Class meeting #12 – Music recommendation algorithms II: Collaborative filtering – Monday 11/26

Readings:

Erik Bernhardsson. 2104. “Music Recommendations @ MLConf 2014.” Technology, April 14. https://www.slideshare.net/erikbern/music-recommendations-mlconf-2014.
Bell, R., Y. Koren, and C. Volinsky. 2009. “Matrix Factorization Techniques for Recommender Systems.” Computer, 2009. https://datajobs.com/data-science-repo/Recommender-Systems-%5bNetflix%5d.pdf.
Levy, Mark, and Klaas Bosteels. 2010. “Music Recommendation and the Long Tail.” In Proceedings of the Workshop on Music Recommendation and Discovery (WOMRAD), 55–58. http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-633/wom2010_paper10.pdf.

Response:

The principal assumption behind collaborative filtering for music recommendation is that your listening choices act as an implicit signal not just about your preferences, also the preferences of “listeners like you”. In a short repsonse based on your reading of the two papers (and skimming the slides prepared by an ex-Spotify employee), what are some of the challenges faced by the designers of recommendation systems that use collaborative filtering, and, if possible, suggest ways that this technique can be improved or used in tandem with other approaches to recommendation in order to overcome these problems?

Class meeting #11 – Artificial musical agents – Monday 11/19

Readings:

Weizenbaum, Joseph. 1966. “ELIZA—a Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine.” Commun. ACM 9 (1): 36–45. https://doi.org/10.1145/365153.365168.
Lewis, George E. 1999. “Interacting with Latter-Day Musical Automata.” Contemporary Music Review 18 (3): 99–112.
“Magenta Wins ‘Best Demo’ at NIPS 2016!” n.d. Magenta. Accessed August 6, 2018. https://magenta.tensorflow.org/2016/12/16/nips-demo.
“Learning from A.I. Duet.” n.d. Accessed August 6, 2018. https://magenta.tensorflow.org/2017/02/16/ai-duet.

Reponse:

In a short response, contrast Weizenbaum’s design for an artificial interlocutor with Lewis’s. How can ideological differences be reflected in the construction of the software systems that they propose? What are the fundamental differences between designing a system for intelligent verbal conversation and for musical improvisation?

Class meeting #10 – Music recommendation algorithms I: Content-based – Monday 11/12

Readings:

Sturm, Bob L. 2014. “The State of the Art Ten Years After a State of the Art: Future Research in Music Information Retrieval.” Journal of New Music Research 43 (2): 147–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/09298215.2014.894533.
Drott, Eric A. 2018. “Music as a Technology of Surveillance.” Journal of the Society for American Music 12 (3): 233–67. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752196318000196.
Askin, Noah, and Michael Mauskapf. 2017. “What Makes Popular Culture Popular? Product Features and Optimal Differentiation in Music.” American Sociological Review 82 (5): 910–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122417728662.

Response:

No written response required, but be prepared to discuss the Drott as the main target piece for the seminar.

Class meeting #9 – Interactive music visualizations – Monday 10/29

Readings:

Collins, Karen. 2013. “Implications of Interactivity.” In The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics. https://www.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199733866.013.0011.
Darley, Andrew. 2000. Visual Digital Culture: Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres. London; New York: Routledge. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/columbia/detail.action?docID=165889.
Moseley, Roger. 2013. “Playing Games with Music (and Vice Versa): Ludomusicological Perspectives on Guitar Hero and Rock Band.” In Taking It to the Bridge: Music as Performance, edited by Nicholas Cook and Richard Pettengill. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Response:

Watch this short video review of the PC version of Dylan Fitterer’s video game Audiosurf (2008), and using ideas from the assigned readings, compare and contrast the experience of playing Audiosurf with that of Guitar Hero and/or Rock Band (described in Moseley). Your short (150-200) response may touch on how varying degrees of “interactivity” (as understood by Collins) are afforded by each game’s distinct mechanics, questions of immersion/virtuality, the (percieved) difference between active and passive listening, and/or score vs. audio-based visualization techniques.

Class meeting #8 – Music in video games – WEDNESDAY 10/24

Originally due for Monday 10/22

Readings:

Cheng: Introduction and Chapter 2 only

Summers, Tim. 2016. “Analyzing Video Game Music: Sources, Methods and a Case Study.” In Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music, edited by Michiel Kamp, Tim Summers, and Mark Sweeney. Genre, Music and Sound. Sheffield, UK ; Bristol, CT: Equinox Publishing.
Cheng, Willam. 2014. Sound Play: Video Games and the Musical Imagination. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199969968.001.0001.

Response:

Many of the games consoles that were once used to play the games described in these pieces are no longer available or are only available at great cost to collectors. As a result, researchers sometimes use emulators to reproduce some of the experience of these games. In a short (150-200 word) response, reflect on what is lost when emulators are used in the study of video game music. If possible, refer to one or two specific moments in the readings that you think could have been enriched with reference to the “non-emulable” aspects of playing video games.

Class meeting #7 – Online music and sound communities – Monday 10/15

Readings:

Thelwall, Mike. 2018. “Social Media Analytics for YouTube Comments: Potential and Limitations.” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 21 (3): 303–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2017.1381821.
Born, Georgina, and Christopher Haworth. 2017. “From Microsound to Vaporwave: Internet-Mediated Musics, Online Methods, and Genre.” Music and Letters 98 (4): 601–47. https://muse-jhu-edu.ezproxy.cul.columbia.edu/article/689473.

