Call 2015 #

15th International Conference on
New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME)

May 31 – June 3, 2015
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
http://nime2015.lsu.edu

Introduction #

NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) is the premier conference in designing human-computer interfaces and interactions for musical performance. NIME gathers researchers and practitioners around lectures, installations, concerts, and workshops.

• Visual | Aural | Tangible *

Experimental Music & Digital Media @ LSU #

Louisiana State University and the city of Baton Rouge are excited to present the 15th edition of NIME. The LSU School of Music and Center for Computation & Technology will host the 2015 NIME conference, sharing all that we have to offer to the NIME community to creatively explore how music is made. The conference will bridge a bit of past and future, with opportunities to engage in the fantastic musical history of Louisiana, as well as make use of the newly opened facilities at the LSU Digital Media Center including our 92-speaker immersive sound theatre. We are also excited to have the LSU Digital Art program involved in an expansion of the sonic art installations category for extended exhibition at the Shaw Center for the Arts, LSU Museum of Art and Glassell Gallery.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Call For Participation #

On behalf of the NIME 2015 Committee, we would like to invite you to be part of the 15th international conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression.

We invite submission of new works in the following categories:

• Papers and Posters
• Performances and Installations
• Workshops and Tutorials
• Demonstrations

Important Dates #

Artistic program: Performances & Installation works

• Submissions due: December 1, 2014
• Review Notification: January 30, 2015

Scientific program: Papers, Workshops, Demonstrations:

• Draft submission (mandatory): January 23, 2015
• Final submission: January 30, 2015
• Review notification: March 20, 2015
• Camera-ready paper deadline: April 17, 2015

The online submission system will open on November 3rd, 2014 and its address will be published at nime2015.lsu.edu

Please note the following:

• The artistic program deadlines (installation and performance) this year do not coincide with the paper deadline!
• The scientific program consists of a mandatory draft submission followed by full submission. This system is implemented to address the perennial deadline extensions. There will be no deadline extensions. On the date of the draft submission, the author must be registered on the online submission system and have submitted a full draft manuscript of their paper. Authors then have one week to make minor edits to previously submitted manuscripts.

Scientific Program #

Call for Papers #

We welcome submissions of original research on scientific and artistic use of new interfaces for musical expression. A non-exhaustive list of NIME related topics is found below. This list is inclusive and indicative. The thematic focus of this year’s edition is Visual | Aural | Tangible and is described in the introduction above. We also encourage submissions that extend, stretch, or challenge the NIME topics and themes.

Acceptance criteria: The paper under consideration must propose an original contribution to NIME research; it must cite prior related work and should demonstrate rigorous research methodology.

There are three different paper submission categories:

• Full paper (up to 6 pages in proceedings, longer oral presentation, optional demo)
• Short paper/poster (up to 4 pages in proceedings, shorter oral presentation or poster, optional demo)
• Demo paper (up to 2 pages in proceedings, demonstration)

Submitted papers will be subject to a peer review process by an international expert committee. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, under an ISSN/ISBN reference, and will be archived online after the conference to be tracked by citation tools. A manuscript submitted for review cannot be already under review for publication elsewhere or be submitted for a second review elsewhere while under review for NIME 2015. Authors of both full and short papers are greatly encouraged to submit a video in support of their paper. A video is mandatory for demonstration submission.

A best paper award will be presented to the individual(s) judged by the scientific committee to have written the best paper appearing in the conference proceedings.

In the aim to constantly improve the conference, this year the papers and demos will go through a modified review, which was first employed by NIME last year. The complete process is detailed below.

Call for Workshops #

We invite submissions for half-day (3 hours) or full-day (6 hours) workshops and tutorials. These can be targeted towards specialist techniques, platforms, hardware, software or pedagogical topics for the advancement of fellow NIME-ers and people with experience related to the topic. They can also be targeted toward visitors to the NIME community, novices/newbies, interested student participants, people from other fields, and members of the public getting to know the potential of NIME.

Tutorial proposals should clearly indicate the audience and assumed knowledge of their intended participants to help us market to the appropriate audience. Workshops and tutorials can relate to, but are not limited to, the topics of the conference. This is a good opportunity to explore a specialized interest or interdisciplinary topic in depth with greater time for discourse, debate, and collaboration.

Review Process #

After you submit your paper, it will go through a rigorous review process that has been changed compared to the previous years. Overall, the review process comprises three layers of evaluation: reviewer, meta-reviewer, and paper chair.

The process is as follows:

• Each paper is assigned to one meta-reviewer who is a representative of the general research topic that the paper deals with.
• The meta-reviewer together with the paper chair assign the papers to the reviewers that will evaluate it according to a set of criteria. Each paper has at least two reviewers.
• The meta-reviewer writes a meta-review based on the reviewers’ comments. The meta-reviewer may ask the reviewers to provide further details for reviews that were too concise.
• The paper chair gathers reviews and meta-reviews. He or she discusses with the meta-reviewers and finalizes a decision for each paper.
• The anonymity of the submission is preserved among the reviewers.

Artistic Program #

Call for Performances #

We invite submission of proposals for performances and installations. Proposed performances should have a clear connection with the substance of the NIME conference. We expand the notion of NIME in the performance program to include the exploration of existing interfaces into new sounds, new methods, or new ways of being physical. These performances might re-insert the body into digital performance, or they might suggest new modes of performing and the presentation of live music that go beyond existing practices while exploiting the unique affordances of interfaces and technologies.

We encourage submissions that explore:

• Novel and exploratory use of interfaces in performance
• Both old and new interfaces
• Use of innovative, imaginative and creative methods.

We invite you to consider fully what a performance can be: you should go well beyond demonstrating the interface and we will consider any performance that is in the realm of live, electronically-produced sound, where an interface is central to the realisation of the music.

