As a result of a close and long-standing relationship to promote electronic music between the Music Technology Research Group (MTG) of the Department of Information and Communication Technologies at UPF and Phonos, a more ambitious project is now being undertaken that involves both activities that are already being carried out and new ideas, and seeks to promote and develop the cultural and social aspects of music technology research.

One of the activities that took place recently as part of this project was the concert "The EyeHarp & Brain Control", which took place at 7.30 pm yesterday, 4 July, in the Multipurpose Room of the Poblenou campus at UPF. The concert featured the performers Zacharias Vamvakousis, Carlos Vaquero Patricio, Rafael Ramírez and Sergio Giraldo, who are all artists linked to UPF as doctoral students, students on master's degree programmes or lecturers.

The EyeHarp is a musical instrument guided by the eye, with a potential expressiveness similar to that of a traditional musical instrument, developed by Zacharias Vamvakousi, a doctoral student in the MTG, in a project that was exhibited at the most recent display of master's degree final projects presented at Sónar 2012.

Creation, awareness-raising and dissemination activities

In this first stage, the Phonos project is divided into three main areas:

Grants for creative output: grants for artistic projects incorporating advanced musical technologies, to make technological research more accessible to artists and to give it artistic impact.

Dissemination activities: as part of the Sons de Barcelona project, workshops are organized to promote the creative use of sound and technology as a means to understand and influence our environment. Areas of work include the discovery of sounds in the environment, practice with recording and sound creation with software.

Concerts and other awareness-raising activities: concerts showing the art projects done by students, researchers and guest artists. These concerts explore new ways of creating and performing music, and present forms of music that are close to research in music technology.

An information website open to public participation

Phonos is a project that is open to the university community and the general public. It is a gateway through which those interested may submit specific proposals or suggestions for concerts, workshops or other activities. All these possibilities, plus information about the project, can be found on a new website: Phonos: musical culture and technology , which is organized into different subject areas covering the project, and contains a whole range of musical events such as concerts, workshops and other activities.

The Phonos project is supported and funded by the Icària Project (UPF), the Government of Catalonia and Barcelona City Council.