Day Two: Friday 7 November

Studio 2, Bathway Theatre

2-4pm

Workshop 1 Chenghao Xu – Realtime audiovisual composition framework with Unreal Engine and MaxMSP This workshop introduces a real-time audiovisual composition workflow using Unreal Engine, Max/MSP, and Max for Live. Participants will learn the fundamental programming logic behind the system, including how sound is generated and processed in Max/MSP and how visuals are created and controlled in Unreal Engine. The session will cover the design principles and operational workflow of the integrated system, demonstrating how OSC communication enables real-time interaction between audio and visual components. By the end of the workshop, participants will gain a foundational understanding of how to utilise a game engine as a powerful tool for creating interactive audiovisual works.

Day Three: Saturday 8 November

Room 11_2014, Stockwell Street Academic Building

10am-12pm

Workshop 2   Rosamund Davies – Seeing Beyond the Prison: a virtual reality prison cell prototype This workshop will introduce a prototype of a simulated virtual reality prison space and soundscape (experienced through VR headsets), inviting participants to test the prototype and provide feedback on their experience. The prototype is part of a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project between academics, undergraduate and postgraduate researchers and graduates, across criminology, animation, creative writing and screen studies, to explore the potential for a virtual environment to enable VR participants to experience the felt realities of life in a women’s prison. This VR prototype forms part of a wider research project ‘HMP Holloway: The anatomy of a women’s prison’, which aims to capture a living history of Holloway, using this notorious prison as a point of departure for informed dialogue and debate aimed at challenging and changing policy decisions and public attitudes to the punishment of women, as well as pushing forward a more progressive and socially just agenda. It raises questions about what we choose to value and preserve as cultural heritage and how different forms of tangible and intangible cultural heritage might inform public discourse. As part of the workshop, we will also provide information about the development process of the prototype, which involved an exchange across subject specialisms. This included, for example, criminology researchers sharing personal accounts of their own experience of the criminal justice system, as well as recorded interviews and first-person testimonies from women with lived experience of prison. We will also discuss the technical development of the project.

Room 11_2014, Stockwell Street Academic Building

2-4pm

Workshop 3    OLIVER MAG GINGRICH – De-colonising the AI of Sound & Language Deep learning and large language models are intrinsically shaped by bias in the data sets that underpins them. We are proposing a creative ideation and co-design workshop to collaboratively interrogate inherent bias in Creative AI tools in relation to multi-cultural contexts. What are the challenges of decolonising AI as a creative tool? How can we utilise AI in ideation while considering bias? And vice versa, can AI be a means to overcome human bias if used effectively? Dr Gingrich and Dr Rahman’s AHRC-funded research into participatory art investigates the role of creative AI in the context of creative engagement (Gingrich & Rahman 2024). Participants in the workshop will critically reflect on bias inherent in contemporary AI co-creation tools, and interrogate AI-based co-creation in a multicultural context. AI, Bias, Visuals & Language workshop Firstly, a hands-on creative ideation and co-design workshop will involve participants utilising different language and visual AI tools to collaboratively design a multicultural artistic output such as a participatory art activity.

Day Four: Sunday 9 November

Room 11_2014, Stockwell Street Academic Building

10am-12pm

Workshop 4 Jonathan Higgins – SoundThread for CDP This workshop will provide an introduction to working with SoundThread, a new node-based front end for the Composers Desktop Project (CDP). It will walk through the basics of getting started before exploring a number of examples of how SoundThread and CDP can be used to transform and generate sound. CDP is a suite of offline audio processing tools for sound-transformation that offers completely unique ways of processing and generating sound. It has been in development by Trevor Wishart, Richard Dobson, Archer Endrich and Robert Fraser for almost forty years and in this time, it has shaped the progression of experimental electronic music worldwide. SoundThread provides a contemporary method of engaging with this software suite using a node-based approach to transform CDP into a user friendly, modular playground for offline audio processing. No prior knowledge of SoundThread or CDP is required for this workshop.