Submitted proposals will be reviewed by an expert committee. Preference will be given to submissions with strong evidence that the proposed performance has already been realized or is technically feasible and within the artists’ capabilities. We particularly invite premieres from performers with a track record, or with interfaces that have been well tested.

You should submit a PDF document, maximum 4 pages. The proposal must include the following:

• Title and detailed description of the proposed performance.
• A link to one primary video documentation of an example performance with the relevant interface. If video documentation is inappropriate for your performance, please explain why and instead send an audio file with accompanying photographs (these do not need to be to marketing standard, they are more for explanation of how your performance will look).
• Links to any relevant supplementary supporting media files (audio and video).
• Number of performers and the instruments and technologies that will be used.
• Names of all participants/submitters, with a short bio for each (100 words).
• Details of technical requirements for the venue. Diagrams of the preferred stage setup and signal routing are recommended.
• Evidence of the feasibility of the performance. Include documentation and listings of past performances or related works that demonstrate the submitter’s capabilities to implement the proposed performance.
• A list of any equipment that needs to be provided by the conference organizers.
• Any instrumental performers that would need to be provided by the organizers. Note that the conference organizers may not be able to accommodate your request. Please also note that the organizers cannot provide funding to support performers’ travel or accommodation at the conference.
• Please specify if the performance is a demo.
• Please note whether performance would be better in club, bar or traditional concert environment.

Performance proposals in conjunction with paper submissions are encouraged, but each must be submitted separately and will be judged on its own merit.

Typical NIME performance pieces last for 5-15 minutes, but shorter and longer performance proposals may exceptionally be taken into consideration.

Within reasonable limits, we may be able to provide musicians to perform pieces but this would be negotiated on a piece-by-piece basis.

Documentation of the performances will be available online after the conference unless this is impossible due to the nature of the performance.

Special Call – Digital Media Center Theatre #

The LSU Center for Computation & Technology’s Digital Media Center Theatre is a custom-designed immersive audio and video environment. The theatre hosts a Christie 4k digital projector, and a Meyer Constellation sound system, with 71 discrete channels and up to 40 directlyaccessibleaudiochannels. Weareinterestedinperformancesthatuse4kvideoand/or massively large loudspeaker arrays as essential components of the work. Also, demonstrations or papers that address massively large loudspeaker arrays are welcome. Contact us for more detailed specifications (nime-music@cct.lsu.edu).

Call for Installations #

NIME 2015 seeks installation and sculptural work to showcase at several locations in Baton Rouge. The theme for all venues will focus on an amalgamation of NIME topics listed below. Special consideration will be given to projects that embody a combination of qualities that are visual, aural, and tangible. Submitted proposals will be subject to a peer review process by an international expert committee. Installations picked to be shown at the LSU Digital Media Center will be exhibited during the length of the conference. Installations picked to be shown at the LSU Museum of Art and the LSU Glassell Gallery will be invited to be part of a longer exhibition spanning a month. These pieces will be shown alongside several invited sound artists whose work addresses NIME.

In order to present an installation for NIME 2015, please submit a proposal in the form of a PDF document, maximum 4 pages, containing the following information:

• The title of the work
• Names of contributing artists
• A clear description of the proposed installation that will provide reviewers with a sense of its motivation and proposed realization. Pictures, schematic diagrams and/or proposed floor plans would be helpful here. You may also provide any documentation of previous presentations of this installation (if they exist).
• Describe the space needed and the adaptability of the installation in terms of possible venues.
• Provide a list of equipment required for the installation, clearly indicating what you will bring and what you would require the conference organizers to provide.
• Finally, indicate if your piece is able to be shown only during the length of the conference or if is able to remain for an extended exhibition.

Topics #

Core topics central to NIME include the following. In addition to submissions that address specific themes of this year’s edition of the conference, original contributions are encouraged in, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Novel controllers and interfaces for musical expression
• Novel musical instruments
• Augmented/hyper instruments
• Novel controllers for collaborative performance
• Sensor and actuator technologies
• Haptic and force feedback devices
• Motion, gesture and music
• Interfaces for dance and physical expression
• Multimodal expressive interfaces
• Interfaces for musical expression for hearing or visually impaired people
• Interactive game music
• NIME intersections with game design
• Robotic music
• Mobile music technology and performance paradigms
• Biological and bio-inspired systems
• Musical mapping strategies
• Embedded musical instruments and embedded sound art installations
• Interactive sound art and installations
• Musical human-computer interaction
• Interaction design and software tools
• Interface protocols and data formats
• Sonic interaction design
• Issues in perception, cognition, computational musicology and music analysis
• Performance analysis
• Performance rendering and generative algorithms
• Machine learning in musical performance
• Experiences with novel interfaces in live performance and composition
• Surveys of past work and stimulating ideas for future research
• Historical studies in twentieth-century instrument design
• Artistic, cultural, and social impact of NIME technology
• Novel interfaces in music education and entertainment
• Reports on student projects in the framework of NIME-related courses
• Practice-based research approaches/methodologies/criticism
• User studies/evaluations of NIME
• Language and state in live interaction
• Musicianship of new musical interfaces
• Platforms and frameworks for musical interaction design

Organizing Committee #

NIME 2015 is hosted by the Cultural Computing focus area, Center for Computation & Technology (avatar.cct.lsu.edu), and the LSU School of Music Experimental Music & Digital Media program (emdm.music.lsu.edu) at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.

General Inquiries: nime@cct.lsu.edu Academic Inquiries: nime-papers@cct.lsu.edu Music Inquiries: nime-music@cct.lsu.edu Installation: nime-art@cct.lsu.edu Volunteers: nime-volunteer@cct.lsu.edu