Open Methods for Digital Conservation of Historic Musical Instruments

Edinburgh Futures Institute

Edinburgh Futures Institute, The University of Edinburgh

Centre for Data, Culture & Society

The Centre for Data, Culture & Society, a part of Edinburgh Futures Institute, builds capacity for data-led and applied computational research and aims to inspire and empower researchers to engage with data and digital research methods.

AbstractAs the harvesting of materials that are traditionally used for building musical instruments become more tightly regulated, we need to look at how we can continue to study and preserve historic musical instruments. Preserving musical instruments digitally is one solution, but raises questions on how we might continue to study and interact with them. We must also consider the problem of how to make the tools authored for digital conservation maintainable and accessible.This talk discusses work carried out at the NEMUS project on the topic of digital conservation of historic stringed instruments with three themes: Measurement, Analysis and Interaction."Measurement" considers the risks during the measurement process, particularly to historic stringed instrument soundboards. As such, non-contact laser Doppler velocimetry methods for measuring vibration are appealing, but are prohibitively expensive."Analysis" focuses on the creation of an open source framework for interacting with a novel finite difference scheme for plates under general elastic boundary conditions."Interaction" looks at preserving the sensory experience of playing a historic instrument after it has been digitised, in particular 17th century harpsichords. Speaker BiographyMatthew is a twice graduate from the University of Edinburgh in Acoustics and Music Technology, an apprenticed luthier, and currently a researcher as part of the <a href="https://site.unibo.it/nemus-numerical-sound-restoration/en" title="https://site.unibo.it/nemus-numerical-sound-restoration/en" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">NEMUS project</a> at the University of Bologna. Matthew's research interest lie at the intersection between research software engineering, creative applications of computer programming pedagogy, interfaces for musical expression and numerical simulation for sonic art. Event InformationThis event will take place in Room 2.35 of the Edinburgh Futures Institute building. Please inform us of any access requirements by emailing <a href="mailto:cdcs@ed.ac.uk" title="mailto:cdcs@ed.ac.uk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">cdcs@ed.ac.uk</a>. Further details about how CDCS uses your information obtained from booking onto our events can be found at in our <a href="https://www.cdcs.ed.ac.uk/events-privacy-statement" title="https://www.cdcs.ed.ac.uk/events-privacy-statement" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Events Privacy Statement</a>.As of March 2022, the government formally removed all Covid restrictions in the UK. We ask that you continue to be considerate of others’ personal space, and please do not attend if you feel unwell or have any Covid symptoms.