AHRC/EPSRC/JISC eScience four-year PhD Studentship in Musicology at Goldsmiths Department of Computing (Oct 2007 - Sept 2011)
PURCELL PLUS
Principal Investigator: Mr Tim Crawford, Senior Lecturer in Computational Musicology, Goldsmiths, University of London; Co-Investigator: Prof. Geraint Wiggins, Professor of Computational Creativity and Leader of the ISMS group in the Department of Computing, Goldsmiths, University of London
This AHRC/EPSRC/JISC-funded eScience project, based in the ISMS group at the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths, is about reconciling the needs of humanistic scholarship (in this case, a musicological study) with the demands and constraints imposed by the emerging eScience technology being brought to bear on those needs.
Its essential aims are to:
* investigate a methodology for conducting musicological research in an eScience context by supplementing and supporting traditional methods rather than threatening or replacing them
* build a computer-based framework for investigating the knowledge of an expert community about a certain repertory of music by establishing, recording and analysing associations between information in the three domains of notated score, verbal commentary and recorded performance, and to develop the means whereby scholars can interact with this information, providing ways to annotate the sources, to extract knowledge that is meaningful for their study and present it effectively, without needing to learn the underlying technology
* demonstrate proof of concept of this framework on Purcell’s Fantazies and In nomines (c1680) as the basis of enquiry, using a variety of information sources including a full score-encoding, a specially-commissioned expert commentary and several audio recordings
* show how ICT tools (such as music information retrieval as represented by the OMRAS 2 project) which operate on musical content (either in the symbolic/score or digital audio domain) may be used to produce information that can be expressed as musical knowledge in a manner that is compatible with humanistic enquiry. This will be carried on within the context of established and emerging text-based methods such as those facilitated by the Semantic Web and other technologies
PHD STUDENTSHIP
We are offering a fully funded studentship for a PhD student who will work alongside the technical team under the supervision of the PI and CoI, on a study of the emerging methodological issues and their implications for the discipline of musicology. We expect this to be carried out in the context of a number of musicological case studies undertaken during the period of the studentship. The duration is four years, during the first of which the student will receive appropriate training in the necessary technical skills to carry out the study using the technological framework.
We wish to stress, however, that this will not require any more than basic ICT experience or expertise as a prerequisite; more important is a thorough musical background, a proven aptitude for musicological research, and the willingness to take on a challenge. The student will work for the first two years alongside Mr David Lewis, the technical RA on the project and himself a trained musicologist, as the Purcell Plus framework is designed and developed.
We expect the PhD thesis to be on a topic related to musicological methodology and the use of IT tools such as music information retrieval and/or the elicitation of explicit and tacit knowledge from various sources of musical information. The PhD work will provide an essential element of validation to the Purcell Plus project which will feed back into the ongoing design of the software framework.
For further details, see:
http://doc.gold.ac.uk/~mas01tc/PurcellPlus/PurcellPlus_CaseForSupport.pdf
Applicants should normally have an excellent first degree, preferably in music; those with a similar degree in a discipline relevant to the project with a demonstrable musical understanding and a good knowledge of music history will also be considered.
To apply for this studentship you will need to follow the normal Goldsmiths postgraduate admissions procedure. See: http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/apply/pg/
All applications should be clearly marked “Purcell Plus PhD studentship”.
The closing date for applications is 7th September 2007.
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COMPUTING AT GOLDSMITHS
The Department of Computing at Goldsmiths is a vibrant, innovative and challenging research-led department, and one of Europe’s leading research departments specialising in computing and its applications in the arts.
Intelligent Sound and Music Systems (ISMS) make or process music in ways which involve knowledge of music and/or musical behaviour. Among the aims of the ISMS group at Goldsmiths are a better understanding of how human music cognition functions and to build computational systems which analyse, model and ultimately exhibit behaviour which is musical and/or useful to musicians, including musicologists..
