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X-WR-CALDESC:Events for ICMC HAMBURG 2026
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DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260513T160000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260513T180000
DTSTAMP:20260617T215434
CREATED:20260421T172024Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260511T160839Z
UID:10000086-1778688000-1778695200@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
SUMMARY:Piece & Paper Session
DESCRIPTION:Music Program Overview\nHe（龢）\nXiangbin Lin \nSpores: A Physarum-Inspired Instrument for Agent-Based Ecological Interaction\nKyle Smith \nRemnants \nNikos Baskozos \n  \nSession Chair: Rodrigo Cadiz\nPaper Abstracts\nXiangbin Lin\, Du Huang\, Qi Qian and Maosong Sun Beyond Musique Concrète: “Perceptual Morphing via Audio Latent Embeddings Manipulation”\nThis paper proposes “Neural Musique Concr`ete”\, a compositional paradigm that reinterprets the Quantized Audio Latent Embedding produced by Neural Audio Codecs (NACs) as a malleable digital “Sound Object” (L’Objet Sonore) amenable to direct artistic intervention. While end-to-end generative AI has dramatically accelerated music production\, it confines creators to prompt-level interaction\, effectively reversing the long-standing trend toward increasingly fine-grained control over acoustic micro-structures. To restore this creative agency\, we introduce Latent Manipulation Functions (LMFs)—weighted summation with independent time-varying coefficients—that operate directly on the continuous latent space\, enabling “Perceptual Morphing”: the deep semantic and\nacoustic fusion of heterogeneous sound materials beyond waveform-domain superposition. The framework is validated through the electronic composition “He” (Harmony)\, whose three compositional phases (spectral fusion\, stochastic granular scattering\, and order-chaos coupling) demonstrate that tensor-based latent editing supports structurally complex musical forms; a complementary survey of five NACs further establishes the requirements for codec applicability. Our results indicate that direct manipulation of NAC latent embeddings effectively\nbridges the high fidelity of modern AI systems with the fine-grained compositional control central to avant-garde electronic music. \n  \nKyle Smith and Alexandria Smith Spores: “A Physarum-Inspired Instrument for Agent-Based Ecological Interaction”\nThe ecosystem is the interface. Spores (2025) is a touchscreen instrument where sound is activated based on simulated slime mold colonies finding food. The performer becomes part of the ecosystem and a caretaker alongside the slime mold. They read health\, growth rate\, stress\, and territorial spread through observable organism behavior\, the way one reads an animal’s body language. The per- former distributes resources rather than issuing commands\, acting as caretaker to a system that resists mastery. In this paper\, I discuss the theoretical underpinnings engaging with ecological systems\, biomimetic systems\, multi-agent systems in composition/instrument design\, technical implementation\, and composing for and performing with living environments where the performer becomes the care taker of an environment instead of the ”commander” of the environment. I discuss incorporating biophilic design practices into working with agent-based models (ABM) and\nartificial intelligence in music\, modes of interaction\, and my biologically inspired process of collaborating with artificial intelligence. A seven-minute event-based improvisation demonstrates this approach across six sections exploring hunger\, competition\, and abundance. \n  \nNikos Baskozos and Thanos Polymeneas-Liontiris: “Data-driven algorithmic composition with large sample libraries: a modular system for the dynamic formation and control of spatialised sound groups”\nThis paper presents a Max/MSP abstraction library for data-driven algorithmic composition. It utilises large sample collections for the formation and temporal control of multiple subselections of the corpus. Each subselection is hosted in a separate container object and may be formed with its own querying rules\, using various querying modes. These subselections are typically predefined and can be dynamically recalled and modified. Each subselection container is connected to its own pitch\, timing\, effects and playback modules. In addition to sequential playback of samples\, which is more suitable for melodic and rhythmic explorations\, the presented system offers the possibility of vertical playback. The vertical