Head of Research, MuTant Team-Project (INRIA/CNRS/Ircam).
Director, Department for Research/Creativity interfaces.
Ircam - Centre Pompidou, Paris, France.
arshia.cont [at] ircam [_dot_] fr
From 2012 to 2016, I was heading the MuTant research team sponsored by INRIA at IRCAM; and in parallel, managing the Research/Creativity Interfaces Department (IRC) at IRCAM.
As a researcher, my passion is to engage new technologies in the process of musical creativity involving humans and computers. Scientifically speaking, this leads to research in Artificial Machine Listening and Real-time Systems involving machine learning, signal processing, real-time languages and artificial intelligence. My work has notably led to the development of Antescofo.
In the IRC department I served in maintaining and renewing Ircam's Forum since 2012, coordinating musical research, foundation of Ircam's Artistic Residency program; and most importantly working with extremely creative people in both sciences and the arts.
Since April 2016, I am serving a Start-up Company aiming to bring the Antescofo technology to the greater public.
Research Interests
Real-time Score Following, Synchronous Programming, Real-time Machine Listening, Music Information Geometry
Software
- Antescofo: Anticipatory score following and synchronous programming for real-time computer music
- Chromax: Real-time Spectral Generator for time-synchronous Spectral Delay Effects. Now part of IRCAMAX Collection II distributed by Ableton
Awards Highlight
- Industry Award from the French Ministry of Industry for Antescofo, May 2013.
- SPECIF/Gilles Kahn PhD Prize 2009, First prize (sponsored by French Academy of Science)
- Sound and Music Computing Best Paper Award 2009.
- ICMC Best Presentation Award, 2007.
Teaching
- ATIAM Machine Learning Course, 2013 Course Page (Taught from 2008-13)
- Paris Conservatory, FSMS, English research survey course (2014-15) (Taught since 2009)
Selected Publications
(See all here)
Cont A., Dubnov S., and Assayag G., On the Information Geometry of Audio Streams with Applications to Similarity Computing, IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, Vol. 19, no. 4, Pp. 837-846, 2011. (preprint) (bibtex)
Cont Arshia, A coupled duration-focused architecture for realtime music to score alignment. IEEE Transaction on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence. Vol. 32(6), Pp. 974-987, June 2010. (preprint) (bibtex)
Cont Arshia, ANTESCOFO: Anticipatory Synchronization and Control of Interactive Parameters in Computer Music. International Computer Music Conference. Belfast : August 2008. (pdf) (bibtex)
Cont Arshia, Dubnov Shlomo, Assayag Gérard, Anticipatory Model of Musical Style Imitation using Collaborative and Competitive Reinforcement Learning. Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems. Berlin : Martin Butz, Olivier Sigaud and Gianluca Baldassarre (Editors). 2007, p. 285-306. (pdf) (bibtex)
Cont Arshia, Dubnov Shlomo, Wessel David, Realtime Multiple-pitch and Multiple-instrument Recognition For Music Signals using Sparse Non-negative Constraints. Digital Audio Effects (DAFx). Bordeaux : Septembre 2007. (pdf) (bibtex)
Cont Arshia, Realtime Multiple Pitch Observation using Sparse Non-negative Constraints. International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR). Victoria : Octobre 2006. (pdf) (bibtex)
PhD Thesis
Cont Arshia, Modeling Musical Anticipation: From the time of music to the music of time. PhD thesis in Acoustics, Signal Processing, and Computer Science Applied to Music (ATIAM). Paris : University of Paris 6 (UPMC), and University of California San Diego (UCSD) (joint), 2008. (pdf) (bibtex) (Defense Presentation)
