Victor Zappi

Where: University of Iceland, Veröld room VHV-103

When: Friday, March 7th, 3-5 pm

In this talk, I’ll share my unexpected journey from preserving obsolete mobile devices to exploring neural audio instruments. First, I introduce LDSP, an open-source C++ environment that grants low-level access to Android phones for high-performance audio, reverse-engineers vendor-specific pipelines and transforms outdated devices into novel musical tools. Then, I’ll discuss how LDSP’s rapid prototyping capabilities and smartphones’ interactive nature propelled my research on neural audio instruments, positioning them within the discourse on digital musical instrument embodiment. I propose that, despite their digital underpinnings, these instruments share much with acoustic instrument design and performance.

Victor Zappi is an Assistant Professor of Music Technology at Northeastern University. Being both an engineer and a musician, he focuses on the design and the use of new interfaces for musical expression. How can we use today’s most advanced technologies to build novel musical instruments? In what ways can these instruments comply with and engage our physical and cognitive abilities? And what new forms of musical training and practices are required to master them? Victor’s research interests span human-computer interaction, physical modeling synthesis, embedded and mobile technologies, music perception and cognition.