AI & Creativity: what we will do when machines do lots more of our work, a critical piece by James McDermott

Fascinating analysis on the current and future of AI, automation, and creativity

28 January 2022

James McDermott, lecturer in Computer Science at NUI Galway and Polifonia partner wrote his interesting perspectives on automation, labour, and the future of creativity. James argues that automation is itself a creative, enjoyable activity. It requires knowledge of the underlying task and deep sympathy for it. 

He mentions how AI is applied in NUI Galway’s work within the Polifonia project. In fact, they use statistics of common snippets of musical material obtained by automation to study tunes in Irish traditional music. To start 2022 with AI and creativity, check out this fascinating piece ‘Automating Away What is Dangerous, Dirty, Dull and Difficult’ via the link.

Photo credits: Photo by Brian McGowan on Unsplash

Recent News

Music libraries currently lack well-founded information retrieval tools. While it is relatively easy to find music based on metadata, content-based music retrieval still remains as a challenge. The Polifonia FACETS pilot aims to tackle this challenge by building a faceted search engine (FSE) for large collections of music documents.

Music libraries currently lack well-founded information retrieval tools. While it is relatively easy…

24 November 2023

This is a week of major importance to the Polifonia team, as its researchers join both the conference of the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) and the conference for the International Semantic Web and Linked Data Community (ISWC): venues of significant importance for both research and industry. Read more about Polifonia’s contributions below.

This is a week of major importance to the Polifonia team, as its researchers join the conference of…

7 November 2023

On Oct, 13 an explorative workshop took place in a school in Milton Keynes (UK) as part of the Polifonia project. The “Music Meets Machines workshop” gave a look into cutting-edge technologies used to represent music history.

On Oct, 13 an explorative workshop took place in a school in Milton Keynes (UK) as part of the Polifonia…

3 November 2023

Between 16 and 20 October, the Polifonia consortium met in the Italian city of Bologna, home of the project coordinator University of Bologna (UNIBO). During an intensive week, the project team took steps in the development of the pilots, including the long-awaited web portal. Read more about the 7th project meeting here.

Between 16 and 20 October, the Polifonia consortium met in the Italian city of Bologna, home of the…

27 October 2023

The sensory journey “Data Wanderings” is a new project of Polifonia. The art installation will open on Friday, Oct. 13, in Bologna, Italy and you can visit it until the 28th of the month.

The sensory journey "Data Wanderings" is a new project of Polifonia. The art installation will open…

12 October 2023

Friday Oct. 13, high school students are able to explore music history withcutting-edge technologies. The Music Meets Machines: Exploring Music’s Hidden Connections with AI and Knowledge Graphs  is a workshop organised by Polifonia and The Open University.

On Friday Oct. 13, high school students are able to explore music history withcutting-edge technologies.…

11 October 2023

Make sure to check out a sensory experience called Data Wanderings from this Friday (Oct. 13) in Salaborsa, Bologna. The art installation is a Polifonia project, built by Umanesimo Artificiale and based on sources from our project.

Make sure to check out a sensory experience called Data Wanderings from this Friday (Oct. 13) in Salaborsa,…

9 October 2023

ChoCo, the Chord Corpus, is out! After months of work the team is proud to release a 20K+ timed harmonic annotations of scores and tracks. Its release comes with a long awaited publication in the journal ‘Scientific Data’.

ChoCo, the Chord Corpus, is out! After months of work the team is proud to release a 20K+ timed harmonic…

6 October 2023

The Netherlands AI Coalition’s working group Culture and Media collaborates with the Working Group Human Capital in their next Communityday – a yearly gathering for professionals working in the culture, media, art and education sector. This year’s line up includes Polifonia.

The Netherlands AI Coalition’s working group Culture and Media collaborates with the Working Group…

4 October 2023

Each autumn, an international event dedicated to digital art and electronic music takes place in Bologna: ROBOT Festival. Polifonia will be part of this exciting festival with a talk held by Valentina Presutti, Coordinator of the Project, on the 14th of October.

Each autumn, an international event dedicated to digital art and electronic music takes place in Bologna:…

2 October 2023

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N. 101004746