playback module provides temporal control of individual voices and is more suitable for harmonies and spectral techniques. Granular synthesis is possible with both playback modules. The system has been used for the composition of a few fixed-media works. The piece ‘Remnants’\, described in this paper\, partially explores the system’s available features. \n  \nAbout the pieces & artists\nXiangbin Lin: He（龢）\nThe electronic music composition “He” (龢) explores deep fusion mechanisms for heterogeneous sound materials through the direct manipulation of Audio Latent Embeddings (ALE). “He” (龢) is an ancient Chinese character. The conceptual framework derives from the etymology of the title character\, where “Yue” (龠) symbolizes artificially constructed musical structures\, while “He” (禾) signifies nature and vitality . Situated at the intersection of artificial operation and sonic origins\, this work implements a novel method of sound fusion through the computational manipulation of the latent space. \nAbout the artist\nXiangbin Lin is a master’s student in Electronic Music Composition at the Central Conservatory of Music. He received his bachelor’s degree in Electronic Music Production from the same institution\, where he ranked first in his cohort and was recommended for direct admission to the master’s program. He studies under Professor Qi Qian\, Associate Director of the Department of Music Artificial Intelligence and Music Information Technology at the Central Conservatory of Music. \nHe has received numerous honors\, including the National Scholarship for Undergraduate Students\, the Outstanding Graduate of Beijing award\, the Beijing Advanced Class Collective Award\, and the First-Class Academic Scholarship for Graduate Students. He has also been a multiple-time recipient of the Outstanding Student Scholarship and the Merit Student title of the Central Conservatory of Music. \n  \nKyle Smith: Spores: A Physarum-Inspired Instrument for Agent-Based Ecological Interaction\nSpores (2025) explores the relationship between non-deterministic emergence\, artificial co-agency\, and musical expression by reimagining the controller as an ecological system. The performer tends virtual slime mold colonies on a touchscreen running a real-time Physarum polycephalum agent-based model\, seeding new colonies\, distributing nutrients\, and disturbing the environment. Health\, stress\, and territorial spread are continuously extracted and mapped to synthesis parameters via OSC and MPE MIDI. No food\, no colonies. No colonies\, no sound. The constraint becomes visible before it becomes audible. Six sections explore hunger\, competition\, and abundance across a seven-minute event-based improvisation\, each isolating a different ecological condition. The ecosystem itself becomes the interface. \nAbout the artist\nKyle Smith (b. 2000) is a designer\, engineer\, and multimodal artist working at the intersection of music technology\, biomimetic design\, and immersive systems. His research focuses on sensor-driven soundscapes\, generative instruments\, and ecological approaches to musical interaction. He is a second-year master’s student in the Creative Music Technology Lab (CMTL) at Georgia Institute of Technology and holds a B.S. in Creative Technology & Design from the University of Colorado Boulder. \n  \nNikos Baskozos: Remnants\nThis fixed-media piece explores rhythmic patterns and creative sample browsing using a large sound collection. As detailed in the accompanying ICMC 2026 paper\, “Data-driven algorithmic composition with large sample libraries: a modular system for the dynamic formation and control of spatialised sound groups”\, the piece is realised with a custom system which utilises Music Information Retrieval for offline analysis and various querying modes for real-time navigation. For this piece\, a corpus of about 20\,000 one-shot samples is used\, consisting of commercial libraries\, personal recordings\, and random sounds stored in random folders. Four subselections of sounds from the larger library are used and they are dynamically modified during the piece. Each group focuses on different frequency bands and structural roles in the music. Frame drum sounds comprise the low end\, while mostly metallic sounds are present in the mid-range and high frequencies. From a reflective perspective\, images of scrapyards emerge\, both through the sound palette and as an analogy for the retrieval and recombination of materials. The sounds\, as found in the library\, are unsorted and decontextualised\, with folk instruments coexisting alongside office foley