Welcome to Musically Embodied Machine Learning (2025)
Description:
What are the creative possibilities of machine learning when embedded within musical instruments? If an instrument can learn and adapt with its player, how might this change musical practices? How do we adapt ML technology so that it can learn in-situ within an instrument? How do we design simplified interfaces to machine learning that become part of a musical instrument? These are the sorts of questions being explored by the Musically Embodied Machine Learning project. We’ll be bringing our new embedded ML technology to AAU for a workshop, where you can learn about embedded musical ML hands-on by building new prototype musical instruments.
The workshop will take place in CreaTech Lab (CTL) and the Augmented Performance Lab (APL)
Schedule:
Day 1:
08:30 Coffee (APL)
09:00 Welcome / Short presentations
10:30 Lecture: MEML (Chris Kiefer)
12:00 Lunch
13:00 Lecture: Introduction to MEML Environment on Pi Pico (CTL)
Warn-up practical tasks
16-17:00ish Finish
Day 2:
08:30 Coffee (APL)
09:00 Guest Lecture
10:30 Start of practical work - ideation session (CTL)
12:00 Lunch
13:00 Practical work
16-17:00ish Finish
Day 3:
08:30 Coffee (APL)
09:00 Guest Lecture
10:30 Practical work (CTL '/ APL)
12:00 Lunch
14:00 Group sharing / presentation
15:00 Discussion / reflection: World Cafe exercise
17:00ish Close
Evening: Dinner and informal performances (details TBC)
Prerequisites:
We’ll try and accommodate a mixture of people with varied musical and technical skills. Work is in small groups. As long as skills balance out in the groups, participants will need at least one of these skills:
- Basic electronics / coding
- Musical instrument design (software and/or hardware)
- Musical performance
Learning objectives:
Understand the motivations behind the need for in-situ learning within hybrid and digital musical instruments
Understand the musically creative possibilities of embedded machine learning
Understand techniques and technologies for embedded machine learning
Develop musical prototypes for interacting with embedded machine learning in instruments
Experiment with advanced algorithms (such as extensions to reinforcement learning) that are specialised for in-situ machine learning
Carry out musical instrument prototyping in small groups
Perform with or demonstrate new musical prototypes
Key literature: TBA
Organizer: Daniel Overholt
Lecturers: Dr. Chris Kiefer, Andrea Martelloni & Daniel Overholt
ECTS: 3.0
Time: 15 - 17 January 2025
Place: Aalborg University (Room TBA)
Zip code: 2450
City: Copenhagen
Maximal number of participants: 20
Deadline: 2 January 2025
Important information concerning PhD courses:
There is a no-show fee of DKK 3,000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before the start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start of the course.
We cannot ensure any seats before the deadline for enrolment, all participants will be informed after the deadline, approximately 3 weeks before the start of the course.
To attend courses at the Doctoral School in Medicine, Biomedical Science and Technology you must be enrolled as a PhD student.
For inquiries regarding registration, cancellation or waiting list, please contact the PhD administration at aauphd@adm.aau.dk When contacting us please state the course title and course period. Thank you.
- Teacher: Cumhur Erkut
- Teacher: Chris Kiefer
- Teacher: Daniel Overholt
Welcome to Norms Power and Design - new analytical tools for planning design and architecture
Description: Across planning, urban design, industrial design, and architecture there is a cultural preunderstanding that these fields of practice are benevolent and ‘good. However, at times these fields are complicit in social exclusion. At times due to ‘unintended consequences of design’ and at other times due to normative agendas related to power more or less in the open. This course will establish a theoretical framework for operational analysis of empirical cases across these fields. The materialization of power in various design solutions and plans require a conceptual scaffolding unearthing the relationship between human bodies, material artefacts, spaces, and technologies. The course will draw upon the latest contemporary research into power and design drawing on post-phenomenology, new materialism, and actor-network perspectives and give examples from the lecturer’s research. Participants will connect these ideas and frameworks to their own PhD projects in workshops, exercises, and through plenary project presentations. Participants must read a moderate number of readings in advance of the course.
