C4DM Seminar: Ichiro Fujinaga - The Research Program of the Distributed Digital Music Archives and Libraries Laboratory at McGill University

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Date and Time
Thursday, 18th February, at 3:00pm

Place
ITL Meeting Rooom, Informatics Teaching Laboratory, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS. Information on how to access the school can be found at here.

Speaker
Ichiro Fujinaga

Title
The Research Program of the Distributed Digital Music Archives and Libraries Laboratory at McGill University

Abstract
The main goal of this research program is to develop and evaluate practices, frameworks, and tools for the design and construction of worldwide distributed digital music archives and libraries. Over the last few millennia, humans have amassed an enormous amount of information and cultural material that is scattered around the world. It is becoming abundantly clear that the optimal path for the acquisition of this material is to distribute the task of digitizing the wealth of historical and cultural heritage material that exists in analogue formats, which may include books, manuscripts, music scores, maps, photographs, videos, analogue tapes, and phonograph records. In order to achieve this goal, libraries, museums, and archives throughout the world, large or small, need well-researched policies, proper guidance, and efficient tools to digitize their collections and to make them available economically. The research conducted within the program addresses unique and imminent challenges posed by the digitization and dissemination of music media. In this talk various projects conducted at our laboratory will be presented; including large-scale optical music recognition, workflow management for automatic metadata extraction of LP recordings, creation of ground truth for structural and chord analysis of music, and digital prosopography of Renaissance musicians.

Bio
Ichiro Fujinaga is an Associate Professor in Music Technology Area at the Schulich School of Music at McGill University. In 2003-4, he was the Acting Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology (CIRMMT) at McGill. In 2002-3, 2009-12, and 2014-5, he was the Chair of the Music Technology Area. Before that he was a faculty member of the Computer Music Department at the Peabody Conservatory of Music of the Johns Hopkins University. Research interests include optical music recognition, music theory, machine learning, music perception, digital signal processing, genetic algorithms, and music information acquisition, preservation, and retrieval.