CFP: music/creativity issue of Connection Science

[Peter M. Todd]

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MUSIC AND CREATIVITY

Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Connection Science


Over the last few years there has been a vertiginous growth in the
connectionist exploration of many domains, including music.  Music has
traditionally been one of the least studied areas of cognition, in part
because of the complexity of musical phenomena and their language-like
connections between many levels and modalities of thought.  But the
application of network-based computational techniques to aspects of musicality
and creativity has resulted in a variety of illuminating models.  The time now
seems right for an overview of the agenda being followed by connectionists in
this area, the articulation of the central issues in the field, and a forum
for the discussion of future directions.

To this end, we are inviting papers covering the whole field of
connectionist modelling of music, arts, and creativity for a special issue of
the journal Connection Science.  Papers may be either empirical or
theoretical, but must communicate predominantly unpublished ideas.  We are
particularly interested in receiving work in the following areas (although we
emphasize music here, other areas of creativity and artistic endeavour may be
substituted):


    1.  The limits and possibilities for connectionism in modelling
         creativity.
    2.  Modelling cognitive aspects of music: meter, rhythm, tonality, 
         harmony and melody.
    3.  The use of neural networks in creating pieces of music, choreography,
         visual art, etc. 
    4.  Modelling the integration of lower- and higher-level musical 
         knowledge, including hierarchical representations.
    5.  The representation of intermodal relationships between musical 
         dimensions, e.g. tonality and rhythm.
    6.  Developmental models of musical cognition.
    7.  Psychoacoustic models underlying categorical pitch and other
         musical phenomena. 
    8.  Models of auditory streaming, attention, phrasing, and grouping.
    9.  Connectionist models of timbre.
   10.  Models of cross-cultural differences or universals.
   11.  Comparative models of music and language.
   12.  The use of sequential, recurrent, predictive, and chaotic network 
         models for creative phenomena.
   13.  Cognitive neuroscience models of musical phenomena.


We are particularly interested in stimulating discussion with this special
issue of the present and future of this field, and papers should explore the
importance of issues raised by the research as broadly as possible.  An
awareness of the cognitive plausibility and implications of the ideas
presented is also essential.


Requirements for Submission

All papers will be rigorously refereed.
Guidelines for submission of papers to Connection Science can be found in
issues of the Journal and are also available from lyn at dcs.exeter.ac.uk (or by
mail from Lyn Shackleton, University of Exeter, address as below).

Authors are encouraged to contact the editors with any questions about
proposed papers or the relevance of their work for this special issue.

Authors must submit five (5) printed copies of their papers to either of the
addresses listed below by OCTOBER 15 1993.  Each copy of the paper should be 
fronted by a separate title page listing its title, authors, their addresses,
surface-mail and E-mail, and an abstract of under 200 words.  Notification of 
receipt will be electronically mailed to the first (or designated) author.  
Notification of acceptance or rejection will be mailed by DECEMBER 31 1993.  
Final versions of accepted papers will be due MARCH 1 1994.


Special Issue Editors:

Niall Griffith
Department of Computer Science,
University of Exeter,
Prince of Wales Road,
Exeter,
EX4 4PT, England.
E-mail: ngr at dcs.exeter.ac.uk

Peter M. Todd
The Rowland Institute for Science
100 Edwin H. Land Boulevard
Cambridge, MA  02142  USA
E-mail: ptodd at spo.rowland.org