It is with sadness but with our hearts full of gratitude that we announce that Safeya Alblooshi terminated her appointment as a Kawader research fellow at MaSC. This fixed-term three-year appointment has come to an end, and we could not be more grateful to Safeya (Saf) for her great contributions.

Saf started with MaSC in Fall 2021 and has operated substantial improvements in our group’s modus operandi. In the support to the most visible side of our activity, she designed and thoroughly maintained our beautiful website and she was responsible for MaSC’s presence in social media (Instagram and Facebook). Behind the scenes, Saf provided support to our extensive field recording sessions, by setting up the equipment, doing the recordings, and making sure that everything was properly stored and archived. She diligently worked with the NYUAD library to create our new perpetual archive of Taarab music from Zanzibar, which will soon be made available.

As a researcher, Safeya Alblooshi pursued her interests on urban soundscape analysis and its creative manipulations by expanding the work she did in her capstone project Narrated Liquid Contaminants (2021). This culminated in a sound installation and a research paper, “Sounding-Out Mina Zayed,” where she explores the evolution of the soundscape at Port Zayed in Abu Dhabi by investigating the sonic metaphors within the socio-cultural landscape, using the concept of “sounding-out” to define and envision the past, present, and future of this location and reflect on its evolving identity through created soundscapes.

As an artist, Saf’s creative collaboration in our two installations Music of Crafts and Formation of Soofcontributed to their extensive success in the presentations at Qasr al Hosn, COP 28, London Design Biennale, and Dubai Design Week. During her tenure at MaSC she also evolved as an emerging Emirati sound artist with presentations at Forum IRCAM in New York, Alserkal Avenue, Louvre Abu Dhabi, Festival X, Sharjah Art Foundation, and she successfully curated last year’s ElectroFest, a festival of electronic music at NYUAD.

Finally, Saf always had the best chocolate available at her desk to make the group’s long working sessions more pleasant.

For all this, we are extremely grateful to Safeya Alblooshi and wish the best of luck for the future!

The Formation of Soof installation, as part of the Abu Dhabi Pavilion at the London Design Biennale, is the winner of this year’s London Design Biennale Theme Medal!

The London Design Biennale jury chose three pavilions which demonstrated creativity and innovation in response to this year’s theme of ‘The Global Game — Remapping Collaborations’, and the Abu Dhabi pavilion was awarded for the most “inspiring interpretation of the theme.”

MaSC has received two grants for research projects from NYUAD’s research enhancement fund (REF).
Project “Computationally-engaged approaches to rhythm and musical heritage: Establishing cross-cultural relationships using data-driven approaches.” (PI: Carlos Guedes. Co-Investigators: Andrew Eisenberg, Beth Russell, Yi Fang, Brian McFee, Robert Rowe) has obtained $249,634.00. Pathway project “The Swahili Musical Imagination: Intercultural Style and Aesthetics in the Compositions of Ally Salim Basalama.” (PI: Andrew Eisenberg. Co-Investigators: Clarissa Viercke (U of Bayreuth), Carlos Guedes, Robe Rowe) has obtained $21,883.60.
Both projects will be running until August 31, 2021.

Carlos Guedes, Konstantinos Trochidis, and Akshay Anantapadmanabhan were awarded the “Best Paper Award” at the 15th Sound and Music Computing Conference (4-7 July, Limassol, Cyprus) with their paper “Modeling Carnatic rhythm generation: A data-driven approach based on rhythmic analysis” (Guedes, Trochidis & Anantapadmanabhan, 2018 ). This paper was presented in the context of the work developed in the project, “Computationally-engaged approaches to rhythm and musical heritage: Generation, analysis, and performance practice.”