Town Hall Plenary

Chair: Charles Martin

Town Hall Plenary
  • Friday 2025-06-27 16:00-17:00 AEST
  • Location: Kambri Cinema
  • Type: plenary
  • Video link

NIME 2025 Town Hall Slides

  • Friday, 27 June 2025
  • Cinema, Lowitja O’Donoghue Cultural Centre, Australian National University, Ngunnawal Country (Canberra), Australia
  • Slides PDF link (here) (quality low to optimise file size)
  • Text from slides provided below.

Conference Attendance

  • Total attendees: 199
  • By presence:
    • Remote: 50 (-ish)
    • In person: 149 (-ish)
  • By type:
    • Non-Student: 58- Student: 106
    • Committee: 14
    • Guests: 8
    • Volunteers: 13

1 remote participant saves up to ~3000 kg of carbon emissions (based on London-Sydney economy air fare). So we saved up to 150000 kg of carbon emissions.

N.B.: in person attendance numbers are approximate as some people did not check in at the registration desk and some people were not able to attend in person as a last minute decision.

Submissions and Acceptance

  • Paper Track (Short, Medium, Long)
    • Submissions: 195
    • Accepted: 96 (49%)
  • Music Track (Live/Remote Performances + Installations)
    • Submissions: 104
    • Accepted: 44 (42%)
  • Workshops Track
    • Submissions: 12
    • Accepted: 9 (75%)
  • Total submissions (all tracks): 311

Committee

  • General Chairs: Charles Martin, Pia van Gelder
  • Paper/Poster Chairs: Florent Berthaut, Doga Cavdir, Yichen Wang
  • Music Chairs: Sophie Rose, Nicole Carroll, Jos Mulder
  • Workshop Chairs: Minsik Choi, Alon Ilsar
  • Accessibility: Alexander Hunter
  • Hybrid: Albert-Ngabo Niyonsenga
  • Proceedings: Sam Trolland
  • Student Volunteers: Sandy Ma
  • Social Media: Patrick Hartono

Special Thanks to PhD students on the committee..

ANU SMCClab (sound, music and creative computing lab):

  • Yichen Wang (posters!)
  • Sandy Ma (ambassadors/volunteers!)
  • Minsik Choi (workshops!)
  • Albert Niyonsenga (hybrid STREAMING!)

Monash Sensilab:

  • Sam Trolland (proceedings!)

These folks were crucial for the success of NIME2025! Thank you all so, so much.

Sponsors

  • The Australian National University
    • School of Computing
    • School of Music
    • School of Art and Design
  • MusicACT (Closing Concert)
  • Prize Sponsor: Bela

A word from the NIME board

  • The NIME board is NIME’s governing body. It presently has 8 members and meets ~10 times per year.
  • NIME is an informal collective (no legal organisation or bank account), but board provides continuity, develops community and manages procedural issues (publishing proceedings etc).
  • Participate in the NIME community!
  • Nominate for the board! (next elections will be in 2026)
    • April 2026: election for two committee roles (2x members-at-large)
  • News from Committees (Juan!)

Existing committees (and networks)

  • Diversity
    • Courtney Reed
    • João Tragtenberg
    • Andrew McMillan,
    • Yichen Wang,
    • Zeynep Ozcan
  • Environmental
    • Raul Masu
    • Ha-Moon Young,
    • Florent Berthaut,
    • Benedict Gaster
  • Ethics
    • Kerem Ergener
    • Doga Cadvir,
    • Natalia Fuchs
  • WiNIME
    • Isabela Corintha
    • Aida Khorsandi,
    • Eleni-Ira Panourgia
  • LATAM NIME
    • João Tragtenberg
    • Alvaro Lopez
    • 70+ network members
  • Info: https://www.nime.org/committees/

Prizes

Three categories:

