„Musical Arts”

In the Year of Informatics, the very successfully introduced conference series “Culture and Informatics” was again held at the Berlinische Galerie and placed under a special theme – audio. The aim of the workshop “Culture and Informatics – Audio Art” was an analysis of the development of digital art and culture as well as an attempt to analyze and predict the development trends and the influence of informatics. In this context, various milestones of modern audio technology were discussed and their economic, social and scientific potential was examined in more detail. Special emphasis was given to the areas of sound and sound generation, digital audio models, audio processing, audio quality and listening pleasure.

After the welcome by the directors and presidents respectively of the Berlinische Galerie and the FHTW Berlin, Prof. Dr. Carsten Busch opened the scientific program with a contribution on the influences of sound on the Internet on general communication areas. This was followed by the contributions of Drs. Heinz and Niehof, who spoke on problems of digitizing sounds and on visualization with the aid of the acoustic camera. In these contributions it was demonstrated how voice and instrumental analysis can be done with the help of computer science.

The second part of the conference opened with a greeting from Berlin’s top politicians in the person of the Berlin State Secretary for Science, Dr. Husung. The other presentations ranged from the history of electronic musical instruments to compositional-aesthetic models and iTunes technology to the use of audio in mixed-reality games. The dialogue on the information society and the development of computer science, art and culture was a special concern of the conference. The speakers took positions on the various specialist topics and developments, and continued the exchange of ideas beyond the workshop or defined further focal points for work.

Download: Programme KuI 2006