Conference: Cultural Heritage and New Technologies (Vienna, 2022)

by Dominik UkolovConferences & TravelsPosted on 8,430 Comments

As my project focuses on the digitization of musical instruments that are inherent components of cultural heritage sites, the conference Cultural Heritage and New Technologies (CHNT 27) seemed ideal to present one of my works about the acoustical spaces that are surrounding the organ. I’ll propose a system that will detect materials, textures and shapes in a photogrammetric model through artificial neural networks to build a new model for acoustical simulations including a mapping of the derived absorption coefficients. You can download the preview of the Short Paper below. The conference will be held in the City Hall of Vienna between November 10-12, 2022.

Date: November 11, 2022
Session: Cultural Heritage and the Metaverse: Linking the Cyber and the Physical to protect and share Cultural Heritage (Intro)
Chair: Lorenzo Ceccon

Title: Multimodal Digitization Concepts for Acoustic Cultural Heritages. Using Photogrammetric Models for the Preservation and Auralization of Historical Acoustical Spaces
Preview to Short Paper (v0): Download

Historical musical instruments and acoustical heritage sites in the Metaverse deserve much more attention, I’ll probably set a focus on this at the end of the project when the structures become more clear. I’m excited to hear the other contributions at this conference!

Annual Meeting of the American Musical Instrument Society 2022

by Dominik UkolovConferences & TravelsPosted on 4,621 Comments

After starting with my project in April 2022, I felt very honored to present my work about Virtual Acoustic Objects in June at the Annual Meeting of the American Musical Instrument Society at the National Music Centre of Canada in Calgary. I was very glad that my colleague Dr. Heike Fricke accompanied me, as she was talking about DISKOS and complemented many aspects of my presentation, also she introduced me to almost everyone she knew from her work in New York (Metropolitan), Washington and Edinburgh – exceptionally nice people with interesting projects! Luckily I received the Frederick R. Selch Award for my presentation, together with Frederick Lapointe, who did a great job in his research about instrument builders in 19th century Montreal.
I was really amazed by the high quality and diversity of the presentations in these days, some of them are still present in my mind and led me to new perspectives on organology in general.

 

Calgary SkyscrapersCalgary Skyline
There are lots of Skyscrapers in Calgary, a pretty young and interesting city with some beautiful surrounding nature (the Rocky Mountains and the Banff National Park are nearby). The high number of homeless people and the gentrification in the east of the city were very noticeable. A network of overground-tunnels called Skywalk / +15 also connects many of those skyscrapers, so you can cross the city without walking outside.

The collection of the Studio Bell / NMC and the building itself were pretty impressive, I highly appreciated the collection of rare synthesizers, but especially their fresh ideas and the high competence of the young team at Studio Bell. The concerts on a digital theatre organ, Ondes Martenots and on the TONTO-System (played by Robin Hatch) were pretty special and memorable.

Studio Bell in CalgarySynthesizer-Collection at Studio Bell in Calgary

This was actually my first time on the american continent, with all these new impressions and kind people I met it is certain that I won’t forget my first conference as a doctoral researcher! I still take the resonance and the award as an important motivating factor to keep going and to spread the word about the project, but also to build up cooperations and work together with interested specialists all around the world.

AMIS 2022 - Screenshot from Presentation

Thanks to everyone who participated and I hope to see you again soon!

tl;dr

  • The Annual Meeting of the American Musical Instrument Society (AMIS) was highly motivating and gave me new perspectives on diverse organological topics
  • The Studio Bell / National Music Centre of Canada has an impressive collection of synthesizers and a great, young team!
  • Full Presentation: Amplify / YouTube