The discipline of designing algorithms for creative processing of musical audio is now fairly mature in academia. However, this large corpus of work is motivated primarily by technical novelty or improvement in quantifiable metrics related to signal quality or computational performance. Whilst these factors are important, they are only a part of the process of designing an inspiring and engaging tool for the creative generation or processing of sound. Algorithms for this use must be designed with as much thought given to subjective qualities like aesthetics and usability. In this seminar, Dr. Parker presents his own experiences of trying to bridge this gap, and the design principles he has arrived at in the process.

Julian Parker is a researcher and designer of algorithms for generation and processing of musical audio. He is a graduate of the University of Cambridge, the University of Edinburgh and Aalto University, Finland. He currently works at Native Instruments in Berlin as their Principal DSP Engineer.