Researcher receives two awards from the Iceland Music Fund

Jack Armitage, musician and researcher at the Intelligent Instruments Lab, University of Iceland, receives two awards from the newly launched Iceland Music Fund. Along with other awardees, Jack attended a reception at Iceland Music Fund on Hafnarstræti on Thursday, August 15, where the Minister of Culture and Trade addressed the guests.

The two awards both stem from research Jack has carried out at the Intelligent Instruments Lab and is also being awarded to Afhverju Ekki, Jack’s new Icelandic company. The two awards are as follows:

• Creating a live coding community in Iceland: 158.000 kr.
• Strengjavera album: 130.000 kr.

Creating a Live Coding Community in Iceland

Live coding is an internationally growing arts community, where coding becomes a live performance tool, and artists develop and share free software for creating music, visuals, installations and other art forms. We have been hosting live coding workshops and concerts in Iceland since 2022, and with this project, we are inviting some of the best live coders in the world to perform in Iceland. We are also hosting more free workshops, to help create a community in Iceland that can impact music and education.
 
A week of live coding events was held in June 2024 to coincide with the International Conference on Live Coding 2024, and a future event will be held in the autumn/winter of 2024 focusing on Icelandic youth. The events attracted coverage from Reykjavík Grapevine who described them as “mesmerising and innovative” and “undeniably unique”.

If you are interested in live coding in Iceland, please contact us.

Strengjavera Album

"The piano is an intimidating, iconic figure. If you take the piano but forget about the keys, tuning and hammers, and look at it as a purely acoustic object, what is its musical potential starting from there?"

Strengjavera ("string being") is an album by Jack Armitage, based on the generative AI installation of the same name, where artificial life simulations electromagnetically actuate a grand piano. The installation was exhibited at the AI Music Creativity Conference 2023 in Brighton, UK, and at Nordic House in Reykjavík, in December 2023.

Strengjavera excerpt from the premiere at AIMC 2023 in Brighton, UK, from where the album recordings come from.

The album will feature artwork by artist and filmmaker Arna Beth, and original Icelandic text by writer María Elísabet Bragadóttir.