Mikel Zorrilla from Vicomtech on AMPLIFY: Advancing AI and XR Technologies for the Future
1. Could you please give us an overview of AMPLIFY?
AMPLIFY aims to amplify voices on the margins —professional and non-professional musicians who nurture Europe’s rich musical life— by providing technologies to explore novel phygital (physical–digital) human connections among and between artists and audiences, beyond video streaming, with innovative digitally-born formats tested in diverse pilots under real world conditions. This way, AMPLIFY will support CCI sector professionals (artists, promoters, managers etc.) and policy-makers to facilitate the use of new digital tools and formats towards the digital transition in and beyond the CCIs.
2. What are the main goals and challenges which AMPLIFY is facing?
AMPLIFY is a research project with a multi-disciplinary working in the intersection of digital technology, Cultural and Creative Industries, a human-centric and ethical approach and market adoption. All are intertwined and all are equally important. Finding a good balance between them and making a multi-disciplinary team working together will increase the impact exponentially, but it is a big challenge.
3. Can you please present the tools developed under the project and how they will bridge the gap between technology and live performance?
We are still in the first phase of the project, and therefore, how the tools will look like at the end of it remains unclear. However, their purpose if to connect artists and audiences in a hybrid physical and digital scenario: we call it phygital. The project will explore AI-driven automixing tools for audio and video and immersive XR technologies.
4. How are tools like AMPLIFY PORTABLE and IMMERSIVE designed to enhance artistic expression and audience engagement?
AMPLIFY PORTABLE will be a cost-effective, easy-to-use tool to facilitate people in different places to play, learn and perform together, especially at community level. We want it to make it simple, to make it work easily and to be portable. Multimedia and AI technologies will play a key role in developing it.
AMPLIFY IMMERSIVE will enable producers to promote live immersive performance experiences to distributed and remote audiences. We are researching with volumetric video, spatial audio and advanced interaction through XR technologies.
Both tools will be open-source and, although focused on music, transferable across the spectrum of Cultural and Creative sectors.
5. Can you please present the four pilots and explain how they demonstrate AMPLIFY’s potential to redefine creative experiences for diverse audiences?
The project includes four very diverse pilots to test the technology and the research questions through small-scale pilot trials. First, there is a pilot called RENEWING TRADITION, with remote learning and performance in Gaelic folk culture in Scotland with teenagers in rural communities. Second, the MUSIC WITH BABIES pilot, that will provide digitally-enabled music cocreation with families in Portugal. Third, a pilot called NEXT STAGE, that will explore digitally-born novel musical experiences with XR connecting artists and audiences in Italy. Fourth, and finally, the REVEALING OPERA pilot where immersive experiences of co-creation with communities will be explored in Barcelona, during a community opera creation process between the Liceu Opera House and the Sant Andreu district.
6. How is AMPLIFY paving the pay for a sustainable future in the culture and creative industries, balancing economic, environmental and socio-cultural sustainability?
Well, this is a big question and we just started. We don’t expect to solve all the problems or to answer all the questions, but we expect to do a step forward in the right direction and to share all that worked and didn’t work for us through guidelines, workshops, policy recommendations, open-source technology, etc. We believe this is the way to do it, and other will come in the future to continue our research, in the same way that AMPLIFY continues the research in this field from other partners and projects.
7. What lasting impact do you hope the project will have on the sector?
Throughout the three-year period, AMPLIFY will engage people beyond the project in a continuing dialogue about the place and possibilities of digital technology in cultural experiences, maintaining its roots in music while extending beyond as opportunities and resources permit. The project website will present experiences, case studies, interim guidance, open-source digital tools and support, in a style that directly engages music professionals and others in the CCIs. AMPLIFY will also use this to advocate for a 10-year vision for the digital transition in the CCIs, developed by the partners and others, and intended to build confidence, skills and motivation to engage in the digital transition. This vision will seek to extend the project’s influence beyond music to the whole sector and from the margins to the large CCI players in the private, public and voluntary sectors, ensuring better uptake and integration of novel forms of artistic production, distribution and consumption by institutions, corporations and policy-makers. CCI actors will adapt more easily to new tools, services, products and formats that have been successfully tested and accepted by skilled providers in the independent CCI sectors.
We sincerely thank Mikel Zorrilla, the AMPLIFY project Coordinator, for his insightful answers, which we are confident will help clarify our mission of amplifying voices across Europe to the general public.