sounds. Selection based on audio characteristics allows samples to be found and placed in a musical context. Samples are triggered continuously at 130 BPM\, and rhythmic variations are generated through constrained random selection from the contents of each group. ‘Browsing solos’ integrated into the rhythm are heard frequently. These are created through continuous descriptor querying\, allowing smooth transitions in sample selection. \nAbout the artist\nNikos Baskozos is from Athens\, Greece. He holds a diploma in architecture (U. Patras) and a master’s degree in music creation for new media (NKUA). In recent years\, his main focus has been computer music\, particularly working with large sound collections in Max/MSP. He recently completed an internship at IRCAM-STMS Lab\, focusing on corpus-based synthesis and spatialisation. \n 
URL:https://icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de/event/piece-paper-session-hamburg/
LOCATION:Hamburg University of Technology\, Building H\, Audimax 1\, Am Schwarzenberg-Campus 5\, Hamburg\, 21073\, Germany
CATEGORIES:13-05,Piece & Paper,Session
ORGANIZER;CN="ICMC HAMBURG 2026":MAILTO:info@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260515T133000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/Amsterdam:20260515T150000
DTSTAMP:20260617T215434
CREATED:20260421T172624Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260516T112612Z
UID:10000178-1778851800-1778857200@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
SUMMARY:Piece & Paper Session
DESCRIPTION:Music Program Overview\nLinear A\nChristopher Trapani\nBP clarinet: Sophie Kockler \nRituals of Forgetting and Remembering\nJocelyn Ho\, Margaret Schedel and Sofy Yuditskaya \n雨/Rain \nYuan Zhang and Xinran Zhang \n  \nPaper abstracts\nChristopher Trapani: “Linear A: A Composer’s Integrated Workspace”\nThis paper explores the tools used in the composition of Linear A for Bohlen-Pierce clarinet and electronics (2021). The piece explores the many ways a single microtonal line can be manipulated: echoed\, transposed\, splintered\, zig-zagged\, chopped into bubbling snippets\, and finally\, realigned into a closing chorale. Microtonal features in the bach library\, critical in both the planning and performance stages\, are exploited to pivot between fingerings and the precise non-tempered Bohlen-Pierce tuning. A notation interface uses a system of markers to visualize canonic replies in the electronics. This information is in turn used to generate a master file for real time score following with Antescofo~. The result is a dynamic\, flexible\, self-contained environment that accommodates the peculiarities of the project. \n  \nJocelyn Ho\, Margaret Schedel and Sofy Yuditskaya: “Magnetic Memory Rushnyk”\nIn what ways can two separate but traditionally gendered types of memory—symbolic embroidered memory encoded in ritualistic textile objects and magnetically encoded memory in historic aeronautical computing—intersect to create a performative decoding instrument? This paper introduces Magnetic Memory Rushnyk\, a woven score-instrument that synthesizes symbolic embroidered memory with hand-woven magnetic memory. The project investigates the convergence of ritual textile embroidery (historically used to carry social and generational meaning) with the ”core memory” techniques developed for early computing and aerospace contexts. By embedding magnetic elements into a traditional East Slavic rushnyk (ritual cloth)\, we create a single performative object where weaving serves as a material practice of memory-making. The installation is activated through a custom-built electromagnetic interface\, allowing performers to ”read” the cloth through touch\, gesture\, and sound. This work extends the Women’s Labor artistic research project\, moving from the sonification of domestic tools to the performative decoding of ritual objects\, proposing a model of memory that is materially durable and physically traversable. \n  \nYuan Zhang and Xinran Zhang: “Hexagram-Based Semantic Composition: Discretizing Embedding Spaces into Symbolic Compositional States for Improvised Performance”\nRecent AI-assisted composition systems often emphasize sound generation and continuous parameter control\, treating semantic embeddings as latent spaces for producing musical material. This paper proposes an alternative approach in which semantic computation supports compositional decision-making rather than sound generation. Building upon prior work on semantic-driven digital scores\, we introduce a method that extracts semantic embeddings from a composer-defined corpus and