Eine Ringvorlesung des Instituts für Theaterwissenschaft der Freien Universität Berlin

On Generating a Master's Programme. Future Analytics: AI and Audio Worlds

• Prof. Dr. Johannes Ismaiel-Wendt
  Institut für Musik und Musikwissenschaft,
  Universität Hildesheim
  Dieser Beitrag findet in englischer Sprache statt.

“Unfortunately, AI for music-making isn’t as bad as musicians would like it to be.”

(Jazz bassist from Cologne)

Discussions on the subject of AI and music are often characterised, on the part of musicians, by fears of loss and a sense of being offended with regard to their unique human abilities. Among those with an affinity for algorithms, there is a spectrum ranging from naïve enthusiasm, futuristic visions to promises of salvation for the whole world.

What if musicians really understood how AI works and had at least a basic grasp of coding and machine learning? What meaningful projects could computer scientists develop in collaboration with musicians and humanities scholars if they were deeply informed about sound studies, cultures of listening and ethical discourses?

At the University of Hildesheim, Germany, we are currently developing the new MA degree programme “Future Analytics”. In April 2027, we will launch an internationally oriented special issue on the topic of “AI & Audio Worlds”. This inter- and transdisciplinary programme is aimed equally at students from diverse backgrounds in: Computer Science, Data Science, and/or Music, Musicology, Audio Design, Sound Studies & Cultural Studies, Anthropology.

Johannes S. Ismaiel-Wendt, one of the two chairs of the MA degree programme, presents a few details of the collaboration with the Information Systems and Machine Learning Lab Hildesheim and the MA programme’s content. How did we develop a curriculum? Which papers do we share? Who would like to get involved?

Johannes Salim Ismaiel-Wendt is Professor of Sociology of Music and Popular Music Studies at the University of Hildesheim, Germany. He is author of tracks'n'treks. Populäre Musik und Postkoloniale Analyse (2011), post_PRESETS. Kultur, Wissen und populäre MusikmachDinge (2016) and editor of the Series MusikmachDinge (with Rolf Großmann). Ismaiel-Wendt is a founding member of KollektivARK, a collective for post-representative sound lectures and installations on globally entangled histories of music, sampling cultures and drum machines.