New Interfaces for Musical Expression Conference 2020

The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression gathers researchers and musicians from all over the world to share their knowledge and late-breaking work on new musical interface design. An annual series of international conferences have been held around the world, hosted by research groups dedicated to interface design, human-computer interaction, and computer music. The twentieth edition of the conference will be hosted by the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, a world-leading music institution and one of the eight conservatoires in the UK.

Our conference is mutating into an exciting online edition for participants in all regions of the world. This year’s theme, the Accessibility of Musical Expression, is curiously timed for a planetary epidemiological lock-down, and offers a timely challenge to developers of New Interfaces for Musical Expression. Our aim is to to explore accessibility and its different forms through the themes of music making with and for people with complex cognitive and physical needs, musician-centred interaction design and interfaces for music education and discovery.

COVID-19 is an urgent wake-up call for humanity. It is also an acute reminder of our accountability as inhabitants of a planet reeling from human hubris. We are uniquely positioned to promote NIME’s broader societal implications via a richly networked conference ecosystem and reposition our intellectual journeys as a dynamic, creatively evolving, online community.