Overview

Homepage About LIM Overview

Laboratorio di Informatica Musicale (LIM, Music Informatics Laboratory) is one of the main labs of the Department of Informatics and Communication - Università degli Studi di Milano. It includes 4 labs equipped with a number of music, multimedia and computer devices.

Established in 1985, under the direction of its founder Goffredo Haus LIM has hosted composers and renowned experts such as Angelo Paccagnini, Antonio Josè Rodriguez Selles, Franco Donatoni and Dante Tanzi.

During more than 30 years of activity, LIM has carried out international projects and established important collaborations. It is worth to cite: Teatro alla Scala of Milan, Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow, RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana, RSI Radiotelevisione Svizzera italiana, Orchestra Verdi di Milano, IEEE Computer Society, NASA Charles Ames Research Center, Ricordi Historic Archives, CNR (Italian National Research Council), and the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities.

Besides, LIM has worked with a number of recording industries, broadcasting companies, editors, software houses, internet companies, music producers and music instruments manufacturing industries.

Quick Report

Research Areas

The research activities at LIM cover many areas in the field of computer applications in music; the main projects concern the following topics:

• definition of formal methods for music information describing and processing;
• study and experimentation about digital sound processing techniques;
• design and implementation of software and hardware tools for both sound and music processing, with many levels of representation capability, both for real time and interactive systems;
• study and experimentation about multimedia authoring systems, multimedia performance, multimedia composition and related aesthetics.

Past Projects

Many projects have been carried on since 1975; the most relevant of them concern the following topics (the order reflects the temporal sequence of our works):

• formal description and compacting of music processes;
• description, analysis and synthesis of music scores by means of Petri Nets;
• description and transformation of music processes by means of homologies;
• automatic segmentation and score transcription of electronic music from tape;
• analysis, segmentation and orchestration of scores;
• synthesis of audio signals by means of two variable functions;
• synthesis of audio signals by means of cellular automata;
• experimental synthesizers based on Walsh functions and two variable functions;
• electronic publishing of music;
• computer music software engineering;
• transliteration of both graphic animations and literary texts into music;
• intelligent systems and hypertexts;
• simulation of the movement of sound sources in 3D virtual realities;
• simulation of the movement of sound sources in a theatrical context;
• functional performance of music;
• multimedia authoring systems, multimedia performance, multimedia composition and related aesthetics;
• acoustic monitoring of neural networks.

Current Projects

The most relevant projects currently going on at LIM concern the following topics:

• multimedia synthesis and performance;
• video-tracked synthesis of musical processes;
• audio-tracked synthesis of musical processes;
• music education by hypermedia approaches;
• audio data base management, preserving and restoration;
• audio archives restoration;
• music (audio & score) archives management and preserving;
• synthesis by sound feature extraction of symbolic/structured audio codes.

Education and Cultural Promotion

The Information and Communication Department (DICO, Università degli Studi di Milano) has activated a degree in Music Informatics. An advanced course on "Informatics applied to Music" is held every year by G. Haus in the frame of the Master Course of Studies for both Computer Science and Engineering.

Many thesis are carried on at LIM for graduation in Computer Science, Physics, Electronic Engineering and Mathematics about computer music topics.

Relevant contributions have been given to international associations and research groups in the field of computer applications in music. Particularly, Goffredo Haus is the Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Computer Generated Music and the co-editor (together with Denis Baggi) of its Newsletter.

Concerts, Media and Software Productions

LIM concerts are based on live performance by means of computers and digital sound synthesis systems together with traditional music performers, computer graphics and dancers.

We have published music to make well-known our aesthetic experimentation; particularly, we have produced starting from a SCORESYNTH synthesis of MIDI scores.

In the field of multimedia production: the first Italian CD-I has been produced with the cooperation of Philips Italia and the soundtrack of a Macintosh CD-ROM about the history of telecommunications has been realized with the cooperation of Apple Computer. Other commercial music CD-ROMs has been published by RCS and Ricordi/opera Multimedia publishers.

A multiplatform CD-ROM about music standards has been published by the IEEE Computer Society with the cooperation of the most relevant manufacturers, research centers, and standard organizations on that topic.