Address :
Ircam - Realtime Applications Team
1 Place Stravinsky, Paris 75004.
FRANCE.
Email: cont@ircam.fr

Research Interests:

Music Signal Processing and Machine Learning, Models of Music Cognition, Computer Music.

Education:
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PhD/ Computer Music - ATIAM (Jointly supervised)
September 2004 - 2008, Mention très honorable.
Center for Research in Computing and the Arts, UCSD, San Diego. and
IRCAM Paris, France.

M.S. (DEA)/ ATIAM (Acoustic, Signal Processing and Computer Science in Musical Applications)
Obtained July 8th, mention Assez Bien. IRCAM Paris, France.

B.S./ Electrical Engineering Magna Cum Laude May 2003.
B.S./ Mathematics Magna Cum Laude May 2003. (Dual Major)
2001–2003 Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA.
1999–2000 Sharif Univ. of Technology Tehran, Iran.

• GPA: 3.65/4.00

Publications:
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A coupled duration-focused architecture for realtime music to score alignment. Arshia Cont. IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, 2009. (in press).
Making an orchestra speak. Nouno, Gilbert, Cont, Arshia, Carpentier, Gr{\’e}goire and Harvey, Jonathan. In Sound and Music Computing, Porto, 2009. (SMC2009 Best Paper Award).
ANTESCOFO: Anticipatory Synchronization and Control of Interactive Parameters in Computer Music. Arshia Cont. In Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), August 2008.
Modeling Musical Anticipation: From the time of music to the music of time. Arshia Cont. PhD thesis, University of Paris 6 and University of California in San Diego, October 2008.
On the Information Geometry of Audio Streams with Applications to Automatic Structure Discovery. Arshia Cont, Shlomo Dubnov and G{\’e}rard Assayag. IEEE Transactions on Audio, Speech and Language Processing, December 2008. (submitted).
Anticipatory Model of Musical Style Imitation using Collaborative and Competitive Reinforcement Learning. Arshia Cont, Shlomo Dubnov and Gerard Assayag. In Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems, pages 285–306.Springer Verlag, , 2007.
Audio Oracle: A New Algorithm for Fast Learning of Audio Structures. Shlomo Dubnov, Gerard Assayag and Arshia Cont. In Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), September 2007.
Realtime Multiple-pitch and Multiple-instrument Recognition For Music Signals using Sparse Non-negative Constraints. Arshia Cont, Shlomo Dubnov and David Wessel. In Proceedings of Digital Audio Effects Conference (DAFx), October 2007.
GUIDAGE: A Fast Audio Query Guided Assemblage. Arshia Cont, Shlomo Dubnov and Gerard Assayag. In Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), September 2007. (ICMC Best Presentation Award).
Evaluation of Real-Time Audio-to-Score Alignment. Arshia Cont, Diemo Schwarz, Norbert Schnell and Christopher Raphael. In International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), October 2007.
Score Following at Ircam. Arshia Cont and Diemo Schwarz. In Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX) Score Following Contest, October 2006.
A framework for Anticipatory Machine Improvisation and Style Imitation. Arshia Cont, Shlomo Dubnov and Gerard Assayag. In Anticipatory Behavior in Adaptive Learning Systems (ABiALS), September 2006.
OMAX Brothers: A Dynamic Topology of Agents for Improvisation Learning. Gerard Assayag, George Bloch, Marc Chemillier, Arshia Cont and Shlomo Dubnov. In ACM Multimedia Workshop on Audio and Music Computing for Multimedia, October 2006.
Realtime Audio to Score Alignment for Polyphonic Music Instruments Using Sparse Non-negative constraints and Hierarchical HMMs. Arshia Cont. In IEEE International Conference in Acoustics and Speech Signal Processing (ICASSP), May 2006.
Realtime Multiple Pitch Observation using Sparse Non-negative Constraints. Arshia Cont. In International Symposium on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), October 2006.
Training Ircam’s Score Follower. Arshia Cont, Diemo Schwarz and Norbert Schnell. In IEEE International Conference on Acoustics and Speech Signal Processing (ICASSP), March 2005.
From Boulez to Ballads: Training IRCAM’s Score Follower. Diemo Schwarz, Arshia Cont and Norbert Schnell. In Proceedings of International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), September 2005.
Improvement of Observation Modeling for Score Following. Cont, Arshia. Master’s thesis, University of Paris 6, IRCAM, 2004.
Real-time gesture mapping in Pd environment using Neural Networks. Arshia Cont, Cyrille Henry and Thierry Coduys. In New Interfaces for Musical Expressions 2004 (NIME04), June 2004.
TOASTER and KROONDE: High-resolution and High-speed real-time sensor interfaces. Thierry Coduys, Arshia Cont and Cyrille Henry. In New Interfaces for Musical Expressions 2004 (NIME04), June 2004.
Training Ircam’s Score Follower. Arshia Cont, Diemo Schwarz and Norbert Schnell. In AAAI Fall Symposium on Style and Meaning in Language, Art and Music, 2004.
Audio Spectral Processing and Recognition: Implementation of a ‘Listening Machine. Arshia Cont. In International Conference in Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing(ICASSP), 2003. (student paper section).
Simulation of Bistable Acousto-Optic Devices Using Matlab. Arshia Cont and T.-C. Poon. In IEEE Southern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), 2003.

