Summer School in Sound and Music Computing & SID Training School on Interactions with Environmental Sounds

Casa Da Música , Porto, Portugal, July 18-21, 2009

The 2009 Sound and Music Computing Summer School will be organized as a Training School of the The COST IC0601 Action on Sonic Interaction Design (SID). The theme of this summer school is Interacting with Sounds of Porto. This summer school will explore the potential of recording, processing, sharing and interacting with city sounds.

This is the fifth SMC Summer School (after the Genova and Barcelona editions funded by the European Coordination Action IST-FET S2S² and later editions in Stockholm and Genova again) and the second Training School of the COST Action on Sonic Interaction Design. It will take place just before the 6th Sound and Music Computing Conference.

The School will cater to suit different student backgrounds. If your background is an Art, Sound/Music recording, Design, Computer Science, etc., there will be something new for you to learn at this Summer School.

The summer school will include 3 main lectures:
1. Design of new interfaces for musical expression. This lecture will review existing examples of novel interfaces for musical expres​sion(also known as gestural controllers or control surfaces), as well as the various sensing technologies used in these devices. We will also discuss ways to design mapping strategies between interface output variables and sound synthesis input variables and approaches to the design of novel interfaces and digital musical instruments. Course material.
2. Registering the soundscape. This lecture will present basic aesthetic, technical, and cultural aspects of audio field recording, interactive approaches to sound design with environmental sounds, and the nature of the roles that soundscape composition can play in our lives.
3. Sound edition, description and retrieval, social networks. Present current technologies for sound edition, description and retrieval, and introduce students to the use of the Freesound.org platform with which they will edit, tag and share their sound recordings.

Application
A maximum of 20 students will be admitted to the school.

Interested candidates are asked to propose a project they intend to carry out (either alone or in small groups) during the summer school.

A selection of projects will be made by the Summer School team. Participants may be asked to modify slightly their projects. After completion of all projects, the Scientific Committee will proceed to an evaluation and the best project will receive a prize during the Sound and Music Computing Conference (23-25 July 2009) in the Casa da Música.

Fees
There will be a student registration fee of 200 Euros to the Summer School. The COST Action IC0601 on Sonic Interaction Design will provide financial help to a selection of students under the form of individual fixed grants of 500 Euros (preference will be given to students whose proposal projects best fit SID topics.

Summer School students are also encouraged to attend the Sound and Music Computing Conference (23-25th July 2009). There will be special (lower) conference fees for Summer School students.

Students have to send their applications before April 24th 2009.