The Past, Present & Future of the Computer in Electronic Music

While Manchester is prominently featured in music history, the role that it played in the creation of electronic music is less known. This event will:

• take the audience back to the beginnings of electronic music, celebrating Turing's work in Manchester which led to the creation of the earliest computer-generated music

• showcase electronic music facilities and research in Manchester throughout the years

• explore how humans and machines currently collaborate to create electronic music, and what this means for the future of music

The event will conclude with an exploration of TURING – MACHINE: a sound installation that articulates the various ways in which algorithms, AI and digital technology interact with humans.

Tentative agenda

12:15 - 12:45 Refreshments and registration

12:45 - 12:50 Welcome from Creative Manchester Director Prof John McAuliffe

12:50 - 14:05 Lightning talks by Dr Jonathan Swinton, Dr Iain Emsley, Prof David Berezan, Prof Frank Boons and Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina

14:05 - 14:50 Panel discussion with Prof Sean Bechhofer (moderator), Dr Iain Emsley, Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina, Prof Chenghua Lin and Prof Jemily Rime

14:50 - 15:00 Closing words

15:00 - 16:00 THE TURING – MACHINE Exhibition with Prof Frank Boons and Harry O'Brien; refreshments and networking

Speakers

Dr Jonathan Swinton (Author, "Alan Turing’s Manchester")

Jonathan Swinton is a mathematical biologist and biographer. His book Alan Turing's Manchester was published in 2018 and Mathematical Phyllotaxis in 2025. He posts at https://www.manturing.net/manufacturing, Instagram, and Bluesky.

Dr Iain Emsley (Computer Science & Sound Researcher; Research Software Engineer, University of Warwick)

Iain Emsley is a Research Software Engineer supporting the use of technology in teaching and research at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methods at the University of Warwick. He holds a PhD from the University of Sussex that uses Distant Sonification as a critical computational method in the sonic analysis for digital data and is currently researching the relationship between sound and computer science starting from mainframe machines to machine learning. His research interests include critical computation, sound / audio in digital culture and methods, infrastructure, and digital humanities.

Prof David Berezan (Professor of Electroacoustic Music Composition; Director, Electroacoustic Music Studios, University of Manchester)

David Berezan has been composing electroacoustic music for more than 25 years. He is Head of Music and Professor of Electroacoustic Music Composition at the University of Manchester, where he founded the electroacoustic music studios in 2003 and the MANTIS (Manchester Theatre in Sound) festival of electroacoustic music in 2004. His work is published by empreintes DIGITALes (Montreal, Canada).

Prof Frank Boons (Professor of Innovation & Sustainability; Freelance Musician)

Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina (Bicentenary Fellow in Music; Pianist)

Dr Alexandra Huang-Kokina is an academic, pianist and creative director whose work bridges music, literature, intermediality, and digital creativity. As a maker of immersive opera and curator of experimental music ensembles, her practice directly informs her research at the intersection of performing arts, digital innovation, and intercultural inclusivity. Currently a Bicentenary Fellow in music and AI at the University of Manchester, Alexandra employs opera as case study and engine for collaborative creativity, harnessing AI and data science to expand participatory and artistic possibilities. Through radical innovations in storytelling and audience engagement, she has produced Yūrei (2025) and The Covenant (2026) - immersive operas infused with Japanese Noh and Kabuki theatre, improvisation and gamification. Her vision is to reimagine the future of opera, making it more accessible, sustainable and relatable for diverse audiences.

Prof Sean Bechhofer (Professor of Computer Science; Musician)

Sean Bechhofer is a Professor in the University of Manchester Department of Computer Science. He teaches on a variety of subjects, currently Computational Thinking, Operating Systems, and Data Structures and Algorithms. He was part of WonderWeb, a European project developing ontology infrastructure for the Web, and OntoWeb, a European thematic network concerned with Ontologies. Other more recent projects included KnowledgeWeb, OntoGrid, Wf4Ever and SCAPE.

Sean also explored the use of semantic technologies to support computational musicology, in particular applied to live music archives.

Prof Chenghua Lin (Professor of Natural Language Processing)

Chenghua Lin is Professor of Natural Language Processing in the Department of Computer Science, The University of Manchester. His research interests lie in the integration of machine learning and NLP for language generation and understanding, as well as representation learning and generation for music. He has received several prizes and awards for his research, including a CIKM Test-of-Time Award and an INLG Best Paper Runner-up Award. He is the Chair of the ACL SIGGEN Board, a Member of the IEEE Speech and Language Processing Technical Committee, and a founding Advisor of the Multimodal Art Projection community.

Prof Jemily Rime (Professor of Electronic and Produced Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama)

Jemily Rime is a Professor of Electronic and Produced Music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and a Research Fellow with StoryLab at Anglia Ruskin University. She focuses on applications of new technologies to music and audio production, specifically in cultural heritage contexts. She is particularly interested in human-centred approaches, integrating methods such as participatory design or co-creation into music and sound computing research dealing with immersive sound as well as AI systems. Her PhD (University of York, 2024) focused on the production of personalised and immersive audio using AI-driven tools for podcasts, in partnership with the BBC. In parallel to research, Jemily is a musician and composer.

Harry O'Brien (PhD Student Electroacoustic Composition at the University of Manchester)

Harry O'Brien is currently undertaking a PhD in Electroacoustic Composition at the University of Manchester. His research focuses on the sonification of dynamic optimisation algorithms and the development of machine-learning approaches for generative compositional practices. He is an alumnus of the University of Leeds, where he completed a BSc in Mathematics and Music, followed by an MMus in Critical and Experimental Composition.

Accessibility

We want to make the event a positive experience for all participants. If you have particular access needs or dietary requirements, please let us know in advance by providing details when registering for your ticket or by emailing us at [email protected].

About Creative Manchester

Creative Manchester is an interdisciplinary platform based at The University of Manchester. The platform champions research in creativity and creative practice, bringing together research communities with external stakeholders to explore new research areas and address strategic opportunities. Please visit the website for more information: Creative Manchester.

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