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January 23, 2018

Federico Fontana seminar

On the 24th January, Federico Fontana from the University of Udine will be visiting Queen Mary and giving a seminar.

The musical keyboard is changing: what will we need to reconstruct sense of touch?

After decades of research and industrial development centered around the electronic substitution of traditional (electro-)mechanic keyboards, current market trends point toward a progressive virtualization of the keyboard concept, essentially obtained by interfacing the performer to a compact mobile synthesizer through novel motion sensors and multi-modal actuators. The talk will deal with touch response, actually a key factor in piano and other keyboard instrument playing, whose credible virtualization must involve diverse aspects of the reproduction ranging from its accurate real-time synthesis to the auditory and tactile perception of sonic feedback. Detailing these aspects will be an occasion to present past and present research activities conducted by the speaker, in the fields of interactive sound processing and in the design and subjective evaluation of musical interfaces.

Bio

Federico Fontana is an associate professor in the Department of Mathematical, Computer and Physical Sciences at the University of Udine, teaching auditory-tactile interaction, object-oriented programming and computer networks. He is Coordinator of the Ph.D. in Computer Science, Mathematics and Physics at the University of Udine. He led research projects in the Sound and Music Computing and Interaction Design areas. He co-authored more than 100 international publications