Project Overview

Cyborg Soloists is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship project, led by Zubin Kanga and based at Royal Holloway, University of London. It explores interdisciplinary interactions between music, the other arts, and new digital technologies. The project focuses on five main themes:

1) The Body as Instrument: exploring the use of body-worn sensors, motion tracking in performance and voice control of electronics

2) Music and AI: AI as a tool for composition, AI performers and AI-integrated instruments

3) Audio-Visual Interactions: live performer-controlled visuals, live AI-generated imagery in performance, and performances with holograms

4) Sound, Space and Place: music with large speaker arrays, interactive sound installations, site-specific soundwalks

5) New Digital and Hybrid Instruments: new digital instruments that facilitate multiple dimensions of expressive control, microtonal instruments, new approaches to analogue synthesizers and the co-development of new hybrid instruments.

Launching in February 2021, Cyborg Soloists has been awarded renewal funding for 2025–28. The first 4.5 years of the project resulted in 70 new works, 14 conference papers, 16 journal articles and book chapters, two journal special issues, 24 software and hardware outputs, two conferences, one research forum, 11 public lectures and three keynote presentations. Seventy composers and more than 120 performers have worked together with technology researchers and industry partners to develop artistic and technological innovations. Cyborg Soloists works have been performed at many international festivals including Paris Autumn Festival (France), Gaudeamus Festival (Netherlands), Transit Festival (Belgium), Time of Music Festival (Finland), Hamburg International Music Festival (Germany), Modulus Festival (Canada), Huddersfield International Music Festival (UK), Aldeburgh Music Festival (UK) and the New Music Biennial (UK).

The project’s innovations include:

  • The world-first development of decision-based brain-control of music and video software in Steady State (2024).

  • A new hybrid instrument, the Keyscanner, that allows the piano to interact with other technologies via MIDI.

  • New gesture-based collaborations with disabled artists through the use of sensor gloves.

  • Using an AI-embedded instrument to navigate (in live performance) an 8-dimensional AI map of an audio broadcast archive.

Cyborg Soloists currently has 26 partners, ranging from music technology companies such as MiMU, Luminary ROLI, Soundbrenner and Lumatone, AI companies including MusAI, audio-visual software companies including EboSuite and TouchDesigner, medical research companies such as ANT Neuro, major research centres including the Augmented Instruments Laboratory (Imperial College/Queen Mary, University of London), the Centre for Sound, Technology and Culture (Goldsmiths, University of London), and the Intelligent Instruments Laboratory (University of Iceland), and national charities and institutions such as The National Gallery, Drake Music, and Sound and Music.

Collaborating performing arts organisations have included the BBC Philharmonic, Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Ensemble Offspring, Plus Minus Ensemble, Distractfold, Explore Ensemble and Manchester Collective. The project’s research has been featured in The New York Times, Classical Music Magazine, Limelight Magazine, BBC World Service, BBC Radio 3, New Scientist, The Wire and The Guardian.

See upcoming performances of works commissioned by the project →