intentionally reduces and discretizes the resulting continuous space into hexagram indices. These indices are interpreted as symbolic compositional states\, not as predictors of musical content. Each state configures structural conditions — such as the balance between fixed and open score layers\, performer agency\, and degrees of stability and change — within which musical behavior may emerge. Hexagrams neither encode musical materials nor prescribe performer actions; instead\, they function as compact interfaces for selecting and constraining compositional worlds. An artistic example demonstrates how this hexagram-based discretization supports interpretable\, repeatable\, and open-ended improvisational performance within a digital score framework. By combining semantic embedding reduction with a highly compressed symbolic system\, this work reframes AI-assisted composition as a decision-oriented practice that assists composers in shaping musical worlds rather than automating sound production. \n  \nAbout the pieces & artists\nChristopher Trapani: Linear A\nThis paper explores the tools used in the composition of Linear A for Bohlen-Pierce clarinet and electronics (2021). The piece explores the many ways a single microtonal line can be manipulated: echoed\, transposed\, splintered\, zig-zagged\, chopped into bubbling snippets\, and finally\, realigned into a closing chorale. Microtonal features in the bach library\, critical in both the planning and performance stages\, are exploited to pivot between fingerings and the precise non-tempered Bohlen-Pierce tuning. A notation interface uses a system of markers to visualize canonic replies in the electronics. This information is in turn used to generate a master file for real time score following with Antescofo~. The result is a dynamic\, flexible\, self-contained environment that accommodates the peculiarities of the project. \nAbout the artists\nChristopher Trapani earned a Bachelor’s degree from Harvard\, then spent most of his twenties in London\, Istanbul\, and Paris\, where he studied with Philippe Leroux and worked at IRCAM.\nAt thirty he moved to New York City\, earning a doctorate at Columbia in 2017. He is currently Assistant Professor of Electronic Music and Digital Media at Louisiana State University.\nRecent commissions have come from Klangforum Wien\, Ensemble Modern\, and Radio France. His works have been heard at Carnegie Hall\, Southbank Centre\, Wiener Konzerthaus\, Ravenna Festival\, and Wigmore Hall.\nChristopher is a Guggenheim Fellow (2019)\, winner of the Rome Prize (2016) and the Gaudeamus Prize (2007). Waterlines\, his debut portrait CD\, was released on New Focus Recordings in 2018\, followed by Horizontal Drift in 2022 and Noise Uprising in 2024.\nChristopher splits his time between his hometown of New Orleans and his European base in Palermo\, Sicily.\nFor more information: www.christophertrapani.com \nBP clarinet: Sophie Kockler \n  \nJocelyn Ho\, Margaret Schedel and Sofy Yuditskaya: Rituals of Forgetting and Remembering\nRituals of Forgetting and Remembering is a performance work for three interrelated instruments: the new Magnetically Memory Rushnyk\, the EM Embroidery Hoop\, the Embedded Iron\, together with ritualistic found objects. Together\, these instruments explore gestures of women’s domestic and ritual labour\, activated as sound.\nThe work responds to forms of labour that are historically taken for granted and structurally forgotten—embroidering\, weaving\, ironing\, maintaining—labour that sustains life yet leaves little trace. The Rushnyk functions as a woven site of memory\, carrying patterned inscription through embroidery and embedded magnetic structures. It is activated through performance rather than display.\nThe EM Embroidery Hoop\, developed in Housework Commons\, operates as an electromagnetic sensing instrument. As performers move the hoop across the surface of the cloth\, variations in proximity\, speed\, and pressure are translated into sound. It decodes signals that are invisible and inaudible through performance gesture. The Embedded Iron\, likewise developed in earlier Women’s Labor works\, extends this reading through acts of pressing\, hovering\, and traversal. Gestures associated with smoothing\, care\, and repetition—often understood as erasing traces—are refigured as acts that reveal and activate what is embedded in the cloth.\nSound in Rituals of Forgetting and Remembering does not emerge through instantaneous access or clean retrieval. It unfolds through physical effort\, friction\, and sustained engagement. Memory is encountered as something that must be worked for: activated through the body\, maintained through repetition\, and made audible through care.