ARTECOM: immersive urban soundscapes and personalized music creation to engage youth in the smart city
The ARTECOM project – ARt, TEchnology and COMmunity: digital installations for inclusive access to the city’s cultural heritage – is affiliated with Spoke 1 and focuses on culture within the smart city. Its goal is to promote the enjoyment of art in an educational, free, and inclusive manner, through the use of urban technologies integrated into the fabric of the city of L’Aquila. These consist of digital installations based on Artificial Intelligence (AI).
The project involves a multidisciplinary team comprising computer, telecommunications, and automation engineers, architects, psychologists, music composers, and economists.
The first challenge of ARTECOM was to identify an effective communication channel that, by leveraging each expert’s specific domain knowledge, would enable the achievement of all project objectives with high quality standards.
The primary target audience is adolescents. Adolescence is a particularly sensitive period during which the beneficial effects of art – especially music creation – can have a strong impact, promoting active involvement as well as the development of personality and creativity. Among various music genres, the electroacoustic genre – though niche – appears to be the most effective in stimulating active engagement, thanks to its unique characteristics, such as the combination of acoustic and electronic sounds.
To this end, a state-of-the-art analysis was conducted to understand what tools are currently available to adolescents interested in exploring electroacoustic music creation.
A sample group of adolescents from L’Aquila with no formal music education was selected. This group was classified based on the results of a well-known psychological test grounded in the Big Five personality theory, which investigates five fundamental traits,
The results were analyzed using user-centred design methods, namely Personas & Scenarios, leading to an ideal profiling of five types of end users.
Based on this profiling, expert music composers from the “A. Casella” Conservatory of L’Aquila created five distinct immersive, dynamic, and personalized soundscapes capable of narrating urban complexity through sound.
The electroacoustic tracks were created using specific parameters derived from recordings made directly in the city of L’Aquila. The use of urban sounds helps build an intangible dialogue between the installation and the listener, evoking emotions and social dynamics.
The result was presented during the demonstration session (DEMO) dedicated to cascade funding calls related to the themes of Spoke 1 (plenary meeting in Genoa, March 31–April 1). It consisted of an interactive prototype for interfacing and personalized sound production by individual users. This prototype enables both personalized sound experiences and the collection of data useful for training the AI algorithm.
Personalization is a key concept in the ARTECOM project. Thanks to AI’s adaptive capabilities, user profiling is combined with immersive soundscapes: the algorithm suggests an optimal set of parameters that each user can modify to create their own musical composition.
Once the “ARTECOM box” has been field-tested through empirical trials, its contents can be easily adapted based on goals and context of use, thus opening the possibility for the project to expand to other cities in the Abruzzo region and, more generally, throughout central, northern, and southern Italy.
The ARTECOM project is led by the University of L’Aquila (UNIVAQ), Partners: Conservatory A. Casella dell’Aquila; University of Teramo, Collaborations: CUEIM – University Consortium of Industrial and Managerial Economics; Cykel -Web Agency & ICT Consulting.
ARTECOM – ARt, TEchnology and COMmunity: digital installations for the inclusive use of the city’s cultural heritage (CUP E13C24001110006) is funded under the call “Public notice for the selection of project proposals presented by public universities and public research bodies located in the regions of southern italy for the implementation of research, development and experimentation activities in the areas of interest of the RAISE Ecosystem – Robotics and AI for Socio-economic Empowerment”, published by SPOKE 1 as part of the pursuit of the objectives of the RAISE Innovation Ecosystem Research Programme funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU using PNRR MUR – M4C2 – Investment 1.5 funds.
Author photo:
ARTECOM (Spoke 1)
Credits:
ARTECOM (Spoke 1) and RAISE
