Seminar: Augmented Reality Music Ensemble (ARME), 'Lives of Ensembles'

Seminar:

Augmented Reality Music Ensemble (ARME), 'Lives of Ensembles'

Music production has always been a social and interactive experience, but how can people practice music in a group when physically alone?

The Augmented Reality Music Ensemble (ARME) is an EPSRC-funded project that employs emerging immersive technologies to expand the ways musicians practice music in a music group. ARME integrates video capture, computational modelling and augmented reality so that a musician can practice with avatars having the appearance and interactivity of real musicians. Originally designed for string quartets, ARME is evolving to allow several kinds of real-time interactions.

This seminar will begin with a conversation between OCLW's Kate Kennedy and Nicholas Roberts, cellist of the Coull Quartet, about the life of the quartet. This will be followed by an introduction to the scientific principles and technological innovations behind ARME, from the perceptual and cognitive challenges of synchronizing humans (in real and virtual spaces) to the software and hardware that make interaction in a virtual ensemble possible. In so doing, the ARME team will showcase the latest developments and discuss potential impacts on music pedagogy and beyond. 

Attendees will also be able to test live demonstrations of ARME, where participants can interact with virtual musicians and adaptive metronomes in real-time. 

Speaker Details:

Dr Kate Kennedy is a writer, cellist, and BBC broadcaster. Her work combines words and music, in performance, on the radio, and on the page. She is a Research Fellow in Life-Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. Her most recent book, Cello: A Journey Through Silence to Sound (2024) is part memoir, part biography, and her previous biography Dweller in Shadows (2021) explored the life of British poet-composer Ivor Gurney. She is a regular presenter for BBC Radio.

Nicholas Roberts is the cellist for the Coull Quartet, an English string quartet originally formed at the Royal Academy of Music in London in 1974. Since 1977, the Quartet has held the position of Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Warwick. Coull Quartet has toured extensively across the UK and internationally, with appearances throughout Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, China, India, and the Far East.

Dr Massimiliano Di Luca leads the ARME project; he is an Associate Professor in the School of Psychology and in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham (UK). He received his Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from Brown University (USA) and has held research positions at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Oculus, and Facebook Reality Labs. He has collaborated with industry leaders such as Facebook, Google, and Procter & Gamble, applying academic research to real-world problems. His work spans psychophysics, immersive technologies, haptics, and computational neuroscience, with 70 scientific publications, over 100 conference presentations, and four patents. He has received funding from the European Commission, the Royal Society, BBSRC, and EPSRC, and has been recognized as a Turing Fellow and a Fellow of the InterContinental Academia.

Professor Alan Wing was educated at King Edward VII Grammar School, Sheffield, from 1958 to 1963, and at Edinburgh University (BSc Psychology and Physics) from 1964 to 1969. He obtained his PhD from McMaster University Ontario (PhD supervisor AB Kristofferson) in 1973 and worked at Bell Labs NJ (Human Information Processing Section) as a postdoctoral research fellow in 1974-1975. He joined the MRC Applied Psychology Unit Cambridge in 1975, leaving in 1997 to take up a Chair in Psychology at the University of Birmingham (Professor of Human Movement), where he currently leads the Active Touch Lab. His research spans sensory motor control (posture and balance, grip, timing) and touch for perception and action, including the effects of aging.

Dr Diar Abdlkarim is a postdoctoral research scientist at the University of Birmingham, specialising in immersive augmented and virtual reality technologies. His contribution to ARME is both entrepreneurial and scientific, focusing on user research and software infrastructure, where he combines video capture, psychophysics, and software development. He holds a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from the University of Birmingham, where he studied sensory-motor control and neuroplasticity through immersive virtual reality training. He has previously worked as a research intern at Meta Reality Labs, where he designed experiments on wrist-based haptic feedback and hand tracking in virtual environments. His expertise spans computer vision, physics-based simulation, and real-time avatar interaction, making him a key developer in ARME’s technological advancement.

Evguenni Penksik is the main software developer of the ARME project. He has developed the real-time graphics and sound-video integration for the system and contributed to the scientific understanding of avatar synchronisation. With a background in computational neuroscience and cognitive robotics (MSc, University of Birmingham, 2019) and mechanical engineering (MEng, University of Warwick, 2007), his expertise is in virtual and augmented reality, machine learning, 3D graphics, modelling, and game development. His interests also extend to music performance and production, contributing to ARME’s unique intersection of technology and artistic expression.

Further Details and Contacts:

This hybrid event is free and open to all; however, registration is recommended.

This event will be recorded and made available soon after on the OCLW website.

Registration will close at 10:30 am on 7 May 2025. 

Queries regarding this event should be addressed to admin.oclw@wolfson.ox.ac.uk.