The ExCITe Center at Drexel University, October 18, 2013

10:00am

The ExCITe Center will be hosting a segment of the Grassroots Game Conference exploring the Collision of Games and Music. As a whole, the conference aims to encourage the use of creativity in game development, as well as to expand the field. This event will feature a number of presentations by experts with backgrounds in both music and technology, including our very own Youngmoo Kim, as well as panel discussions.

Speakers:

Dr. Teresa Nakra, Associate Professor of Music at The College of New Jersey, is a recognized expert in music technology, having made important research contributions in the study of musical expression and gesture. She is best known for her quantitative analyses of orchestral conducting, and the application of this information to real-time music systems. Teresa’s research areas include human-computer interfaces, real-time music systems, music theory, music perception, and affective computing. Her interactive conducting experiences, You’re the Conductor and Virtual Maestro, have been showcased across the United States and Europe at museums, music festivals, and concert halls. She founded and runs Immersion Music, a non-profit organization that designs technical solutions for the performing arts. Clients have included Harvard University, ABC’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition, Boston Children’s Museum, Children’s Discovery Museum (Illinois), the Leonard Bernstein Office, UBS, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, American Composers Orchestra, Arizona State University, and McGill University. Her work has been profiled in the New Yorker Magazine, the New York Times, CNN Headline News, BBC World Service, and the Associated Press. Teresa performs professionally as a conductor and violinist, in opera, symphonic, and new music productions. She holds an A.B. degree in music (magna cum laude) from Harvard University, and an M.S. and Ph.D. degree from the MIT Media Laboratory.

Tae Hong Park is a composer, music technologist, and bassist. His work focuses on composition of electro-acoustic and acoustic music, machine learning and computer-aided music analysis, research in multi-dimensional aspects of timbre, and audio digital signal processing. Dr. Park has presented his music at national and international conferences and festivals including Bourges, ICMC, MATA, SCIMF, and SEAMUS. Among the ensembles and performers that have played his work are the Brentano String Quartet, California E.A.R. Unit, Edward Carroll, Ensemble Surplus, Zoe Martlew, Nash Ensemble of London, and the Tarab Cello Ensemble. Professor Park is author of Introduction to Digital Signal Processing: Computer Musically Speaking (World Scientific, 2010). He is the Chief Editor of Journal SEAMUS, serves as Editiorial Consultant for Computer Music Journal, and is President of the International Computer Music Association (ICMA). He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Eric Humphrey is a PhD candidate (ABD) in Music Technology at the Music and Audio Research Lab (MARL) @ NYU. After earning a BSEE at Syracuse University in 2007, Eric flocked south to pursue a masters in Music Engineering Technology at the University of Miami, graduating in 2009. During the completion of his master’s thesis, Eric fell in love with music informatics and New York City; as a result, he now spends his days in the Village, striving to make machines more intelligent. In addition to the academic pursuits of higher education, Eric is a multi-instrumentalist, has been a visiting lecturer at the University of Miami, worked as an independent contractor roles for several audio technology companies, spent a summer at Google doing really exciting things he can’t really talk about, and currently serves as the student member on the ISMIR Steering Committee.

Youngmoo Kim is Director of the ExCITe Center and Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Drexel University. He received his Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab and also holds Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Music (Vocal Performance Practice) from Stanford University as well undergraduate degrees in Engineering and Music from Swarthmore College. His research group, the Music & Entertainment Technology Laboratory (MET-lab) pursues machine understanding of sound, interfaces and robotics for expressive interaction, and K-12 outreach for engineering education. He co-chaired the 2008 International Conference on Music Information Retrieval and was invited by the National Academy of Engineering to co-organize the “Engineering and Music” session for the 2010 Frontiers of Engineering conference. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Knight Foundation. Youngmoo has performed with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, American Musical Theater of San Jose, and SpeakEasy Stage Company (Boston) and is a member of Opera Philadelphia’s American Repertoire Council.

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