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Digital Planet: Making Music with Blockchain

Factual: Science & Nature

A mixing desk

05/07/2016 GMT

Making Music with Blockchain

BBC World Service - Digital Planet, Making Music with Blockchain

The technology behind the virtual currency bitcoin is being used to make music

Creative blockchain; AI abstract thinking; CAMERA; African City Data

Blockchain is known as the basis for the virtual currency bitcoin.  We have also reported on its use as an academic certification system, but now a new report by Middlesex University London shows it can also be used by the creative industry, it can even be used to create music.

AI Abstract Thinking
Is artificial intelligence capable of abstract thinking?  Can it decide when something is different or the same?  According to new research by Dr Peter Bentley from University College London, it can.  He has “taught” an AI how to not only distinguish different static images but also differences in videos. 

CAMERA
Motion capture is a staple of the movie industry, but now it is moving into the academic world.  At the University of Bath, they have just launched a £4 million project called the Centre for the Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research and Applications or CAMERA in short.  It is a collaboration of academics backed by commercial sponsors.  The idea is to push the limits of what the technology can do, and to move out of the arts and into any field of activity where motion capture could help - like sports performance.  Our reporter Roland Pease went to try it out.

African City Data 
As individuals we are bombarded with so much data we do not know how to use or interpret most of it, so imagine how a city planner might feel with so much data – can it be put to good use and improve the cities we live in?  The Future Cities Africa project is a new initiative which aims to make sense of some of this data and help future proof cities and make them more resilient.  


(Photo caption: A mixing desk © Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for Academy of Country Music)


Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz

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