FluCoMa Plenaries

The project has held six plenaries over four years, where the project team, commissioned composers and other guests come together to share work and insights on project topics.

Plenary 1

September 20–22 2018, University of Huddersfield

Attendees: Alex Harker, Andie Brown, Daniele Ghisi, Frederic Dufeu, Gerard Roma, Hans Tutschku, Jacob Hart, James Bradbury, Lauren Hayes, Leafcutter John, Nicolas d'Alessandro, Olivier Pasquet, Owen Green, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Richard Devine, Rodrigo Constanzo, Sam Gillies, Sam Pluta.

The first plenary gave the project participants a first opportunity to come together and share thoughts about how the idea of 'fluid corpus manipulation' resonated with their practice. Much of the three days were given over to some group brainstorming sessions, as well as the introductory presentations embedded below, before an alpha version of the toolkit was workshopped on the final day. We were blessed to be joined also by Daniele Ghisi and Nicolas d'Alessandro as invited speakers, who gave us the benefit of their insights and ideas.

Plenary 2:

20–22 May 2019, University of Huddersfield

Attendees: Alex Harker, Andie Brown, Frederic Dufeu, Gerard Roma, Hans Tutschku, Jacob Hart, James Bradbury, Lauren Hayes, Leafcutter John, Olivier Pasquet, Owen Green, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Rodrigo Constanzo, Sam Gillies, Sam Pluta.

This plenary was a hands-on affair, getting to grips with the affordances of the first toolkit, ahead of the first concert later in 2019.

Plenary 3:

20–23 November 2019, University of Huddersfield

Attendees: Alex Harker, Alice Eldridge, Andie Brown, Daniele Ghisi, Frederic Dufeu, Gerard Roma, Hans Tutschku, Jacob Hart, James Bradbury, Lauren Hayes, Laurens van der Wee, Leafcutter John, Michael Zbyszyński, Nicolas d'Alessandro, Olivier Pasquet, Owen Green, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Richard Devine, Rodrigo Constanzo, Sam Gillies, Sam Pluta.

To coincide with the concert of the project's first commissions, kindly hosted by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, each of our first batch of composers shared with us how they had used FluCoMa tools in their work:

As with Plenary 1, we were lucky enough to enjoy two fantastic guest presentations, this time from Alice Eldridge and Michael Zbyszyński:

Plenary 4:

18-20 July 2020, online

Attendees: Alex Harker, Alice Eldridge, Andie Brown, Daniele Ghisi, Francesco Cameli, Frédéric Dufeu, Gerard Roma, Hans Tutschku, Hunter Brown, Jacob Hart, James Bradbury, Lauren Hayes, Laurens Van Der Wee, Leafcutter John, Michael Zbyszynski, Nicolas d'Alessandro, Olivier Pasquet, Owen Green, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Richard Devine, Rodrigo Constanzo, Sam Pluta, Samuel Gillies, Theodore Moore.

This plenary was devised again as a coding spree, getting to grips with the affordances of the second toolkit, ahead of the second concert planned for February 2021. Due to covid travel restrictions, it was held online with a blend of group presentations and discussions, 'break-out rooms' as parallel chats and coding exchange, and deferred activities to alleviate the telematic fatigue.

Plenary 5a:

27 February 2021, online

Attendees: Alex Harker, Alice Eldridge, Andie Brown, Daniele Ghisi, Francesco Cameli, Gerard Roma, Hans Tutschku, Jacob Hart, James Bradbury, Lauren Hayes, Olivier Pasquet, Owen Green, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Richard Devine, Rodrigo Constanzo, Sam Pluta, Samuel Gillies, Theodore Moore.

As the covid travel restrictions were still in place, the fifth plenary has been split in two: this first part was for the participants to show and tell their work in progress, as well as for the project research to benefit from further feedback on the proposed software ecosystem. Each of the commissioned musicians shared with us how they had used FluCoMa tools in their work:

Plenary 5b:

10 July 2021, hybrid online and in-person, University of Edinburgh

Attendees: Alex Harker, Alice Eldridge, Andie Brown, Ben Hackbarth, Chris Kiefer, Gerard Roma, Hans Tutschku, Jacob Hart, James Bradbury, Jules Rawlinson, Lauren Hayes, Michael Zbyszynski, Olivier Pasquet, Owen Green, Peter Nelson, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Rebecca Fiebrink, Rodrigo Constanzo, Sam Pluta, Theodore Moore.

Finally, the last plenary was held around the second concert of the project, as part of the Dialogues Festival, in the West Court of the Edinburgh College of Art. We took the opportunity to reflect on the project so far, and how we could widen the community and sustain the ecosystem beyond the project.

Once again we were joined by two fantastic specialists in our field, Rebecca Fiebrink and Chris Kiefer, who shared their reflections on machine learning for musicians: