44 years have passed since the first ICMC (1974). We missed it only once (1979) convening during difficult times including 911(Cuba, 2001), SARS (Singapore, 2003), and Hurricane Katrina (USA, 2006).

Celebrating our 43rd ICMC, we invite the community to consider this year’s theme preserve | engage | advance as it broadly relates to the diverse field of computer music including auditory display, cognition, composition, digital audio effects, digital libraries, DSP, MIR, musicology, multimedia, NIME, performance, perception, soundscapes, and WebAudio. While developing this theme we have taken it to heart ourselves through two programs:

Soundscape Heritage capture, archive, and preserve soundscapes through a 3D lens: data-Driven, community-Driven, and art-Driven. We are launching a campaign to engage the community in Soundmapping our World to preserve our soundscape heritage and advanced technologies to sense and help mitigate the global urban noise pollution phenomenon.

Computer Music Heritage capture, archive, and preserve annual ICMC works starting with ICMC 2018. Initial Step – Stop the leak so that the yearly curated works are no longer lost after each conference ends. Next Steps – Archive access and the what, how, and who to advance content-based music exploration for meaningful user engagement.