The 43rd International Computer Music Conference was held in the Shanghai Conservatory of Music from October 15 to 20. It’s the first time the music conference to be held in a Chinese conservatory.

Prior to the event, SHCM President Lin Zaiyong said the conference would showcase the highest-level theses presentations and computer music, and it would surely bring to the music world a new experience of combining technology with music. It would become the most important gathering for musicians across the world as well, he added.

No wonder, the event attracted not only musicians and composers, but also software and hardware designers. This year’s conference featured Stanford University Professor John Chowning’s opening ceremony keynote speech and Pulitzer Prize for Music winner Du Yun’s performance at the closing ceremony.

This year’s conference theme was “the Sound within Ourselves,” a concept derived from an ancient Chinese saying by Laotze, “the best music and art lay in silence and abstraction,” said Chen Qiangbin, director of the SHCM Sound Engineering Department.

In light of the theme, artist Federico Nicolas Camara Jalac designed a contraption, called “Listen to Yourself,” which combines human’s sound spectrum with mathematics and physics. Meanwhile, a facial recognition software FaceOSC.app was introduced at the conference to identify audiences.

Also at the conference, a piece of electro music composed for violinists and dancers used the contact improvisation technology to change the notes and sounds of the violins according to the signals sent out by blue tooth sensors matching the dancer’s moves.

Other than the artistic projects, the conference also featured 25 theses presentations, on subjects such as the New Interface of Musical Expression, Interaction Design, Composition Algorithm, Aesthetics, Theory, History and Philosophy.

Chinese theses focused on composition algorithm, interactive music, and technology in music composition. Among them, “Music Composition Platform Based on Ambisonics Algorithm” discusses the latest 3D sound technology and modern interactive music.

Composed by Fang Dalei, a graduate of the Music Engineering Department of the SHCM, the opening ceremony concert Sound Cubic 2.0 contains 3D holograph sound space, new media, real-time interaction electronic music, and a whole new version of Electronic Wave Concerto.

Audience at the concert could visit a website to choose voice part of the music piece at a selected time to interact with the speakers installed in the concert hall to play their own part in the concert.

During the conference, the Electronic Music Week, with a history of 10 years, was also staged to promote young artists.

So, the closing concert of the conference commissioned three young artists’ works, namely, Zhang Zhiliang’s Burning Joss Sticks, Composed for Flute and Computer; Julian Vincenot’s Fire and Forget, Composed for Piano and Computer; and Miyamoto Takashi’s Fragment, Composed for Viola and Computer.

Pulitzer Prize for Music winner Du Yun also collaborated with violin students from the middle school affiliated to Shanghai Conservatory of Music at the closing concert.