Grant awarded: 1,965,583.75 EUR (Total EU Grant Awarded); DMU to receive 353,396.25 EUR
Funder: EU – HORIZON-SESAR-2023-DES-ER2-WA2-2
Project Leads: Raouf Hamzaoui (PI) and Feng Chen (Co-I)
The ATMACA (Air Traffic Management and Communication over ATN/IPS) project proposes an innovative solution that enables effective, seamless, interoperable air-to-ground datalink communication and digital flight monitoring and management through aeronautical telecommunication (ATN) based on the Internet Protocol Suite (IPS) within all domains of flight. ATMACA aims at supporting the “air-ground integration and autonomy” initiative in the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA), which presents strategic roadmaps to achieve SESAR phase D “Digital European Sky” in the European ATM Master Plan 2020 edition. ATMACA proposes a beyond the state-of-the-art IP-based datalink communication solution by introducing an application-layer mobility management for ATN and enabling commercial of-the-shelf equipment. It will also provide a next generation human-machine interface (HMI) that will process higher quality data, enable interactions with existing and future aeronautical applications and services, and meet the needs of end-users. The ATMACA solution will be validated through real-time simulations and real-time monitoring tests by considering relevant applicable SESAR key performance areas and indicators, as well as industry standards. The consortium consists of a balanced mixed of universities and industrial partners (an air navigation service provider, an airline, and a research and consultancy firm specialized in HMI design) to ensure the project meets its objectives.
Funder: EU – Horizon Research and Innovation Programme
SMIDGE is a project dedicated to exploring the impact of extremist narratives on the middle-aged population. As part of an EU-funded Horizon research project, we are investigating the attraction of extremist content on social media and how it influences this group. Our goal is to provide policy-makers with valuable insights and recommendations through our reports, policy briefs and counter-narrative videos. Stay up-to-date with our latest findings, news and upcoming events such as webinars, roundtables and conferences.
Misinformation, conspiracy theories and extremism online are growing concerns for governments and society at large. The way social media algorithms work often incentivizes the spread of such ideas, as they generate more engagement and revenue. This phenomenon can have a direct impact on perceptions of democratic institutions, trust in science and calls for direct action to overthrow or disrupt democratically elected governments. Middle-aged individuals (45-65) are particularly susceptible to extremist narratives, and their involvement in such content could have significant consequences for political discourse, democratic processes and institutions.
In 2021, Dr Giuliana Tiripelli was commissioned by the Committee on Culture, Science, Education (CCSE) and Media of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), to write a report on “The role of the media in times of crisis”. The report was debated at the plenary of PACE held in May 2021, and the corresponding resolution was adopted in January 2022 (CCSE rapporteur, Ms Annicka Engblom, Sweden, EPP/CD). PACE, which means “peace” in Italian, is made up of parliamentarians from the 47 member states of the Council of Europe (CoE).
The CoE has an important balancing international role, which spans beyond EU countries, “to promote human rights, democracy and the rule of law” (https://www.gov.uk/world/organisations/uk-delegation-to-the-council-of-europe) across the wider pan-European region.
PACE “monitors the way member states honour their commitments and … obligations as members of the Council of Europe”, and itsnine committees “prepare the reports and follow the state of human rights, democracy and rule of law in the member states in their area of focus” (https://www.coe.int/en/web/no-hate-campaign/parliamentary-assembly1, https://www.coe.int/en/web/yerevan/the-coe/structure-of-coe#:~:text=The%20Council%20of%20Europe%20operates,and%20the%20Conference%20of%20INGOs).
The expert report by Dr Tiripelli for the PACE Committee on Culture, Science, Education and Media used previous re-search, case studies, and exchanges with experts. The report, soon to be made public, was an essential source for elaborating the final policy document Resolution 2419 approved on the 25th of January 2022. Tiripelli’s report is an essential source for PACE Resolution 2419 (2022). Its main points and recommendations are reflected in the resolution, and in particular the invitation to members States to:
support journalism that expands the knowledge of the public on both the technical and the social aspects of emergencies, and their resolution;
put in place policies to disperse the concentration of opinion power by social media and take countervailing measures to prevent that powerful digital businesses become centres of political power;
support community media engagement and seek to involve citizens more deeply in public debates, for exam-ple by involving students in educational communication with the community before and during a crisis;
support focused training for journalism that covers the social sciences, as well as the hard sciences, to en-hance journalists’ ability to report on scientific work and impact on the public;
support trainings and research centres focused on the sociological study of journalism and on constructive journalism approaches;
support journalistic coverage of both local and global contextualisation and narratives, and discouraging nationalistic frames in the media;
support documentary production and podcasting of knowledge that can make science, emergency services, and institutional work visible in the form of approachable media cultural outputs.
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.