IRCAM, the world's largest research center dedicated to both musical expression and scientific research, is a partner of the Ars Electronica Festival 2019. The institution is also involved in the STARTS Initiative as coordinator of the STARTS Residencies and will present these activities at the STARTS Day. Hugues Vinet, head of research activities at IRCAM, told us in an interview how the institute works, why AI has social relevance and what role he and his team will play at the festival. Hugues Vinet: My background is signal processing. I worked from the mid 1980s at the Musical Research Group (GRM) in Paris on the first real-time audio workstations and I designed the early versions of the GRM Tools product which made creative audio processing tools broadly available on personal computers.

"Over the last decade, machine learning, which is part of artificial intelligence (AI), has given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome." Movements can be recognised, memorised, interpreted and shared through networks. There are many applications in health, sports and especially education in the digital age. "Driven by advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, voice is slowly establishing itself as the new interface to reach the digital universe." Gestures are thus another emerging interface to reach the digital universe.

"Over the last decade, machine learning, which is part of artificial intelligence (AI), has given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome." Movements can be recognised, memorised, interpreted and shared through networks. There are many applications in health, sports and especially education in the digital age. "Driven by advances in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, voice is slowly establishing itself as the new interface to reach the digital universe." Gestures are thus another emerging interface to reach the digital universe.