  • Best Paper (winner + two highly commended)
    • Panel: Paper + General Chairs
  • Best Music (winner + two highly commended)
    • Panel: Music + General Chairs
  • Pamela Z Award for Innovation, Diversity and Inclusion
    • Panel: Paper + Music + General Chairs

Prize Sponsor: Bela! https://bela.io/gem

  • Category winners (Paper, Music, Pamela Z)
    • Bela Gem Multi (10 in / 10 out)
  • Highly commended
    • Bela Gem Stereo (2 in / 2 out)

Best Paper

Winner:

  • (10) Looping slowly: Diffraction through the lens of nostalgia by Benedict Gaster; Nathan Renney; Jasmine Butt

Highly Commended:

  • (137) The Imperfect Copy: Role Playing Reenactments of Historical Electronic Sound Instruments by Derek Holzer; Henrik Frisk; André Holzapfel
  • (78) Towards Neurodiverse Sensemaking: Pluralizing Agency in Wearable Music and Participatory Workshopping by Seth Thorn; Anani Vasquez; Corey Reutlinger; Margarita Pivovarova; Mirka Koro.

Best Music

Winner:

  • (178) Carpet Entanglement by Joseph Burgess

Highly Commended:

  • (292) Playing the Sound Image by risako shibata; miki kanda; kenta tanaka; ryoho kobayashi; yuta uozumi; shinya fujii
  • (190) Orbis by by Yukihiro Sugawara; Kotaro Watanabe; Shinnosuke Hirose; Moe Miyake; Kenshiro Taira; Sakura Takada; Ryoho Kobayashi; Yuta Uozumi; Kei Fujiwara; Shinya Fujii

Pamela Z Award for Innovation, Diversity and Inclusion

Winner:

  • (68) Between Garment and Prosthesis: The Design of an E-Textile Musical Interface by Qiaosheng Lyu; Ryo Ikeshiro.

Highly Commended:

  • (43) State Change by Molly Joyce
  • (253) The Sound Tree Project: Developing Personal and Collective Expression with Accessible Digital Musical Instruments by Steph O’Hara; Alon Ilsar.

What’s left tonight?

  • Installation Viewing (School of Music): 5pm-7pm
  • Concert 6 (Big Band Room) 7pm-8:30pm
  • Closing Concert (Shadows Night Club) 9pm-12am
  • NIME2025 have free access but need to register via Humanitix
  • Features three NIME artists + three local artists (ex-ANU students!)
  • 15-minute walk from Big Band Room (East Row / Bus interchange)
  • Shadows concert registration: https://events.humanitix.com/synth-and-signal-2025 Use code: NIME2025

And now for next year…

NIME 2026: 23-26 June 2026, London, UK

  • General Chairs:
    • Andrew McPherson (Imperial College London)
    • Courtney N. Reed (Loughborough University London)
  • Evening Programme: Rich Mix, East London
  • Day Programme: Loughborough University London, Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park
  • Papers:
    • Benedict Gaster UWE, Bristol, UK
    • Anna Xambó QMUL, (London, UK)
    • João Tragtenberg (UFPE, Recife, BR)
  • Music:
    • Lia Mice (ICMP, London, UK)
    • Tara Pattenden (Griffith University, Brisbane, AU)
  • Accessibility
    • Hugh Aynsley (UWE, Bristol, UK)
    • Mat Dalgleish (U. of Staffordshire, UK)
  • Poster/Demo
    • Paul Strohmeier (MPI, Saarbrücken, DE)
  • Workshops
    • Pete Bennett (University of Bristol, UK)
  • Installations
    • Sofy Yuditskaya (NYU, USA)

…and you? more soon!

Open Questions

  • What shall we gleefully abandon?
  • What shall we boldly launch?
  • What shall we lovingly maintain?

The open questions section was organised in breakout groups with 5-10 minutes of group discussion followed by a few minutes of sharing from each group. The questions were inspired by Clare Cooper’s keynote and the NIME2025 Town Hall was intended to be a space for reflection and discussion about the future of NIME. For details, see the video link above.