Music Technology Group

Music Department, College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology

Gil Weinberg

Bio

Gil Weinberg is an assistant professor and the director of the music technology program at Georgia Tech. In his work Weinberg attempts to expand musical expression, creativity, and learning through technology. His research interests include new instruments for musical expression, musical networks, machine and robotic musicianship, sonification, and music education. His music has been featured in festivals and concerts such as Ars Electronica, SIGGRAPH, ICMC, and NIME, and with orchestras such as Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, the National Irish Symphony Orchestra, the Scottish BBC Symphony. His interactive systems were presented in museums such as the Smithsonian Museum, Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and Boston Children's Museum. Weinberg received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Media Arts and Sciences from MIT. Before turning to academia, he co-founded and held a number of positions in music and media software companies in his home country Israel.


Current/Recent Research

Brainwaves

Brainwaves is a sonification installation that allows a group of players to interact with an auditory display of neural activity. The system is designed to represent electrical spike propagation in a neuron culture through sound propagation in space. Participants can simulate neural spikes by hitting a set of specially designed controllers, experimenting and sonically investigating hands-on the electrical activity in the brain. (Gil Weinberg, Travis Thatcher)


Haile

Haile is a perceptual robotic percussionist that can listen to live players, analyze their music in real-time, and use the product of this analysis to play back in an improvisational manner. It is designed to combine the benefits of computational power and algorithmic music with the richness, visual interactivity, and expression of acoustic playing. We believe that when collaborating with live players, Haile can facilitate a musical experience that is not possible by any other means, inspiring players to interact with it in novel expressive manners, which leads to novel musical outcome. (Gil Weinberg, Scott Driscoll)


Iltur

iltur is a series of musical compositions featuring a novel method of interaction between acoustic and electronic instruments with new musical controllers called Beatbugs. Beatbug players can record live input from acoustic and MIDI instruments and respond by transforming the recorded material in real time, creating motif-and-variation call-and-response routines on the fly. (Gil Weinberg, Scott Driscoll, Travis Thatcher)


Listening Machines

Listening Machines is a concert series featuring pieces by the faculty and students from Georgia Tech's Music Technology group. The concert series explores concepts of machines listening and improvisation and musical human-machine interaction. (Gil Weinberg, Jason Freeman, Parag Chordia, Frank Clark, Chris Moore, Scott Driscoll, Travis Thatcher, Mark Godfrey)


Publications

2006

Weinberg G., Driscoll S. “Towards Robotic Musicianship” Computer Music Journal 30:4, MIT Press,  pp. 28-45 


Weinberg G., Thatcher T. “Interactive Sonification: Aesthetics, Functionality and Performance” Leonardo Music Journal 16, MIT Press. 


Weinberg G., Freeman J., Chordia P., Clark F., Moore C., Driscoll S., and Thatcher T. "Georgia Tech Music Technology Group – Studio Report" Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2006), New Orleans, LA


Weinberg G., Driscoll, S., Thatcher  T. “Jam ’aa – A Percussion  Ensemble for Human and Robotic Players” ACM International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques (SIGGRAPH 2006), Boston, MA. 


Weinberg G., Thatcher T. “Interactive Sonification of Neural Activity” Proceedings of the International Conference on New  Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2006), Paris, France  


Weinberg G., Driscoll S. “Robot-Human Interaction with an Anthropomorphic Percussionist” Proceedings of International ACM  Computer Human Interaction Conference (CHI 2006). Montréal, Canada,  pp. 1229 - 1232 


2005

Weinberg G. “Local Performance Networks – Musical Interdependency through Gestures and Controllers” Organized Sound, Cambridge University Press pp. 255-267. 


Weinberg G. “Voice Networks – Exploring the Human Voice as a Creative Medium for Musical Collaboration” Leonardo Music Journal, MIT Press: Vol. 15 pp.23-26.  


Weinberg G. “Interconnected Musical Networks – Towards a Theoretical  Framework” Computer Music Journal, MIT Press, Vol. 29:2, pp. 23-39. 


Weinberg G., Driscoll S., Parry M. “Haile – An Interactive Robotic  Percussionist” Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2005). Barcelona, Spain, pp. 622-625. 


Weinberg G., Driscoll S., Parry M. “Musical Interactions with a Perceptual Robotic Percussionist”