Optional

Andersen, Joceline. 2015. “Now You’ve Got the Shiveries: Affect, Intimacy, and the ASMR Whisper Community.” Television & New Media 16 (8): 683–700. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476414556184.

Response:

How can the methodology described in Thelwall (2018) be used to supplement the investigation of Born and Haworth (2017)?

In your short response you may consider some of the following questions:

  • Do you think that Thelwall would approve of the use of their method in this context?
  • If not, what problems can you imagine that they would find with such a technique?
  • Do you think that Born and Haworth would accept conclusions drawn from the use of CFTC?
  • If not, what problems can you imagine that they would find with such a technique?

 

Class meeting #6 – YouTube and the music video – Monday 10/8

Readings:

Link to Vernallis (2010)

Link to Harper (2016) if you are having trouble getting access through the library

Vernallis, Carol. 2010. “Music Video and YouTube: New Aesthetics and Generic Transformations: Case Study - Beyonce’s and Lady Gaga’s Video Phone.” In Rewind, Play, Fast Forward: The Past, Present and Future of the Music Video, edited by Henry Keazor and Thorsten Wübbena. Cultural and Media Studies. Bielefeld: Transcript.
Schäfer, Mirko Tobias, and Frank Kessler. 2009. “Navigating Youtube: Constituting a Hybrid Information Management System.” In The YouTube Reader, 275–91. Stockholm: National Library of Sweden. http://mtschaefer.net/entry/navigating-youtube/.
Harper, Paula. 2016. “‘Unmute This’: Captioning an (Audio)Visual Microgenre.” The Soundtrack 9 (1): 7–23. https://doi.org/10.1386/ts.9.1-2.7_1.

Response:

Write a short (150-200 word) response describing a YouTube video of your choice with a significant musical/audio component (e.g. a music video), focusing on how the disposition of your chosen video on that particular platform changes how you might experience the same video if viewed elsewhere (e.g. on a television screen, on the cinema screen, as a download…). In your answer, you can consider any aspect of the platform: the use of video compression, the commenting system, recommended videos, pre-roll ads etc.

Supplementary:

Links to Internet Archive/Wayback Machine snapshots of Beyoncé user page and YouTube video (c. December 18, 2009)

Class meeting #5 – Collaborative music-making – Monday 10/1

Readings:

Topirceanu, A., G. Barina, and M. Udrescu. 2014. “MuSeNet: Collaboration in the Music Artists Industry.” In 2014 European Network Intelligence Conference, 89–94. https://doi.org/10.1109/ENIC.2014.10.
Glowinski, Donald, Maurizio Mancini, Roddy Cowie, Antonio Camurri, Carlo Chiorri, and Cian Doherty. 2013. “The Movements Made by Performers in a Skilled Quartet: A Distinctive Pattern, and the Function That It Serves.” Frontiers in Psychology 4 (November). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00841.
Rose, Stephen, Sandra Tuppen, and Loukia Drosopoulou. 2015. “Writing a Big Data History of Music.” Early Music 43 (4): 649–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/em/cav071.

Response:

In a short (150-200) response to these three papers, think about how of the methodologies that are described could be used to study some context for collaborative musical creativity (e.g. group performance, online musical collaborations, mashups, classroom music making, music therapy) of your choosing. In your answer, assess the applicability of the models that are described in each paper to your chosen area.

Whiteboards:

Class meeting #4 – File-sharing and copyright – Monday 9/24

Readings:

Katz, p. 114-135 only

Katz, Mark. 2010. Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Koebler, Jason. 2016. “Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems With Digital Colonialism.” Motherboard (blog). March 23, 2016. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/nz7eyg/wikipedia-zero-facebook-free-basics-angola-pirates-zero-rating.
Nowak, Raphaël, and Andrew Whelan. 2014. “Editorial: On the 15-Year Anniversary of Napster - Digital Music as Boundary Object.” First Monday 19 (10). http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/5542.
paleotronic. 2018. “Confessions of a Disk Cracker: The Secrets of 4am.” Paleotronic Magazine (blog). June 15, 2018. https://paleotronic.com/2018/06/15/confessions-of-a-disk-cracker-the-secrets-of-4am/.

Response:

In class, we will discuss the proposition that “anti-piracy legislation harms musical creativity”. Prepare two or three points on both sides of the proposition that draw on the reading for support, and be ready to discuss them in class. You don’t have to post a reply this week but you will be expected in class to have your points to hand, so you might benefit from writing them down somewhere.

Class meeting #3 – Digital audio formats – Monday 9/17

Readings:

Sterne, p. 1–31; Kittler, p. 1–19 only

Sterne, Jonathan. 2012. MP3: The Meaning of a Format. Sign, Storage, Transmission. Durham: Duke University Press.

Response:

Pick a digital format (it does not have to be an audio format) that you are familiar with (not the MP3 or the LP) and, following Sterne and/or Kittler, describe how you think how the technical or material facts about your chosen format can be used as evidence of one or more of the following, more broadly reaching, concerns: specific social practices and habits of media consumption, the aesthetic priorities of artists who make use of your chosen format, any empirical human-centered user research that was used in the development of that format, the fetishization of innovation (conversely, Luddism), or any other topic of your choice.