Ali Nikrang appointed Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Musical Creation

In his work, Ali Nikrang takes a multidisciplinary approach to the interface between artificial intelligence and musical creativity. His work focuses on the development and exploration of intelligent creative systems from an artistic and musical perspective, as well as the development and exploration of new intuitive interaction and collaboration possibilities between creative AI systems and human actors.

Nikrang has extensive technical and artistic expertise: his academic background includes a degree in computer science with a focus on intelligent information systems at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz as well as a degree in composition with a focus on new media at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. He also earned his first diploma in concert piano, also at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. Nikrang worked as a researcher at the Austrian Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Vienna before joining the Ars Electronica Futurelab in 2011. Here he worked on several projects in the field of music and AI, including the »Mahler Unfinished Project«, which was performed in 2019 as part of the Ars Electronica Festival in collaboration with the Bruckner Orchestra Linz.

Nikrang’s AI research and AI compositions have been the subject of numerous television and radio documentaries on the subject of »Artificial Intelligence and Music«. The AI systems he has developed or their compositions have been presented at several exhibitions and concerts in Asia, Europe and North America. For his contributions in the field of AI and music, he was awarded the RFT Upper Austria Young Scientist Award in 2020.

The Hightech Agenda Bavaria (HTA) is an investment programme of the Free State of Bavaria. It strengthens all state universities in Bavaria with additional study places, professorships, scientific and non-scientific staff, as well as funding for infrastructure. At the University of Music and Theatre Munich, the HTA enables an in-depth examination of digitality and artificial intelligence in the context of artistic production.