Panel: Music, Technology and the Mind
Panelists
Lars Rye Bertelsen
Pia Preißler
Goran Lazarevic
Miriam Akkermann
Li Zhong
Li Xiaobing
Moderation: Eckhard Weymann
About the panelists & their perspectives
Lars Rye Bertelsen: MusicStar
Lars Rye Bertelsen will present on the MusicStar app. as a technology for health. The background, thoughts and visions for its development will be presented, along with an overview of its use and distribution worldwide. The app has been in use as a personal coping-strategy both clinically for patients during admittance and after dismissal from hospital, in refugee rehabilitation and several quality studies ad research projects, and it is also available for private use.
About the panelist
Lars Rye Bertelsen began his music therapy training at Aalborg University in the program’s first cohort in 1982. He has since worked as a private music therapy clinician since 1987 and later established a private music therapy clinic in 1999 with three colleagues. From 2004 to 2024, he held a part-time position at the music therapy research clinic at Aalborg University Hospital – Psychiatry, where he conducted both clinical work and research in music therapy and music medicine. Bertelsen is co-inventor of the MusicStar app and specializes in designing playlists for arousal regulation. He earned his PhD in music therapy at Aalborg University in 2025. Moreover, he is a certified Bonny Method GIM therapist and a fellow of the European Association for Music and Imagery (EAMI).
Pia Preißler and Goran Lazarevic: The Healing Soundscapes
We will be presenting our work and the most recent developments in the Healing Soundscapes project – an interdisciplinary project at the intersection of music therapy, psychology, composition, and technology, where each of these branches is simultaneously supporting and enhancing the others. The project integrates scientific research, artistic practice, and AI-driven tools to create “neutral” sound environments for clinical spaces – blending seemlesly into the existing environement and at the same time enriching it in ways that promote the well-being of persons experiencing it. Moving beyond purely functional audio, we explore how complex, artful sound can resonate across individual preferences in a genre-agnostic way, offering new listening experiences for patients and staff, and redefining the role of music outside the concert hall.
About the panelists
Dr. Pia Preißler is a qualified music therapist, psycho-oncologist and research fellow at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE), and a lecturer at the University of Music and Drama in Hamburg (HfMT). Her work combines clinical practice with research, as in the ‘Healing Soundscapes’ project, which she has been leading since 2023 within the context of the ligeti center. Here, sound installations are implemented in waiting and work areas within the hospital and their effects are studied.
Goran Lazarevic is a Hamburg-based improviser, composer, accordionist and researcher. His main interests lie in the fields of live electronics, microtonal music, free improvisation and computer music, as well as brain-computer-music interfaces (BCMI) and cognitive science. Goran Lazarević works as a project coordinator for the Hamburg Open Online University (HOOU) at the University of Music and Drama in Hamburg (HfMT) and has been a part of the ‘Healing Soundscapes’ project group since 2016.
Miriam Akkermann: “music as sleep aid – between expectation and personalization”
Listening to music can have strong effects on humans, which can be traced in both subjective reactions and changes in the brain’s neurophysiology. One area that draws on these effects is the use of music to promote relaxation and help people to fall asleep. While positive effects could be already shown in people suffering from e.g. insomnia and dementia, also healthy adults are using more and more music as a non-pharmaceutical sleep aid to increase individual well-being. Situated at the intersection of music research, psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and computer science, the research on the effects of music on sleep unfolds as a highly interdisciplinary research field. In our project, we are particularly interested in the relation between more general effects and individual preferences for music as well as the role of expectation towards the effect of specific sounds or musics. Hereby, we explore approaches such as the personalization of the music using generative music as well as the associations evoked by technically mediated (audible) space in music productions.
About the panelist
Miriam Akkermann is musicologist and sound artist. Her research areas include music of the 20th and 21st century, computer music/music technology, musical performance practices, archiving music in the digital age, as well as the effect of music on sleep. She received a PhD in musicology from the Berlin University of the Arts, and completed her habilitation at Bayreuth University. As a musician and sound artist, she performs with flute and live electronic, and creates compositions and sound installations, that have been shown at concerts, festivals and exhibitions, in Europe, North America, and Asia.
