"Ethical Innovation with/in Music Technology" - special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society
Luca Turchet
*** Apologies for cross-posting ***
Special Issue on "Ethical Innovation with/in Music Technology" IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society
https://technologyandsociety.org/transactions/special-issues/
Recently, there has been increasing attention by the academic and industrial research community towards topics at the confluence of music technology and ethical and responsible innovation. Conceptual frameworks and technical methods proposed to address issues related to diversity, inclusivity, accessibility, environmental sustainability, surveillance, and fair remuneration for artists are impacting the discussions of both established communities (e.g., New Interfaces for Musical Expression or Music Information Retrieval), and emerging ones (e.g., Internet of Musical Things or Musical Metaverse).
The rapid progress and widespread adoption of Artificial Intelligence, Extended Reality, and Internet of Things applied to music raise the urgent question on how to concretely embed ethics and responsible innovation practices in musical hardware and software development processes so that the services provided do not infringe on the ethical rights of stakeholders in the music ecosystem by performing ethical response-ability in the ethical pluralism of music practices. Such stakeholders involve a significant part of digital societies, including performers, composers, audiences, music teachers and students, sound engineers, as well as music labels and publishers.
The intent of this special issue is to identify the main considerations around the ethical and responsible development of future music technologies. We target ethical innovation in music technology as well as with music technology. We aim at defining a promising road-map to account for these considerations while maintaining the objective of pushing the boundaries of musical hardware, software and socio-technical ecosystems, thus merging musical innovation with the understanding of its impact on society.
We invite theoretical and methodologically rigorous original submissions that challenge, provoke, and expand these emerging frontiers. We welcome both conceptual and experimental studies, corroborated by quantitative and/or qualitative data. The studies can address a plethora of musical activities, including composition, performance, improvisation, teaching and learning, as well as broader ethical and responsible innovation issues in and beyond the music industry.
Key topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Conceptualization of trustworthy musical ecosystems for digital societies
- Trustworthy AI, Responsible AI and Explainable AI for musical applications
- Ethics for the Musical Metaverse, Internet of Musical Things, Music Information Retrieval, and New Interfaces for Musical Expression
- Environmental sustainability issues and solutions for the music industry
- Dilemmas of creativity and autonomy in music technology
- Inclusivity and accessibility in music technology
- The plurality of ethics (cultural, legal, social and political) issues related to innovative music technologies
- Trustworthy musical data ecosystem architectures, interfaces, methodologies, orchestration, patterns, solutions, and technology platforms
- Impact of trustworthy musical ecosystems on digital societies at the local, national and global levels
- Socio-economic fairness and ethical response-abilities in the music industry
- The restoration of ancient instruments in a modern digital context and the preservation of related cultural histories
- The benefits and risks of using an AI musical tutor: fast-tracking tools for learning an instrument and means of production
- New responsible tools and techniques for teaching and learning music in higher education
- Repositioning ourselves as researchers who perform ethical response-ability
Important dates
- Submissions open: 1 January 2025
- Submissions close: 1 September 2025
- Author latest notifications of acceptance: 1 February 2026
- Final receipt of final files: 1 March 2026
- Publication of special issue: 1 June 2026
Guest Editors
- Prof. Luca Turchet, Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento, Italy
- Prof. Nick Bryan-Kinns, Creative Computing Institute, University of the Arts London
- Dr. Fabio Morreale, Sony AI, Barcelona, Spain
- Prof. James Brusseau, Department of Philosophy, Pace University, New York City, USA
- Prof. Pamela Burnard, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge