Universities are expected to undertake research at the cutting edge, whether it is to do with scholarly endeavour, scientific or technical development, artistic practice or anything else. Universities are also expected to play a
significant role in terms of making their work relevant to their communities and to society at large.
The Interfaces project (www.interfacesnetwork.eu www.interfaces.dmu.ac.uk) that took place from May 2016 until August 2020 benefitted from cutting edge research developments regarding music that is made using any sounds
which often involves cutting-edge technology and attempted to make this form of sonic creativity relevant and accessible to people of all ages and backgrounds. The project’s motto was: ‘Bringing new music to new audiences’. For the Music, Technology and Innovation – Institute for Sonic Creativity (MTI2) at DMU, it also meant, ‘Bringing new forms of sound-based music making to … everyone’.
Interfaces received €3 million funding as part of the Creative Europe programme. This programme is focused on cultural production, mobility and exchange, not pure research. Receiving our part of the grant provided an ideal
opportunity for the MTI2 to reach out and make its work relevant to our region but also to society at large.
Coordinated by the Onassis Cultural Centre in Athens, it brought together two of the most prestigious institutions in Europe involved with contemporary music, IRCAM, the music department of the Pompidou Centre in Paris and ZKM, Europe’s premier new media art museum, research institute and art centre in Karlsruhe, Germany. Other partners included two of Europe’s finest new music ensembles, Ictus (Brussels) and Klangforum Wien (Vienna),
a sound art venue, Q0-2 (Brussels) and another higher education institution, the European University of Cyprus (Nicosia).
For the MTI2 the project involved artistic commissions for a series of concerts and mini-festivals in venues around Leicester over the project period including the oldest church in the city, the Magazine, which formed part of the city walls, a number of buildings around the city including within Leicester’s cultural quarter including the Phoenix Arts Centre, which is Leicester’s digital arts venue and Curve, its main theatre and across several venues internationally simultaneously. Therefore, works amongst which many were made for specific sites, were visited by people who normally would not attend contemporary music events alongside its existent audience. The works presented included sound installations, building projections and audio-visual works. But there was more!
In a world going through a very strange and challenging pandemic, the notion of making music collaboratively virtually seems to make sense. One of our Interfaces actions, led by Dr. John Richards, was called Telematic Hacking
which involved the creation of an instrument that could be built for just a few pounds that picks up information from the network and uses this information to jam with other musicians online anywhere in the world. Two international
online multi-site live concerts can be found on YouTube.
Moving to things one might expect from a university, workshops for schools and community venues were created and are downloadable for free on DMU’s project site. These workshops were presented internationally
in two areas of sonic creativity with children in schools and people of all ages in a variety of venues: making music with any sounds and socalled DIY electronics. (You can think of this as musical sampling and do-it-yourself instrument building involving any sounds.) The content of these workshops was based on the research of two staff members and over ten PhD students. All workshops culminated in the participants Bringing New Music to New Audiences – the Interfaces Project making their own pieces. At the end of many of the workshops, participants were asked whether they would like to hear this type of music again and whether they would like to make this type
of music again. For music that is unknown to the majority of people today, it may come as a surprise that at least 70% reacted positively to both questions across four European countries during the entire project thus proving that we could succeed in terms of our wish to bring new music to a broad variety of new listeners and musicians.
Perhaps the most ambitious MTI2 activities within Interfaces were to do with the important developments of an eLearning site with its bespoke creative software. EARS 2 (the ElectroAcoustic Resource Site pedagogical project) and Compose with Sounds (CwS, ears2.dmu.ac.uk and ears2.dmu.ac.uk/cws) were developed from their earlier prototypes to sophisticated platforms introducing sonic creativity from the points of view of listening, learning and making. EARS 2 and CwS are available in ten European languages thanks to the project and have already been placed on Cyprus’s national curriculum for music.
As EARS 2 includes teachers’ packs for general and specialist teachers with little to no experience with this form of music making, both have been tested and received enthusiastic reactions from teachers and users alike. They are expected to be used in particular for the UK’s Key Stage 3 (11-14-year olds) but have been used with children from year 4 to adults of all ages. Compose with Sounds is designed to be used intuitively without a steep learning curve with regard to the discovery of making music with sounds. There are even translations in Chinese and Japanese in development. EARS 2 was specifically requested by UNESCO based on its predecessor EARS(www.ears.dmu.ac.uk), is a resource for students and professionals. The impact of EARS 2/CwS may be the ultimate in terms of what a
mid-sized university institute can achieve with respect to increasing interest and participation in our field. EARS 2 is available to all online and Compose with Sounds is freely available for download on Mac and Windows operating systems.
A new version of Compose with Sounds called CwS Live has also been developed and is in an advanced testing phase at the time of writing this short article. It can be used on laptops, tablets and smart phones and involves the opportunity for multiple users to use sounds they have individually or collectively recorded and manipulate them producing real-time sonic performance. CwS Live is also available from the CwS web page and soon will also be available from the relevant App stores on the various platforms. Take a look at EARS 2 and Compose with Sounds and you can discover, explore and enjoy the world of making music with sounds. No previous experience is necessary.