Prerequisites: Participants with master’s degrees in urban design, architecture, industrial design, urban planning, traffic engineering, sociology, urban geography or similar.
Learning objectives: The course is based on a didactic that moves between lecturing and tutoring from the lecturers and exercises enabling the participants to explore and test theories and concepts on their own PhD projects. Learning to reflect upon how one’s PhD project connects to norms and power based on the explored state-of-the-art research is the key learning objective.
Organizer: Ole B. Jensen
Lecturers: Ole B. Jensen and external lecturers TBA
ECTS: 3 ECTS (or 5 ECTS for a successfully evaluated post-course assignment submission)
Time: 16,17,18 June, 2025
Place: Aalborg University
Zip code: 9220
City: Aalborg
Maximal number of participants: 15
Deadline: 26 May, 2025
Important information concerning PhD courses:
There is a no-show fee of DKK 3,000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before the start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start of the course.
We cannot ensure any seats before the deadline for enrolment, all participants will be informed after the deadline, approximately 3 weeks before the start of the course.
To attend courses at the Doctoral School in Medicine, Biomedical Science and Technology you must be enrolled as a PhD student.
For inquiries regarding registration, cancellation or waiting list, please contact the PhD administration at aauphd@adm.aau.dk When contacting us please state the course title and course period. Thank you.
- Teacher: Ole B. Jensen
Welcome to Design Thinking, Design Research, and Design Experiments 2025
Description:
Welcome to our newly developed “Design Thinking, Research, and Experiments” course.
As many academics and professionals within the design field, our relationship to Design
Thinking, Design Research, and Design Experiments has evolved through the years. In this
course, we will discuss and reflect upon selected concepts:
The Evolution of the Design Thinking Concept.
In this first part of the course, we will take you through the development of the design thinking concept with our reflections along the way. We hope this will help you deepen your understanding of the aspirations, the theoretical underpinnings as well as the recent critique of the design thinking concept.
We believe it is important for you as PhD students, who have an interest in the concept to understand why, how, and which path had led the Design Thinking concept, to the somewhat disputed position, where it is today.
Epistemic Traditions from within Constructive Design Research.
In the second part of the course, we work with when we drift, how research insights emerge. We discuss “drifting by intention” and four underlying epistemic traditions from within constructive design research.
We explore emergence as a feature of practice-based design research, and ask questions on how to understand the knowledge produced: where is its location, what acts create it, how binding it is supposed to be, and ultimately, what drives knowledge creation?
Designing Experiments for Your Research.
In this third part of the course, we are hands-on with your PhD research project. You will outline the experimental setups in your research. Together we will ideate on hands-on experimental approaches.
This part usually gives insights into the unknown unknowns in your research through parallel prototyping of your research questions, experimental setups, and expected insights.
Organizer: Linda Nhu Laursen
Lecturers: Linda Nhu Laursen
ECTS: 2
Time: 20 - 21 October 2025
Place: Aalborg University
Zip code: 9220
City: Aalborg
Maximal number of participants: 30
Deadline: 29 September 2025
Important information concerning PhD courses:
There is a no-show fee of DKK 3,000 for each course where the student does not show up. Cancellations are accepted no later than 2 weeks before the start of the course. Registered illness is of course an acceptable reason for not showing up on those days. Furthermore, all courses open for registration approximately four months before start of the course.
We cannot ensure any seats before the deadline for enrolment, all participants will be informed after the deadline, approximately 3 weeks before the start of the course.
To attend courses at the Doctoral School in Medicine, Biomedical Science and Technology you must be enrolled as a PhD student.
For inquiries regarding registration, cancellation or waiting list, please contact the PhD administration at aauphd@adm.aau.dk When contacting us please state the course title and course period. Thank you.
- Teacher: Linda Nhu Laursen