From Networked Music to the Design of Musical Interactions

In this talk, Alvaro Barbosa will discuss research and development related to music and sound art mediated by digital technology, drawing on his personal experience as a researcher and artistic practitioner since the late 1990s. The talk will include insights into experimental research and artistic work, beginning with the idea of making music and performing together across geographically distant locations. It will then explore the evolution of this work into the establishment of the academic field of Networked Music, leading to advancements in semi-algorithmically generated sound art. The presentation will also introduce behaviour-driven interaction, a model of artistic discovery and exploration applied to the design of New Musical Instruments.
Born in Angola and of Portuguese nationality, Alvaro Barbosa is a Full Professor of Communication and Media and Vice-Rector for Internationalisation and Research at the University of Saint Joseph in Macau, S.A.R. China. Prior to this position, he served for six years as Dean of the Faculty of Creative Industries at USJ and for twelve years as Head of the Sound and Image Department at the School of Arts of the Portuguese Catholic University. As a Media Arts and Technology (MAT) researcher and practitioner, he has an extensive career creating artworks that have been widely presented and performed internationally. In 1995, he was awarded a graduate degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Aveiro in Portugal. In 1999, he obtained a postgraduate degree in Digital Arts from the Portuguese Catholic University. In 2006, he completed a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Digital Communication at Pompeu Fabra University in Spain, and in 2011, he concluded a postdoctoral fellowship in Computer Music and Acoustics at Stanford University in the United States.