EU-funded researchers are using the latest digital technologies to improve access to Europe’s rich musical and cultural heritage and facilitate the creation of new cultural connections.
By Ali Jones
With all the fanfare of the Eurovision Song Contest in May this year, it is possible that many missed another European song contest that was taking place at around the same time – the Polifonia Song Contest.
Organised by Polifonia, an EU-funded research initiative aimed at protecting and promoting Europe’s musical heritage, the competition sought to draw attention to the vast wealth of musical material contained in the newly launched Polifonia Portal.
The competition invited musicians from all over Europe to create the ‘soundtrack of our history’ using material from Polifonia’s online musical database, including sounds as diverse as Italian church bells, Dutch organs, bird song, sea shanties and storm sounds.
Splendid isolation
Intrigued by the invitation, Dutch musician Adam Tristar created a minimalistic electronic piece entitled ‘Isolation’ that incorporated archived samples to create a hypnotic and engaging winning entry.
‘I had a rough draft of Isolation on my computer for a year and had no idea how to finish it,’ he said. The sounds he discovered on Polifonia gave him new inspiration to complete the piece. ‘I was a bit surprised at how well the organs and church bells fitted into my music,’ he said. ‘It really added an interesting extra layer.’
While the Polifonia winner may not have trended on TikTok like Eurovision, it did create a musical buzz, a lot of positive feedback and even some talk of a record deal.
Like Tristar, anyone can access the wealth of music and sound clips on the new Polifonia Portal – from famous names like Bach or the Beatles to lesser-known musicians and music from the archives of countries across Europe.
‘When we started, we realised musical heritage was very difficult to access online,’ said project coordinator Professor Valentina Presutti, a professor of computer science at the University of Bologna, in Italy, and head of the Semantic Technology Laboratory at the Italian National Research Council.
‘In some cases it was non-existent, and we realised there was a lot of important heritage at risk of being lost.’
Historical connections
The Polifonia Portal is a searchable, cross-referenced music dataset for everyday music fans and specialist scholars alike. It was built by a team of music historians, computer scientists and creative professionals who drew on resources dating back to the 16th century.
What distinguishes Polifonia from traditional databases is the use of modern data processing and machine learning tools. Advanced computer technology enables highly sophisticated but easy-to-use searches. This means that anyone can dive in and appreciate a multitude of musical entries from the past 400 years of Europe’s musical heritage.
The researchers conducted 10 pilot studies in France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK to help build up the material in what they refer to as a knowledge graph – an advanced technology for data storage that facilitates the development of AI tools.
One study, for example, focused on pipe organs from the Netherlands. Before Polifonia, any historian, organ builder or restorer seeking relevant information on Dutch organs had to sift through over 4 500 pages of a 15-volume printed encyclopaedia – the recognised authority on the instrument.
‘What the Polifonia Organs pilot study did is to create a new dataset about Dutch organs,’ said Presutti. ‘Now there is not only the structured data, but also an application for browsing this data with an interface that we developed and designed for this purpose.’
Feeling the beat
Polifonia’s ambition to provide greater access to music also extended to enhancing participation and engagement, including for people with hearing impairments and other physical disabilities that could prevent them from enjoying music.
‘Music is for everybody, but some people can feel excluded,’ said Dr Simon Holland, founder and director of the Music Computing Lab at the Open University in the UK.
Holland led one of Polifonia’s other pilot studies – Access – that aimed to improve inclusion and engagement through new technology.
‘We’re interested in empowering people who are deaf, so that they can participate alongside hearing people in making music, if that’s their choice,’ Holland said.
The researchers worked with ‘haptic bracelets’, a device developed at the Open University to communicate rhythm through touch. These wireless bracelets are worn on wrists and ankles, where they transmit musical rhythms to the wearer through vibration.
By testing out the bracelets in real-world situations, the research team was able to gather valuable feedback. Sean Chandler, a profoundly deaf music educator from the UK, was one of the testers, along with ‘Garden City Samba’, a Brazilian percussion and dance group based in Letchworth, a small town north of London.
‘Sean turned his back on the rest of us playing drums, so he couldn’t possibly be getting any signals other than from the haptic bracelets,’ said Holland. ‘He was able to feel what he should be playing on his drum and when he should be playing it.’
For Holland, taking the technology out of the lab has given them the knowledge they needed to enable it to have a lasting impact in facilitating wider participation in the shared musical experience.
Seeing the story
Another example of how the latest in computer science can help widen access to Europe’s cultural heritage is InTaVia, a cross-border initiative that ran from November 2020 to October 2023.
Researchers from Austria, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Finland, Denmark and Germany came together to integrate and improve online access to the continent’s cultural and historical data using a visual approach.
Thanks to funding from the EU, the research team were able to develop a web tool that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to analyse and draw connections between various cultural heritage data sources previously archived in isolated databases.
The digital platform that they created allows users to explore information on artworks and cultural objects of their choice, revealing interesting biographical details about the creators and where they lived and worked.
‘We can understand cultural heritage differently by showing this kind of connected knowledge in a visual way,’ explained Dr Eva Mayr, a senior researcher at the University for Continuing Education Krems in Austria, who coordinates InTaVia. A psychologist by training, Mayr has researched how new media can change the way people engage with cultural heritage.
‘Countless connections between digitised cultural objects and corresponding cultural information have yet to be made,’ she said.
Explore, for example, the world of Austrian painter Gustav Klimt, and you can combine images, timelines, maps and text to tell a compelling story of his life and work. You can also share it – and even create a quiz to test others.
Wider access
InTaVia fits in to an overall drive, supported by the EU, to make the most of the opportunities that digital technologies provide to preserve cultural content and to make cultural heritage more accessible to a wider audience.
Many cultural heritage venues are digitising their libraries and contributing to Europeana, the EU’s flagship cultural heritage digital platform. This contains millions of digitised items from museums, galleries, libraries and archives across Europe.
The added advantage of InTaVia is that it brings everything together in one place and makes the underlying connections more visible. The researchers hope it will be a useful tool for teachers, museum curators, art historians and tour guides.
‘We are enriching knowledge of European culture with a broader picture and giving access to that knowledge in a user-friendly way – for researchers as well as for the public,’ said Mayr.
Research in this article was funded by the EU’s Horizon Programme. The views of the interviewees don’t necessarily reflect those of the European Commission.
More info
- Polifonia
- InTaVia
- Europeana digital platform
- Research and innovation dedicated to cultural heritage
- European digital heritage
This article was originally published in Horizon the EU Research and Innovation Magazine.