Education
PhD, Artificial Intelligence & Music, Queen Mary Univesity of London 2027 (Expected)
MPhil, Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary Univesity of London 2024
MMus (with Distinction), Sonic Arts, Goldsmiths College University of London 2022
BA (First-Class), Liberal Arts (Major in Philosophy, Minor in Mathematics), University of Warwick
2020
Research Experience
Research Assistant – Goldsmiths Mocap Streamer (AHRC) 2021-2023
- Investigated the impacts and potentials of telematic dance performance across cultures, using a number of ethnography techniques (workshop, observation and interview)
- Developed software to support streaming of non-normative motion capture data
- Body sonification and interactive sound design for an artistic intervention in accessiblity of metaverse technologies
- Contributed to publications (Pending DIS 2024), presented at Being Human festival (performance) and SXSW (performance and panel)
Research Assistantship – AI and Music, University of Oxford Summer 2021
- Summer research assistantship between Oxford's biology and music departments
- Applying models of group behaviour (flocking, f-formations, fluid dynamics) to new interfaces for musical expression (NIMEs)
Intern – HybridLive (AHRC), Goldsmiths College, Stanford, Iklectik, SFJazz Spring 2021
- Part of mentorship by Prof Atau Tanaka
- Technically facilitated of performance-led research into telematic jazz performance at Iklectik Art Lab
- Assisted ethnographic interviews with performers
Intern – Signal Processing for Sepsis Diagnosis, University of Surrey/Kings College London Summer 2015
- Wrote Matlab code for processing real biomedical signal data
- With applications in machine learning, this work was continued without me, and eventually presented at the Fields Institute
Professional Experience
Demonstrator – Interactive Digital Multimedia Techniques, QMUL; User Experience Design, QMUL; Interactive and Generative Music, Goldsmiths
Producer-Educator (Music), Create Define Release
Assistant Producer, Holocaust Galleries at Imperial War Museums
Assistant Producer – “Young Tech Lab”, Iklectik Art Lab in collaboration with Queen Mary Augmented Instruments Lab
Student Engineer, Goldsmiths Music Studios
Workshop Technician, Harris Academy Wimbledon
Audio-Visual Technician, Warwick Arts Centre
Grants/Awards
Enrichment Award – Alan Turing Institute (2024)
Latent spaces for human-AI music generation (EPSRC Studentship)
Future Arts and Culture (Arts Council England)
Goldsmiths Excellence Fee Waiver
NME’s 100 Essential Emerging Artists for 2021
Goldsmiths Music Performance Award (part-scholarship)
Warwick Arts Centre Jazz Performance Award (part-scholarship)
Performances/Demos
On Drums and/or Electronics: SXSW – Austin, Texas 2023; o2 Ritz Manchester (with Malady and Wet Leg) 2022; o2 Institute Birmingham 2022; Leeds Beckett Students Union Leeds 2022; Color Factory London (with Malady and Sam Akpro) 2022; Junction Cambridge (with Malady and Swim Deep) 2022; The Crescent York 2022; Cluny Newcastle 2022; 100 Club London 2022; CSTC Symposium – Iklectik London 2022; The Standard London 2021; EFG London Jazz Festival 2021; Notting Hill Carnival (with Kinetica Blocco) 2021; Royal Albert Hall (with Ezra Collective) 2020; Ronnie Scotts London 2020; Drapers Coventry (residency)2019; Copper Rooms Coventry 2019; Bedford Street Leamington Spa (residency) 2017-2019; Zephyr Lounge Leamington Spa (residency) 2017-2019
On Voice and/or Guitars: Zephyr Lounge Leamington Spa (residency) 2017-2019; Defunct Club in Coventry 2018; Leif Tea Rooms Leamington Spa 2018; Four Quarters Coventry 2017; Copper Rooms Coventry 2017; Crystal Palace Jazz Festival 2016
Presentations/Publications
Ashley Noel-Hirst, Johan Pauwels, and Nick Bryan-Kinns. “Attribute- Monotonic Variational Autoencoders for Interacting With Pre-Trained Neural Audio Models" (Under Review). 2024.
✨Honourable Mention – Best Paper Award!✨ Corey Ford, Ashley Noel-Hirst, Sara Cardinale, Jackson Loth, Pedro Sarmento, Elizabeth Wilson, Lewis Wolstanholme, Kyle Worrall, and Nick Bryan-Kinns. “Reflection Across AI-based Music Composition”. In: C&C ’24: Proceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity and Cognition. 2024.
Nick Bryan-Kinns, Ashley Noel-Hirst, and Corey Ford. “Using Incongruous Genres to Explore Music Making with AI Generated Content”. In: C&C ’24: Proceedings of the 16th Conference on Creativity and Cog- nition. 2024.
Ashley Noel-Hirst and Nick Bryan-Kinns. An Autoethnographic Exploration of XAI in Algorithmic Composition. In The 1st International Workshop on Explainable AI for the Arts (XAIxArts), ACM Creativity and Cognition (C&C) 2023. Online, 3 pages. https://xaixarts.github.io
Kat Hawkins, Clarice Hilton, Ashley Noel-Hirst, Daniel Strutt Dance in the Metaverse: Tools for Accessibility (panel), at SXSW 2023. Texas USA. https://schedule.sxsw.com/2023/events/PP127701
Particular Granulator – Collaborating on Sonic Spaces with Granular Synthesis and Particle Systems at Goldsmiths Centre for Sound, Technology and Culture Symposium 2021
Grain FM – An Anonymous Sampling Radio for Machine-Led Plunderphonics at the University of Aberdeen SERG 2021
Comfortably NumPy – Music, Algorithms and AI at Oxford University UNIQ+ Conference 2021
(Acknowledgement) Beyond HRV: Interactive attractor reconstruction with cardiovascular waveform data at the Science Museum and Imperial College London 2016