Expert Interview: Rocco Tripodi
Expert interview to our Rocco Tripodi
1- What is your background and role in Polifonia?
My background is in computational linguistics and lexical semantics. Currently, I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna. Previously, I worked as postdoctoral researcher within the Sapienza NLP group at Sapienza University of Rome and the European Centre for Living Technology in Venice.
I like to play with words. My main interests are in fact in game-theoretic models for natural language processing. I am also particularly interested in the design, learning, and evolution of linguistic communication systems.
In Polifonia I will work on extracting musical information from text. I will try to make sense out of tons of documents stored in different digital libraries. I will automatically scan textual resources, selecting pieces of information, and trying to combine them in a large mosaic. This will allow us to set up a computational resource for browsing historical information about music and to connect it with its socio-cultural context.
2- What is your motivation for conducting research in this field?
I am particularly interested in semantics. I like to investigate how words work and what they can tell us about the society that introduced or modified them. Since my childhood, I liked how words are combined to create jokes. I must thank my grandmother for this. Since she used to entertain me and my sister with jokes and anecdotes.
3- What interests you the most in the Polifonia project?
I like the diachronic, multimodal, and multilingual components of the Polifonia project. These three elements are fundamental for the development of innovative technologies in Artificial Intelligence. Nowadays, we are seeing advances that enable a machine to create music or art, but to what extent can this machine be creative? Besides developing tools that can be used for the preservation of cultural heritage, one of the key challenges for Polifonia is to create data that can be used to train and control neural networks. I am referring to projects such as MuseNet. Instead of training networks only with raw sounds, I think that supplying them with more contextual or multimodal information can give more “awareness” to the machine. This will also be more controllable.
3- Do you play an instrument? What is the place of music in your life?
I started playing guitar when I was a teenager but, unfortunately, I am not practicing much, recently. I would like to give more time to it and to start playing drums.
Music plays a central role in my life. My memories are always connected to songs. There is the summer of Manu Chao, the afternoon of Nirvana, the night of Mingus plays piano, the morning of Satie, the spring of Pat Metheny and Charlie Haden, and so on…
Recent News
Polifonia recently released results of 40 months of research and development at the intersection of musicology, semantic web technologies, AI and Music Information Retrieval. And the Polifonia Web Portal, which enhances the discoverability of European musical heritage with Linked Open Data and Knowledge Graphs, can now be explored.
Polifonia recently released results of 40 months of research and development at the intersection of…
With a strong base in academia, the Polifonia team looks forward to the conference season every year. One of the highlights is the Extended Semantic Web Conference. In this article, a brief review of our participation in this conference and update on our paper output.
With a strong base in academia, the Polifonia team looks forward to the conference season every year.…
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From the beginning of the project, Podiumkunst.net and Polifonia have been in close contact and looked…
TONALITIES, IReMus’ pilot for musical heritage data project Polifonia, develops tools for the modal-tonal identification, exploration and classification of monophonic and polyphonic notated music from the Renaissance to the twentieth century. Now, the tools are available for use within the TONALITIES Interface for music analysis. Additionally, a patent was recently acquired for this collaborative interface by the IReMus lab.
TONALITIES, IReMus' pilot for musical heritage data project Polifonia, develops tools for the modal-tonal…
From April 8 to May 6 Polifonia organised their own version of the Eurovision Song Contest, the Polifonia Song Contest: musicians of all levels were challenged to create the ‘soundtrack of our history’ by using samples from the rich collections in the Polifonia project. Today we can announce the winning song.
From April 8 to May 6 Polifonia organised their own version of the Eurovision Song Contest, the Polifonia…
After four years of development work, the Polifonia project team is excited to present the results. The consortium, consisting of 10 partners from Italy, the Netherlands, France, England and Ireland launches the music discoverability platform ‘Polifonia Web Portal’. In addition, the researchers and developers have also unlocked and linked other music data, developed tools and software that will help musicologists take steps forward in their research on European musical heritage.
After four years of development work, the Polifonia project team is excited to present the results.…
The Polifonia project formally ended on April 30, which means that the tools and software developed within this 4-year-project are released and ready for use. Today we look at ‘Patterns UI’.
The Polifonia project formally ended on April 30, which means that the tools and software developed…
Polifonia Song Contest is two weeks in, and will continue for another two weeks. Have you downloaded the sample pack yet?
With two weeks to go until the deadline, the "Polifonia Song Contest" beckons all musicians who find…
Are you the type of musician that is inspired by old sounds, such as cheerful Irish folk melodies, the majestic resonance of pipe organ concerts, and the timeless chimes echoing from century-old Italian bell towers? Then ‘Polifonia Song Contest’ is your challenge!
Are you the type of musician that is inspired by old sounds, such as cheerful Irish folk melodies, the…
The consortium is preparing for the last face-to-face consortium meeting of the Polifonia project in April 2024.
The consortium is preparing for the last face-to-face consortium meeting of the Polifonia project in…
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N. 101004746