the need of multicultural web technologies
DESCRIPTION
The Web is a globalized platform aimed at supporting all our world cultures. However, like most Information Technologies, it has been developed from the West and for the West, even in the cases of technologies developed outside the US and Europe. Thus, we need to pose the following questions: Are our web technologies culture independent? Can we really use the same information technologies to develop web platforms for different cultures? In this talk I will argue in favor of the NO answer to these questions. I will defend the idea that we need to develop culture specific technologies when we deal with culture sensitive information. I will use the example of music technologies and talk about the research that we are carrying out to develop information technologies to support some of the most consolidated non-western music cultures. In the project CompMusic we work on the automatic description of music through the development of information modeling techniques and web systems applicable to five non-Western music cultures: Hindustani (North India), Carnatic (South India), Turkish-makam (Turkey), Andalusian (North Africa), and Han (China). By looking at the specificities of these mature non-western cultures we can identify the shortcomings of our current technologies when dealing with culture data and we can propose solutions that can give light to the problems of multiculturalism from a technological point of view.TRANSCRIPT
The need for Multicultural
Web Technologies
Xavier Serra Music Technology Group
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (Spain) [email protected]
Our view on the Web
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Music Information Processing
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CompMusic: Computational models for the discovery of the world’s music”
[funded with an ERC Advanced Grant for a period of 5 years and a budget of 2.5 million Euros]
Main danger!!!
compmusic.upf.edu
CompMusic Objectives
• Promote multicultural approaches in Music Information Technology.
• Work on information models for culture specific contexts. Characterize differences.
• Use as many types of information sources as possible (audio features, symbolic scores, text commentaries, user evaluations, …)
• Use culture specific perspectives. Involve researchers immersed in the music cultures to be studied.
Musical repertoires • Hindustani (North India), Carnatic (South India),
Turkish-makam (Turkey), Andalusi (North Africa), Han (China).
• Classical traditions with alive performance practices and strong social and cultural relevance.
• A lot of “good” data available.
Possibility to challenge current western centred information paradigms.
Audio recordings
Expert information
Community information
Multicultural approaches should make qualitative advancements in
Web Technologies.
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The Web Technologies should help preserve and enrich our
multicultural world.
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Mid Level
High Level
duration
spectrum intensity
pitch timbre
loudness
melody
chord
beat
dynamics
emotion
genre
similarity
style relations performer
labels
names scene
sign motions
gestures
preferences
colors shape
textures
tags
mood
motives
instrument
composer
lyricist
form
Thanks!!!
[more in: compmusic.upf.edu]