\nBy treating textile gestures as both labour and performance\, the work reframes forgotten memory\, rituals\, and techne and their remembering as intertwined processes. The piece offers remembering not as representation\, but as embodied practice—enacted through textiles\, tools\, and the persistence of women’s work across time. \nAbout the artists\nHo\, Schedel\, and Yuditskaya form the core team for Women’s Labor\, presenting work internationally at venues including the Smithsonian Museum (Washington\, D.C.)\, Goethe Lounge (Sydney)\, and Governors Island (New York). \nDr. Jocelyn Ho is an internationally acclaimed pianist\, multidisciplinary artist\, theorist\, and composer whose work integrates embodied performance\, multimedia technologies\, and audience interaction to reimagine contemporary concert practices. She has published on embodied cognition\, gesture\, music and technology\, and early recording analysis\, and is a Lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. \nDr. Margaret Schedel is an interdisciplinary researcher and Professor of Music at Stony Brook University\, and Co-Director of the Human-Centered Computing group at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science. Her work bridges sound art\, AI\, and human-centered applications\, including machine learning in creative practice and neurorehabilitation. \nDr. Sofy Yuditskaya is a site-specific media artist and educator working with sound\, interactivity\, code\, and salvaged material. Her practice explores techno-occult ritual\, participatory performance\, and the entanglements of technology\, petro-culture\, and consciousness. She is research faculty at De Vinci Higher Education in Paris. \n  \nYuan Zhang and Xinran Zhang: 雨/Rain\nRain / 雨 is a digital-score composition that explores how semantic meaning can be translated into performative musical states. The work begins with Chinese poetic fragments related to rain\, which are processed through language embeddings and mapped onto hexagram-based structures. Rather than using AI to generate musical material directly\, the system uses semantic computation to select symbolic states that shape the behaviour of the score. \nThe resulting digital score presents six animated layers\, corresponding to the six lines of a hexagram. These layers guide density\, gesture\, continuity\, and interaction\, while leaving space for performer agency. For this ICMC presentation\, Rain is presented as one realization of the same digital score\, whose identity lies not in fixed instrumentation\, but in its semantic state\, layered score behaviour\, and shared field of listening. In this work\, “rain” emerges not as a fixed image or sound effect\, but as a field of resonance\, accumulation\, and transformation. \nAbout the artists\nYuan Zhang\, Central Conservatory of Music\nYuan Zhang is a faculty member in the Department of AI Music and Music Information Technology at the Central Conservatory of Music and holds a PhD in Electronic Music Composition. She is a core member of the Digital Score Laboratory\, a collaboration with the European Research Council (ERC)\, and translated the Chinese edition of The Digital Score: Musicianship\, Creativity and Innovation.\nHer work focuses on digital scores\, semantic-driven composition\, and performer-centered AI systems. She served as Conference Organising Chair for TENOR 2025 and edited the conference proceedings. \nXinran Zhang\, Central Conservatory of Music\nXinran Zhang is a faculty member in the Department of AI Music and Music Information Technology at the Central Conservatory of Music and holds doctoral degrees in engineering and the arts. His research focuses on music signal processing and language models. He has published over 20 papers in venues including ACL and IEEE\, serves as a guest editor for IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems\, and was the global champion of Track A in the 2023 Sound Demixing Challenge. He edited the proceedings of SOMI 2023. \n  \nVolunteers\nSession Chair\nViola Yip \nSound Engineering \nIlia Viazov\nAssistants\nSeha Kim \n 
URL:https://icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de/event/piece-paper-session-lubeck/
LOCATION:Lübeck University of Music: Kammermusiksaal\, Große Petersgrube 21\, Lübeck\, 23552\, Germany
CATEGORIES:15-05,Excursion to Lübeck,Piece & Paper,Session
ORGANIZER;CN="ICMC HAMBURG 2026":MAILTO:info@icmc2026.ligeti-zentrum.de
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