EECS' PhD student Ben Bengler was awarded the first honourable mention for Best Contribution to Creative Communication 2013 at the 9th ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition 2013, Sydney, Australia.
EECS’ PhD student Ben Bengler was awarded the first honourable mention for Best Contribution to Creative Communication 2013 at the 9th ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition 2013, Sydney, Australia.
Ben Bengler from the Centre for Digital Music presented research on Polymetros, an interactive, collaborative music system that enables up to four people to play, improvise and compose music together spontaneously.
Commenting on receiving the award, Ben said: “The designer in me is really pleased that this award recognises the innovation that’s gone into developing Polymetros, which allows everybody to experience the creative joy of making music together regardless of their musical proficiency.”
The conference award comes hot on the heels after a visit to China to exhibit Polymetros at a design retrospective and a music festival called Sonar in Spain, where Ben ran the music experiment for 30 hours for three consecutive days.
In China, Ben presented his work alongside fellow PhD student Dave Meckin and supervisor Dr Nick Bryan-Kinns on interactive sound at the “Design Can Change!” exhibition in Shenzhen, China in May 2013. The exhibition was part of the 9th China International Cultural Industries Fair 2013, which received over 210,000 visitors.
Designed as an inviting audience experience for festivals and exhibitions, Polymetros facilitates a form of music-making that is immediate, open-ended and social and was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum and Digital Shoreditch Festival in 2012.