IRZU Institute for Sonic Arts Research is a non-governmental organisation. It is based on an interdisciplinary concept and is conducting artistic productions in the field of electro-acoustic music / inter-media performances, as well as audio technology research and educational activities.

IRZU is the first institution in Slovenia working at the intersection of art and technology, and is promoting interdisciplinary research in the field of audio. The aim of IRZU is to function as a linking body and establish a connection with the Music Academy and the Technical University in Ljubljana. Until now, electronic music composition has been completely excluded from the Slovenian formal education system. Since its inauguration in 2008, IRZU is offering a wide range of different education opportunities, ranging from presentations and workshops on open source tools for electronic music production, open hardware tools and new interface-concepts for musical expression, theoretic lectures on digital sound synthesis / processing / analysis / reproduction, to seminars and talks on the aesthetics of contemporary composition, engaging national and international composers, audio engineers and researchers from the field of digital signal processing. The general target audiences are music and composition students, freelance sound artist, performers, inter-media artists as well as the general public.

IRZU is encouraging the production of original artworks engaging new technologies. In 2008 we produced the performative piece 3”rd. Pole” for which a new concept for an intelligent full body gesture recognition system was developed and implemented. The work was published at prominent computer music conferences (ICMC and NIME) in 2009. IRZU continued to support and explore work on gesture recognition and produced the piece “Fictive Situations” where techniques of live image analysis were implemented, in order to interpret and classify facial expressions.

IRZU is well integrated in the Slovenian arts scene and is collaborating with all the important institutions from the field of contemporary arts in order to conduct its educational activities and its artistic production. Our partners are: Gallery Kapelica, Gallery SKUC, SPLOH institute, Ljudmila, Aksioma, Kiberpipa, Kataman, CodeEP, Mestni Muzej, Cankarjev Dom, National Radio and Television, the Technical university, the Music Academy.

IRZU is actively engaged in audio technology research, with a focus on digital signal processing and the Music Information Retrieval field in particular. In collaboration with the Institute for information science at the Technical University in Ljubljana, we are working on the research project E.A.R.S. Within the project we are developing an intelligent music recommendation engine, which will be implemented as a web platform for browsing large music databases, based on automatically generated music descriptors. Through novel techniques of audio feature organisation we are improving the informative value of automatic music classification engines.

The audio technology research at IRZU is oriented towards technologies that can be used in an artistic context, but which also exhibit a commercial potential. The complicated system of arts funding is not sufficiently developed to secure the existence of contemporary and experimental arts. Through strategically placed interdisciplinary research, IRZU is working towards establishing an alternative funding resource for promoting experimental electronic arts/music in Slovenia.

EARZOOM Sonic Arts Festival

The central part of the festival is featuring institutions from the field of music technology and sonic arts research. Invited artists and researchers give talks on their research activities, organisation schemes and their artistic productions, and present those in form of live performances, installations and workshops.

The festival also aims to create a dialogue amongst existing Slovenian institutions which are already running individual cycles of contemporary music and sonic arts. Those are involved in the organisation of the festival by either offering the infrastructure or producing individual festival components (events or concert series).