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What do musicians and computer scientists have in common?
More than you might think.
“If you think about it,” Nancy Baym says, “almost everything musicians do is technologically mediated—their instruments are technologies, they manipulate the sound with technologies, they sing through microphones that are technologies, they depend on speakers, production software … all kinds of technologies just in the music-making processes themselves.
“If you add in the music distribution and communication that happens through social media and other communication technologies, there are infinitely more ways technology shapes what musicians can and can’t do, as well as what they are expected to do or not to do.”
Baym, a principal researcher for Microsoft Research, is discussing the connection that encouraged her to host the first Music Tech Fest series in the United States. The event is scheduled for Cambridge, Mass., from March 21 to 23 at the Microsoft New England Research & Development Center.
