Research Position available in computer music/sound, cognition and affect

[Kate Stevens <kj.stevens@xxxxxxxxxx>]

From: roger dean <roger.dean@canberra.edu.au>
Subject: Research Position available in computer music/sound, cognition and
affect

2004.01

Dear Colleagues,
Please consider the information below about a new research opportunity in
Canberra, the capital city of Australia. We are hoping for applications from
all over the world, and offer an exciting new research team environment.
Please consider applying or encouraging your colleagues/students to do so,
and please also pass on the information to anyone you think might be
interested and appropriate. In particular, if you have access to a
relevant listserv/email society list, please forward this circular. As
you know, obtaining the best colleagues for such projects is critical,
and not easy, and we appreciate your help and support in this. Queries
may be addressed to me... The advert appeared in the Australian on
2004.01.04.

Please excuse any duplicate postings...(I think it is fair to say that
recipients in need of positions will be glad to receive it, and others
will understand this....)

thanks and best wishes for 2004,

Roger

P.S. Depending on your email reader, you may have to copy the web
addresses below into your browser bar rather than activating directly;
those in the pdf may work more widely. Note that links to the
application documents are on the University of Canberra Recruitment web
site http://www.canberra.edu.au/recruitment/jobs/index.html, as
detailed below.

Roger Dean, Co-Leader, Sonic Communications Research Group, University
of Canberra, ACT 2601. Phone: + 61 2 6201 5000 (Jan Mattiazzi);
roger.dean@canberra.edu.au. Sonic Communications Web page :
www.canberra.edu.au/vc-forum/SCRG.htm;  Creative work represented on
www.australysis.com

Professor Roger Dean,
Vice-Chancellor and President, University of Canberra,
ACT 2601, Australia; roger.dean@canberra.edu.au

Most recent major publication: "Hyperimprovisaton: Computer Interactive
Sound Improvisation', by Roger T. Dean, A-R Editions USA, book (pp.203)
and cd-r (2003). Volume 20 in the computer music and digital audio
series. Available from A-R's website, and from Amazon.

--
Note that this document is slightly edited from that on the UC
recruitment website, to provide more extensive information for those
considering application; for any matters of legal interpretation, the
UC website document is to be used. Some web links are available
directly from the UC website documents; but the Sonic Communications
Research Group page can be accessed via
www.canberra.edu.au/vc-forum/SCRG.htm, and is not listed there.
Further information about the research and creative work of the Chief
Investigator, Roger Dean, is available at www.australysis.com.

POST DOCTORAL RESEARCHER - Sonic Communications/Music

Reference No. 03/2145
$54784 - $64887 pa

ACADEMIC LEVEL B

The University of Canberra currently has new funding available for two
Post Doctoral Researchers.

The second position ¡V Ref. No. 03/2145 - is a three year Post Doctoral
opportunity funded by a new Australian Research Council grant to Prof.
Roger Dean (Team Co-leader), in the newly formed Sonic Communications
Research Team, within the ¡¥CMCS¡¦ area of research strength listed
below. Collaborators are Dr Hazel Smith (UC), and Dr Kate Stevens
(UWS). The project concerns the use of computer generation and
manipulation of sound to permit assessment of the cognitive
accessibility of the resultant musical structures. Details are
available from roger.dean@canberra.edu.au, and from the UC website.
Post-graduate applicants at the Research Officer level will also be
considered for this project.

Areas of Research Strength at the University of Canberra

¡±    Communication, Media and Cultural Studies (CMCS)
¡±    Tourism 
¡±    Education and Innovation
¡±    Built and Cultural Environments
¡±    Ecology, Environmental and Earth Sciences
¡±    Medical and Health Sciences
¡±    Governance
¡±    Socio-Economic Policy and Research
¡±    Information Sciences and Engineering

Closing Date: 23 January 2004


Applications for this position close 23 January, 2004.

(Information available from the UC recruitment website:
Please refer to the Information for Applicants and the Position
Documentation before applying for this position. Note that applications
from non-Australians are extremely welcome, but additional formalities
apply. When applying, you must print, fill out and attach this cover
sheet to your application. Note that the cover sheet is in Adobe PDF
format. If you do not already have one, a program to read PDF files is
available free from Adobe. Applicants should address the Selection
Criteria, and include the names, addresses and fax numbers of at least
3 referees.)

Applications should be addressed to:

Recruitment Officer 1C18
University of Canberra ACT 2601

The University is AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER


POSITION DESCRIPTION


Position Title:  Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, in Sonic Communications

Division:  Communication and Education

Research Group: Sonic Communications Research Group
(www.canberra.edu.au/vc-forum/SCRG.htm)

Appointment Level:  Academic Level B

Reporting to:   Prof Roger Dean

Vacancy Ref No:       03/2145

Position Purpose:
The appointee will carry out independent and team research in the
recently formed Sonic Communications Research Group, within the
Communication, Media and Cultural Studies area of research strength.
This research group is lead by Prof Roger Dean (Vice-Chancellor), and
Dr Hazel Smith (Senior Research Fellow). The project is funded by a new
3 year ARC Discovery grant to Roger Dean, in which the key
collaborators are Dr Hazel Smith, and Dr Kate Stevens (UWS). The
project concerns the use of computer generation and manipulation of
sound to generate large scale musical structure. It investigates the
psychological reality and recognisability of complex musical segments
and structures.  Affective responses elicited by the computer-generated
and mainuplated sounds will also be examined.  Further details,
including details of selected relevant publications from previous work
of group members, are available from roger.dean@canberra.edu.au, and
from the UC website, at the Sonic Communications Research Group home
page (www.canberra.edu.au/vc-forum/SCRG.htm). Applicants at UC¡¦s
Research Officer level will also be considered for this position. The
successful applicant will also carry out activities to develop his/her
research expertise relevant to the particular field of research, and
the University of Canberra is developing several means to support the
development of researchers¡¦ careers, such as contingency funding when a
researcher gains their own research fellowship.