From 2024-2026, she held the Ernst-von-Siemens Musikstiftungsprofessur at FU Berlin, in March 2026, she took over the professorship for systematic musicology at TU Dortmund.
Li Zhong
Li Zhong’s speech highlights the growing role of music in promoting holistic health, including emotional, cognitive, and social well-being. He underscores China’s efforts under the “Healthy China” strategy to advance interdisciplinary collaboration across music, technology, medicine, and psychology. The Central Conservatory of Music is presented as a key driver in this field, actively leading cross-disciplinary research and innovation in areas such as music neuroscience and artificial intelligence, and expanding the role of music in public health. The speech calls for stronger international cooperation to further advance this field and contribute to global well-being.
About the panelist
Li Zhong was born in September, 1972 in Shuozhou, Shanxi province, Han nationality. Started working in July 1995, he achieved the Master of Laws degree. Being the Master’s Supervisor in the major of Intercultural Communication and Language Broadcasting at the Communication University of China and the associate research fellow, he has been the Vice Chairman of the University Council of the Communication University of China and is the Vice Chairman of the University Council of the Central Conservatory of Music presently.
He is the supervisor of the 11th Council of the Party Building Research Association for Universities in Beijing; Vice President of the first Party Building Research Association for Radio and Television of China Federation of Radio and Television Social Organizations; Member of the 9th Council of the Ideological and Political Education Branch of Chinese Association of Higher Education.
From April to July 2009, he visited the University of Reading in the UK to conduct research primarily in student affairs management and educational development. He has been dedicated to systematic research in the fields of cross-cultural communication and language dissemination, focusing on cultural interaction mechanisms within a globalized context. He explores collaborative training models for international talents in response to the needs for enhanced international communication efficacy, continually promoting the integration of academic development with practical demands. His achievements are significant both in theoretical innovation and practical application.
Li Xiaobing: “Artificial Intelligence, Artistic Intelligence @ Machinism”
This presentation takes the dialectical relationship between two forms of “AI”—Artificial Intelligence and Artistic Intelligence—as its point of departure, proposing and elaborating the conceptual framework of “Machinism.” From the interdisciplinary perspective of science, technology, and art, it reconsiders the subject structure of artistic creation and the mechanisms of meaning generation in the age of artificial intelligence. Here, “Machinism” is not a doctrinal theory about machines, but rather a conceptual framework for understanding the reconfiguration of subject relations in human–machine collaborative creation.
Machinism points toward two dimensions: first, within the framework of human values and ethics, intelligent systems are incorporated into processes of meaning production, shifting art from “subjective expression” toward “human–machine co-generation”; second, as a philosophical extension, when intelligent systems develop more complex cognitive structures, artistic creation may evolve into a generative field involving multiple subjects, thereby opening new possibilities for understanding the “creative subject.”
In the future of Artificial Intelligence, Artistic Intelligence @ Machinism, where will human art go?
About the panelist
Li Xiaobing is Professor and Doctoral Supervisor at the Central Conservatory of Music, Director of the Department of Music Artificial Intelligence, National Leading Talent in Philosophy and Social Sciences, recipient of the Central Propaganda Department’s “Four Kinds of Talents” award, expert entitled to special government allowances, Principal Investigator of major national social science projects, the Chair of the China Computer Federation (CCF) Computational Art Branch, the Chair of the Chinese Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAAI) Art and Artificial Intelligence Commission. He also leads the “National Huang Danian-style Faculty Team” in higher education.
A Doctor of Composition, Li Xiaobing graduated from the Composition Department of the Central Conservatory of Music, where he studied under the renowned composer Professor Wu Zuqiang, Honorary President of the Chinese Musicians Association and the Central Conservatory of Music. His musical creations span almost all genres, with works enjoying wide popularity and significant influence. He has been honored with numerous domestic and international awards, including the Golden Bell Award, the Wenhua Grand Prize, the Wenhua Composition Award, first prizes in national opera and dance drama competitions, and the “Five One Project” Award from the Central Propaganda Department.