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Job description also in English and in French at the CNRS Job Portal. Apply HERE.
Note: applications are solicited in English but instructions are in French; non French speakers may find the DeepL online translater useful.
Title of post
Engineer (M/F) in audio/graphics interface design and data analysis/visualization
General information
Reference: UMR9912-ANNVAU-001
Workplace: PARIS 04
Date of publication: Thursday, 4 July 2019
Scientific Responsible name: Elaine Chew
Type of contract: CDD Technique/Administratif
Contract period: 12 months with option to renew
Expected start date of thesis: 15 October 2019 or later
Proportion of work: 50% time
Remuneration: €2139 monthly gross for full time without experience, to be pro-rated according to percentage time
Desired level of education: Bachelor’s+5
Experience required: 1 to 4 years
Missions
Applications are invited for an engineer to join the team of the ERC ADG Project COSMOS: Computational Shaping and Modeling of Musical Structures (European Research Council Advanced Grant COSMOS, Principal Investigator: Elaine Chew, cosmos.ircam.fr). The work will take place at the Sciences and Technologies of Music and Sound (UMR9912-STMS) Laboratory at IRCAM in the center of Paris. The engineer will be in charge of developing or setting up computer tools for the web-based annotation, computational analysis, scientific visualization, and manipulation of musical structures in music performances and cardiac arrhythmia data; participating in the design of citizen science experiments using these tools; and, contributing to the writing of articles presenting the results of the experiments.
Activities
The engineer will develop or set up citizen science portals for marking up, visualizing, and manipulating musical structures—groupings (e.g. rhythmic chunking), articulation, gestural units, prominence, and focal points—in music performance data and in arrhythmia electrocardiographic sequences. The development will involve the integration of interactive audio, and graphical drawing and visualization, components to delineate musical structures. An aim will be to enable human input to provide supporting information for the analysis, processing, visualization and quantification of music prosodic information. The data will include MIDI recordings of legendary performances and performances specially recorded on a reproducing piano and anonymized electrocardiographic data of cardiac arrhythmias.
It is expected that the computer tools developed, the data acquired and resulting analyses will enable people and machines to explore the space of possible musical interpretations and uncover new forms of expressivity. Applying the methods to electrocardiographic data will ultimately provide novel descriptors and methodologies to characterize and stratify abnormal heart rhythms, with implications for individualized diagnostics and precision medicine.
Skills
Candidates must:
– be knowledgeable about web programming, ideally with experience in the design of graphical user interfaces with an interactive and music component;
– be able to implement or modify existing algorithms, e.g. for MIDI-score alignment;
– be willing to master the necessary dedicated software tools, e.g. for electrocardiographic data analysis;
– have a good knowledge of music performance and musical structures, broadly defined;
– be skilled at designing scalable software and databases;
– be able to analyse needs and draw up technical specifications;
– have an affinity for working in a team and strong project management skills;
– be fluent in written and oral English.
Work context
The research will be conducted at the UMR 9912 STMS (Sciences and Technologies of Music and Sound), a joint research unit of the CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), IRCAM (Institut de Recherche Coordination Acoustique/Musique), Sorbonne University, and the French Ministry of Culture. STMS is located at IRCAM (1 place Igor-Stravinsky, 75004 Paris), in the heart of Paris. IRCAM is a world renowned center for contemporary music production; it is organizationally linked to the Pompidou Center.
Facilities include music studios at IRCAM. In addition, researchers have access to IRCAM’s software, computing facilities, recording equipment, and media library, as well as the CNRS and Sorbonne University’s online libraries. As part of the ERC COSMOS project, we are acquiring a reproducing grand piano that is unique in Europe.
Constraints and risks
Short periods of travel within France and abroad, such as to conferences to present accepted peer-reviewed papers and posters, should be expected. Candidates for this position should be aware that the offices of most of IRCAM’s research teams are in an underground building with a central skylight.
Supplemental information
Applications must include at the minimum a detailed CV containing at least two references (people who may be contacted) and pointers to prior work and other experiences relevant to this position. The closing date for sending applications is 1 September 2019. Interviews will take place in the latter half of September 2019. The expected start date is 15 October 2019 or later, depending on whether the candidate is French, European, or from a non-EU country. The salary level will depend on the candidate’s qualification and professional experience.