Research Experiences: (hide)

EU Researcher June 2005-September 2006. IRCAM - Real time Applications Group, Paris.

• Collaboration with the EU funded project Semantic-HiFi, Summer 2005.
• Collaboration with the EU funded project i-Maestro, 2005–06.

Invited Researcher July 2004. Centre International de Recherche Musicale, Nice, France.

• Long-Short Term Memory (LSTM) neural networks implementation and application in algorithmic composition.

Researcher March - July 2004. IRCAM - Real time Applications Group, Paris.

• Prototyping and implementation of a learning algorithm for Ircam’s score follower.

Research Engineer October 2003 - June 2004. La Kitchen, Paris.

• Real-time gesture recognition using neural networks and dynamic sensors in PureData.

Audio Engineer / Computer Music Summer 2003. Centre for the Creation of Music Iannis Xenakis (CCMIX), Paris.

Independent Undergraduate Research Fall 2002. DSP Research Lab, Virginia Tech.

• Implementation of a simple audio analysis tool in Matlab.

Undergraduate Research (NSF Grant) Summer 2002. Optical Image Processing Lab, Virginia Tech.

• Simulation of Hybrid Bistable and Multistable Optical Devices using Acousto-Optics devices.

Invited Talks: (hide)

December 16th 2005: Handling Time and Structure in Computer Music Composers Forum, Bremen University of Music, Germany.

Novermber 28th 2005: Score Following Project Perspective: Artificial Intelligence General public, Ircam, Salle Stravinsky, Paris, France.

November 30th 2005: Music, Interaction and Artificial Intelligence: A Case Study of Score Following Application Round Table, In-Out Festival and H2PTM05 Conference, University of Paris VIII.

June 2004: Learning Algorithm for Score Following and Accompaniment applications Tokyo University, Sagayama/Ono Labs, Tokyo, Japan.

Community Services: (hide)

• Organizing Committee, First Symposium of Southern California Computing in Music (SCCiM07), Los Angeles, February 17th 2007.
• Chair, Panel on Musical Anticipation at ICMC06, New Orleans, .
• Organizer, First Score Following Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (ScofoMIREX), 2006.
• Reviewer for ISMIR.

Public Press: (hide)

August 2008: Les interprètes de l’ombre, Le Monde de la Musique ((pdf in French)).

March 2008: Future Sounds of Paris, Article in Gaurdian (UK). (link)

March 2008: Keyboards Recording Magazine (pdf).

January 12th 2006: Les Belles Captives, Radio France (in French)(listen).

June 2004: NIME 2004 news article (in Japanese).

Teaching: (hide)

Principal Instructor:

• Survey of Machine Learning and Artificial intelligence with Applications to Music, ATIAM 2nd year Masters, Univ. Paris 6/Ircam, December 2007, Principal teacher.

Teaching Assistants at UCSD:

• Musical Acoustics for R. F. Moore (Fall 2004), Shlomo Dubnov (Winter 2005).
• Psychoacoustics for Shlomo Dubnov (Spring 2005)

Honors: (hide)

ICMC 2007 Best Presentation Award for the Guidage paper.
Eiffel PhD grant from French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2006–2007.
Audio Engineering Society’s Grant for Graduate Studies, 2004–2005.
Outstanding Senior Award of Virginia Tech in Applied Math, 2003.
First Place — IEEE VMS Student Paper Competition, January 2003.
DSP Workshop Participant — Stanford University, CCRMA, Summer 2002.
Third Place — IEEE VMS Student Paper Competition, January 2002.
Ranked 48^th in Iran’s National University Entrance Examination, Summer 1998.
Member of Luigi Nono Archive.

Languages: (hide)

English, Farsi (native), French (Diplôme DELPH from French ministry of Culture), Familiar with German (Diploma G1, Goethe institute), Familiar with Arabic.