Séancing
and MachineDriven
International Concert Series 2024-25
Thursday,20th February2025
WindsorAuditorium,WindsorBuilding with Dr Zubin Kanga Project Lead
Dr Jonathan Packham Postdoctoral Research Assistant
Rylan Gleave Gulf
For piano and motion-controlled electronics
Jonathan Packham ghost
For solo performer and electronics Nwando Ebizie
I Will Fix Myself (Just Circles)
For piano, synthesizer and electronics
Estimatedfinishtime:930pm
Pleasenoflashphotographyor visual/audiorecording throughouttheevent.
For news about our future events, please visit royalholloway.ac.uk/music/events
EVENT DETAILS
In this lecture-recital, Dr Zubin Kanga (Project Lead) and Dr Jonathan Packham (Postdoctoral Research Assistant) discuss and demonstrateseveralworkscreated out of Cyborg Soloists, a Royal Holloway-based UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project that’s innovating new approaches to music-technologyinteractions.
In these works, new digital technologies create forms of human-computer interaction that verge on the supernatural. AI, biosensors, and motion-sensor instruments are used to conjure artificial voices, communicate with artificial avatars, and render invisibleinstrumentsinthe air. An accompanyinglectureexploreshow thesetechnologiesbreakdownthe barrier between science and science-fiction, between real and artificial co-performers, and perhapsevenbetweentheworldsof thelivingandthedead.
OUR PERFORMERS
Zubin Kanga is a pianist, composer, and technologist.In2020,Kangawasawarded a prestigious UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship to fund his latest multi-year project Cyborg Soloists, based at Royal Holloway,UniversityofLondon,wherehe isSeniorLecturerinMusicalPerformance and Digital Arts. Cyborg Soloists has facilitatedthecreationofmanynewworks exploring new interactions between live musicians and AI and machine learning, interactive visuals and VR, motion and biosensors, and new digital instruments. His Cyborg Soloists work was recently featured in The New York Times, The Wire,ClassicalMusicMagazine,Limelight Magazine and New Scientist. Zubin has premiered more than 150 works and performedatmanyinternationalfestivals including the BBC Proms, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival (UK) Melbourne Festival (Australia), Paris Autumn Festival (France), Klang Festival (Denmark), Modulus Festival (Canada) andNovemberMusic(Netherlands).
Jonathan Packham is a composer and researcher with interests in a variety of contemporary experimental music and sonic arts. He has published writing in peer-reviewed academic journals Leonardo, TEMPO, and the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, for the National Centre for Research Methods, and in an essay collection titled Crafting a Sonic Urbanism: the Political Voice II convened by Theatrum Mundi. He is Postdoctoral Research AssistantonCyborgSoloists at Royal Holloway, University of London, Departmental Lecturer in Music at the Faculty of Music, University of Oxford, and Stipendiary Lecturer in MusicatLadyMargaretHall, UniversityofOxford.
