The Web is a globalized platform aimed at supporting all our world cultures. However, like most Information Technologies, it has been developed from the West and for the West, even in the cases of technologies developed outside the US and Europe. Thus, we need to pose the following questions: Are our web technologies culture independent? Can we really use the same information technologies to develop web platforms for different cultures? In this talk I will argue in favor of the NO answer to these questions. I will defend the idea that we need to develop culture specific technologies when we deal with culture sensitive information. I will use the example of music technologies and talk about the research that we are carrying out to develop information technologies to support some of the most consolidated non-western music cultures. In the project CompMusic we work on the automatic description of music through the development of information modeling techniques and web systems applicable to five non-Western music cultures: Hindustani (North India), Carnatic (South India), Turkish-makam (Turkey), Andalusian (North Africa), and Han (China). By looking at the specificities of these mature non-western cultures we can identify the shortcomings of our current technologies when dealing with culture data and we can propose solutions that can give light to the problems of multiculturalism from a technological point of view.

1. The need for
Multicultural
Web Technologies
Xavier Serra
Music Technology Group
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona (Spain)
xavier.serra@upf.edu

2. Our view on the Web

10. Music Information Processing
style performer relations
High Level emotion
similarity composer preferences
mood
genre form
motives gestures
Mid Level
beat melody lyricist
sign
dynamics chord motions
instrument
timbre scene
loudness pitch names
duration textures
Low Level
tags shape
spectrum labels
intensity colors
Audio Text Images

11. CompMusic: Computational models for
the discovery of the world’s music”
[funded with an ERC Advanced Grant for a period
of 5 years and a budget of 2.5 million Euros]

12. Main danger!!!

13. compmusic.upf.edu

14. CompMusic Objectives
• Promote multicultural approaches in Music
Information Technology.
• Work on information models for culture specific
contexts. Characterize differences.
• Use as many types of information sources as
possible (audio features, symbolic scores, text
commentaries, user evaluations, …)
• Use culture specific perspectives. Involve researchers
immersed in the music cultures to be studied.

15. Musical repertoires
• Hindustani (North India), Carnatic (South India),
Turkish-makam (Turkey), Andalusi (North Africa),
Han (China).
• Classical traditions with alive performance practices
and strong social and cultural relevance.
• A lot of “good” data available.
Possibility to challenge current western
centred information paradigms.

16. Audio recordings

17. Expert information

18. Community information

20. Multicultural approaches
should make qualitative advancements in
Web Technologies.
style performer relations
High emotion
Level composer preferences
similarity
mood
genre form
motives gestures
beat melody lyricist
Mid
Level sign
dynamics chord motions
instrument
timbre scene
loudness pitch names
textures
Low duration
Level tags shape
spectrum labels colors
intensity

21. The Web Technologies should help
preserve and enrich our
multicultural world.
style performer relations
High emotion
Level composer preferences
similarity
mood
genre form
motives gestures
beat melody lyricist
Mid
Level sign
dynamics chord motions
instrument
timbre scene
loudness pitch names
textures
Low duration
Level tags shape
spectrum labels colors
intensity

22. Thanks!!!
[more in: compmusic.upf.edu]