Duties:
Specific duties required of this Post-Doctoral position may include:

¡q        The conduct of research either as a member of a team or
independently, and the production of conference and seminar papers and
publications from that research.
¡q        Supervision of research-support staff involved in the staff
member¡¦s research.
¡q        Guidance in the research effort of junior members of
research-only academic staff in his/her research area.
¡q        Contribution to the preparation, or where appropriate
individual preparation, of research proposal submissions to external
funding bodies.
¡q        Involvement in professional activities including, subject to
availability of funds, attendance at conferences and seminars in the
field of expertise.
¡q        Administrative functions primarily connected with his/her area
of research.
¡q        Co-supervision, or where appropriate supervision, of major
honours or postgraduate research projects within the field of the staff
member's area of research.
¡q        Attendance at meetings associated with research or the work of
the centre to which the research is connected and /or school and/or
division meetings and/or membership of a limited number of committees.
¡q        Development of grant applications to develop the applicant¡¦s
own research opportunities, and assistance with other applications
supporting the Sonic Communications Research Group.

Required Expertise
One or more of the following are required:

1.      In depth experience and creative outputs in algorithmic
generation of music, using MAX/MSP, or comparable software technologies.
2.      Research experience and publications in cognition of sound or
music.

Essential Criteria

1.      Relevant doctoral qualification or equivalent qualifications or
research experience
2.      Post-doctoral research experience which has resulted in
creative work, publications, conference papers, reports or professional
or technical contributions which give evidence of research and creative
ability
3.      Established links with outside organisations that are of
benefit to the University.
4.      Demonstrated effective interpersonal and communication skills.
5.      Demonstrated understanding of, and commitment to implementation
of equity principles.

Desirable Criteria

1.      Evidence of exceptional innovative capacity, coupled with
critical and evaluative ability.


Before submitting your application
You may contact Professor Roger Dean, on (02) 6201 5000 or
roger.dean@canberra.edu.au for academic/research information, further
information about the position, or to discuss the program of research
to be undertaken.

The University¡¦s cover sheet must accompany applications.  Please
submit your full application (as detailed in Information for Applicants
on the UC website) via email to recruit@adminserver.canberra.edu.au, as
well as hard copy (including the completed and signed Cover Sheet) to:
Recruitment Officer
             Room 1C18
             University of Canberra  ACT  2601

Some further information about the funded ARC project is here:

A4 Project Title:
Towards efficient real-time generation of detectable musical
macrostructure

A5 100 word lay summary
Efficient generation of detectable large scale musical structure is
needed for commercial audiovisual applications, and for creative music
making. But computer mediation of music has focused elsewhere: on sound
synthesis and sequencing, editing, mixing and notation. I will apply
computational processes, like the handling of chunks of genetic
information in evolution, to generate large scale musical structure. I
will control segmentation; framing of internal segments;
spatialisation; and the overlaying of separable musical streams. Expert
cognitive assessment of the resultant structures will be investigated,
and theories of segmentation, streaming and their relationships with
expression and affect developed and tested.

E1.  Towards efficient real-time generation of detectable musical
macrostructure.

E2 Description. The project will develop techniques to generate
large-scale musical structure in real-time, and to assess the degree to
which the resultant structures are cognitively accessible to
experienced musicians. (¡¥Real-time¡¦ means within the time frame in
which a piece is performed.) The project will further develop theories
of segmentation and framing in music, by musicological  and scientific
analysis. The theoretical development will be followed by cognitive
assessment, taking advantage of the real-time generative mechanisms to
produce systematic defined variations of musical structures, allowing
comparative cognitive assessment by the expert listeners. Efficient
generative techniques are required not only for preparation of
experimental examples, but also for the audiovisual industries, which
require economically-generated music whose relationship to the
verbal/visual stream needs to be well controlled, since the affect of
music influences the impact of film segments (e.g. ). Real-time
generative techniques are also important for creative music per se; I
have theorized and analysed the importance of real-time music creation
(e.g. improvisation) in a series of substantial publications . It is
important that the music in this project will not necessarily be
note-oriented, in the sense of classical instrumental music. Rather,
much will be comprised of sonic structures which will be digitally
synthesized or transformed in performance. The note-oriented music will
initially  be atonal. The project is complementary to others  focused
on the computer synthesis of music performance (as opposed to creation)
.
The specific aims of the project can be summarised as follows:
1.To develop new algorithmic methods for the real-time generation
(¡¥digistructuralisation¡¦) of large scale musical structure
(¡¥macrostructure¡¦), in a style-independent manner, using surface ¡¥cues¡¦
for segmentation.
2.To investigate the detectability by expert musicians (composers and
improvisers) and musicologists of the structural features so developed,
notably segmentation.
3.To develop a theoretical framework for the detection, generation and
utilisation of a range of musical segmentation devices (structural
¡¥cues¡¦); this framework will be informed initially by scientific and
musicological considerations, and later also by postmodern cultural
theory.
4.To iteratively test the relationship between defined algorithmic
structural modifications of an otherwise unchanged piece, cognitive
recognition of these changes and the newly established structures, and
their affective content.

  
  

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