Screencap of Forbes article
Ajay Kapur, associate provost for Creative Technologies and faculty of The Herb Alpert School of Music, was interviewed in a recent Forbes article about the impact of open sourcing on the music industry.
Kapur, who also serves as the director of the Music Technology: Interaction, Intelligence and Design (MTIID) program, spoke with Forbes about developments in open source (shareable source code) software and other products in the music industry:
While open sourcing has been happening on a small scale among academics for some time, it converted over the past few years and is now growing mainstream. It’s been really amazing, there has been so much open source stuff happening in the industry driven by the maker movement.
This maker movement has made music technology more accessible to artists, creating an array of microcontrollers and other electronic bits, as well as user tutorials. Kapur likened these developments to those in artificial intelligence (AI): “Instead of charging for their AI, Google released everything open sourced. Who would have imagined … it has changed the landscape of AI, and we’re seeing the same type of movement in the arts as well.”
The sharing and accessibility to online coding materials and tutorials complements the remote learning that’s currently happening throughout the world because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
When CalArts suspended classes in mid-March, Kapur also curated a playlist of videos about remote teaching titled, “CalArts Everywhere: Experiments in Remote Pedagogy.” The videos feature various Institute faculty, including Associate Dean of Critical Studies Mike Bryant, School of Theater faculty Michael Darling, and Dean of The Herb Alpert School of Music David Rosenboom, sharing insight on teaching online and welcoming students back to class through remote instruction.