Worskshop on Music Information Processing Systems

[Dan Ellis <dpwe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear List -

Enclosed is an announcement for a workshop I am co-organizing at NIPS
this December to look at problems in analyzing and modeling the
information in music.  I hope we can get a good selection of
provocative contributions and discussions.

  DAn.

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   MIPS -- Music Information Processing Systems
             Workshop at NIPS*04
      December 16--17, 2004, Whistler, Canada
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  URL:  http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~eckdoug/mips

Music raises fundamental issues in machine learning. Musical signals
are dynamic, highly structured and exhibit long term temporal
dependencies. Methods for discovering and representing these
dependencies will enable the development of algorithms for music
analysis and generation.  Of particular interest are algorithms that
use learned musical structure to compose music and to interact with
musicians.  Additionally, creating and navigating large databases of
music are difficult information retrieval and classification
challenge.


Call for Participation
----------------------

We are soliciting participants for the "MIPS -- Music Information
Processing Systems" workshop.  MIPS will concentrate on several key
issues which are currently prominent in the intersection of machine
learning, music information retrieval and computer music research. The
goal is to create an informal platform for scientific discussion of
recent issues in computational methods for music information
processing.  We are especially interested in participants that can
contribute in the following areas:

* Discovery of musical structure
* Generative models of music (at signal and/or symbolic level)
* Interactive systems
* Music similarity, classification and retrieval

Please send an extended abstract not longer than two pages to
Jean-Francois Paiement at paiement@idiap.ch. PS, PDF and ASCII text are all
acceptable formats. Include the keyword MIPS-SUBMISSION in the title.

The deadline for abstract submission is October 15. Based on these
abstracts, we will select a small number of speakers and a number of panel
members for discussions.

In the tradition of NIPS workshops, the focus is on the discussion of
new ideas rather than on creating a conference-like atmosphere. We
strongly encourage audience participation throughout the talks and will
leave ample time for discussion afterward. In choosing talks we will
opt for those that offer novel algorithms, challenging ideas and
interesting musical examples. Submissions will be
considered that treat a wide range of music-related machine learning
challenges.  The workshop favors neither a particular modeling
framework nor a particular way of encoding music (from digital audio
to symbol strings).

The Workshop
-------------

MIPS is a one-day workshop with a morning and afternoon session.
The tentative schedule is:

* brief introduction by workshop organizers
* five short morning talks
* morning panel discussion
* five short afternoon talks
* afternoon panel discussion
* brief wrap-up by workshop organizers

In addition to a lunch break, long coffee breaks will be offered both in the
morning and afternoon.

Additionally, there will be a possibility to present posters and
demonstrations during these breaks.

NIPS (http://nips.cc) is the leading conference on machine learning,
applied statistics, cognitive modeling and
neurocomputation. Following the main conference in Vancouver, the
workshops are held at Whistler Ski Resort and combine wonderful
science and skiing in an informal environment.

Workshop Organizers
-------------------

Douglas Eck
University of Montreal, Department of Computer Science
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
douglas.eck@umontreal.ca

Daniel P. W. Ellis
Dept. of Electrical Engineering, Columbia University
New York, NY
dpwe@ee.columbia.edu

Ali Taylan Cemgil
IAS Informatica Instituut, University of Amsterdam
The Netherlands
cemgil@science.uva.nl

Jean-Francois Paiement
IDIAP Research Institute
Martigny, Switzerland
paiement@idiap.ch
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