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Explainable AI and Music
Get PDFThe field of eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) has become a hot topic examining how machine learning models such as neural nets and deep learning techniques can be made more understandable to humans. However, there is very little research on XAI for the arts. This chapter explores what XAI might mean for AI and art creation by exploring the potential of XAI for music generation. One hundred AI and music papers are reviewed to illustrate how AI models are being explained, or more often not explained, and to suggest some ways in which we might design XAI systems to better help humans to get an understanding of what an AI model is doing when it generates music. Then the chapter demonstrates how a latent space model for music generation can be made more explainable by extending the MeasureVAE architecture to include explainable attributes in combination with offering real-time music generation. The chapter concludes with four key challenges for XAI for music and the arts more generally: i) the nature of explanation; ii) the effect of AI models, features, and training sets on explanation; iii) user centred design of XAI; iv) Interaction Design of explainable interfaces
Timbre Tools: Ethnographic Perspectives on Timbre and Sonic Cultures in Hackathon Designs
Get PDFTimbre is a nuanced yet abstractly defined concept. Its inherently subjective qualities make it challenging to design and work with. In this paper, we propose to explore the conceptualisation and negoti- ation of timbre within the creative practice of timbre tool makers. To this end, we hosted a hackathon event and performed an ethnographic study to explore how participants engaged with the notion of timbre and how their conception of timbre was shaped through social interactions and technological encounters. We present individual descriptions of each team’s design process and reflect on our data to identify commonalities in the ways that timbre is understood and informed by sound technologies and their surrounding sonic cultures, e.g., by relating concepts of timbre to metaphors. We further current understanding by offering novel interdisciplinary and multimodal insights into understandings of timbre
Using Creativity to Drive Equity, Inclusion, and Social Justice: A three-year strategy. A guide to working with the London College of Communication's Changemakers to Co-Develop Inclusive Pedagogies
Get PDFThis document has been written based on existing guidance on peer project reviews as part of ‘Student as Partners’ initiatives and projects. The London College of Communication's (LCC) Changemaker role provides advice and guidance in areas of criticality regarding themes of racial and social justice in decolonising education
Fashion Psychology: The Predictors of Everyday Clothing Preference Among UK and USA Participants
Get PDFFashion is one of the most common and accessible (aesthetic) activities in everyday life, yet still largely missing in the literature is a systematic study on clothing preference and its predictors. In this context, the present study builds on Hur, Etcoff, and Silva (2023), which examined the preference structure of clothing styles, i.e. the four-factored Everyday Clothing Preference Factors (ECPF), and its correlates among UK participants. Aiming to replicate and expand the ECPF, the present study employed gender-balanced samples from the UK (N = 402) and the USA (N = 400). The work further explored the predictors of the ECPF through path analyses, incorporating a range of individual differences (e.g. Big 5 personality traits, gender, age, fashion expertise, etc.). A set of factor analyses and correlations revealed that while the ECPF was replicated among UK participants in its original four-factor structure, the ECPF could be expanded into five (Feminine/Pretty, Sporty/Trendy, Formal/Elegant, Classic, and Sporty) or six factors (adding Hip/Unique), depending on the sample. Overall, notable overlaps were found between the UK and USA ECPF structures. Furthermore, path analyses identified extraversion, gender, and age as important predictors of fashion behaviors in both samples. These findings provide a theoretical basis for understanding clothing choice dynamics and contribute to empirical aesthetics and preference research, where fashion is rarely examined. This study's insights could inform retail marketing strategies and sustainable fashion, enhancing the understanding of fashion consumption mechanisms
Activating Digital Learning
No full textDigital learning is an important way for students to learn alongside in-person sessions, but students can be reluctant to participate in digital learning environments when they are undertaking broadly residential/in-person courses. Asynchronous learning can be key to inclusive, flexible, accessible teaching, supporting peer to peer interactions and reinforcing learning. To explore student engagement in digital learning this case study presents the development of an online pre-sessional module in a media school that introduces students to digital learning tools and concepts of blended learning, supporting student reflection on their personal approaches to learning; this study serves as a starting point for a wider discussion reviewing blended learning
Method and Metaphor: Dinh Q. Lê’s Untitled (Soldiers at Rest) (2003)
Get PDFEssay on Dinh Q. Lê commissioned by post. notes on art in a global context, the Museum of Modern Art’s online resource devoted to art and the history of modernism in a global context
Making Circular Design Guidelines: Reflections on a longitudinal practice research project which strategically explored sustainable, circular, local and biobased textile/fashion narratives
Get PDFThis paper explores fashion textile design methods and practices which address a concern for the environment, through the sustainable, circular, ‘local’ and biobased frameworks and approaches. A series of upcycled shirts are reviewed, which uncover new opportunities and insights to support future design pioneers in the field.
Fashion textile design has changed rapidly in the last decade. As the climate emergency has gathered pace and become the most pressing issue of our time, designers and educators have been using the remaking and overprinting of clothing in research practices to uncover the new thinking and actions needed to drive and support changes in industry practices. Sustainable and circular fashion textile design offers designers the opportunity to create compelling visions and practical roadmaps to just and equitable cultures, that value people and planet over profit. Designers can build new bridges between the sciences, and between economics, politics and industry – creatively framing emergent spaces for discourse and action – challenging us through new modes of making, thinking and sharing.
Through different approaches to making textiles and remaking second-hand polyester shirts; and through parallel forms of enquiry including workshop facilitation, design thinking, teaching and consultancy, this paper aims to articulate guidelines for textile design and practice researchers in creating materials and systems fit for a more resilient future. The paper demonstrates the different approaches explored in tackling sustainability in practice by focusing the creative brief on different issues when upcycling – adding value through design. The paper considers a set of ten shirts which explored circular design and an extended use lifecycle of 50 years; as well as the use of AI, biobased materials made from agriwaste and the potential for circular clothing to also be ‘local’ in production, use, disposal and regeneration
Invisible Voice: Unveiling Power Structures Through Digital Transparency
No full textPresentation of Invisible Voice, a digital platform that allows users to obtain economic, political, social and environmental information about the practices and people behind the websites of the organisations they visit. It is a tool that reveals power structures and seeks to promote collective action to bring about meaningful social change.
A project by Mark Farid, artist in residence at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) as part of the interdisciplinary residency promoted by HacTe, Hub of Art, Science and Technology of Barcelona, within the European project S+T+ARTS in the City, funded by the European Commission.
Organised by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, HacTe, Barcelona’s Hub of Art, Science and Technology, and the digital magazine Artnodes, this conference aims to explore in depth how the arts, the media, activism and science address in a transdisciplinary way the global challenges in which the planet is immersed in a period of social, climatic and economic uncertainty.
The session will bring artists, academics and scientists into dialogue through, on the one hand, the presentation of the issue 33 of the journal Artnodes, which traces a genealogy of media artivism; on the other, the presentation of Mark Farid's Invisible Voice project, a digital tool that reveals the power structures of corporations and brands in order to promote social action; and finally, an open conversation that invites to debate the power of the liminal spaces between transdisciplinary practices and narratives and activism when it comes to tackling climate challenges.
This conference is organised in the framework of the S+T+ARTS in the City project, a partnership between six European S+T+ARTS Regional Centres of which HacTe is a member. The S+T+ARTS programme is an initiative funded by the European Commission that aims to stimulate cross-innovation between the arts, sciences and technologies. The S+T+ARTS in the City project is supported by the Generalitat de Catalunya