Research Field:

- Usability

Research Topics:

- Sound Synthesis & Acoustics
- Mobile Interactions
- Digital Signal Processing and Numerical Methods
- Multi-Sensory Technologies

Biography

Georg Essl is a Senior Research Scientist at the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories at the Technical University of Berlin in Germany and founding member of the Mobile and Physical Interactions group at the chair for Quality and Usability. He works in two main areas: human computer interaction and interface emphasising sensory modalities and interfaces and physically based rendering of natural (and not so natural) sounds. In recent years he has been emphasizing interactions with mobile technologies, mostly to make them richer and more expressive, so that they can be used more performatively (think making music or just noise with them, or to prefigure uses in other forms of entertainment (uh-oh mobile games). He is also working on sound synthesis, with the basis of trying to understand the basic structures of the problem. Most of his recent work has been on wave propagation in the plane but also on non-physical methods like circle maps as the simplest chaotic but stable perturbations of a linear discrete oscillator.

Before coming to Berlin, he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at MIT's MediaLab Europe with Sile O'Modhrain on tangible interactions. PebbleBox, a tactile interface for sonic performance which he built with Sile O'Modhrain and Andy Brady, was invited to the Touch Me exhibition at Victoria and Albert Museum, London in 2005. While at Media Lab Europe, he participated in the Enactive European Network of Excellence, which studies the role of action in interaction design. Between 2002-2003 he was Assistant Professor in Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the University of Florida, where he taught signal processing and synthesis of sound and digital production. He got my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University in 2002 working with Perry Cook on physical simulation of musical instruments. He also worked some on spatial audio technologies and beat perception. He received a Diploma Engineer's degree from Graz University of Technology, Austria. Additionally he has worked at AT&T Research Labs on perceptual spatial audio and at HyperWave R&D on a commercial database integrated web server technology. A web management technology he co-developed at HyperWave won the European IT Grand Prize and two BYTE's Best of CeBit awards in 1997.

He is a member of the IEEE, the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the International Computer Music Association (ICMA), and the American Mathematical Society (AMS). He serves as technical chair for the International Computer Music Conference in 2004 and 2006. Currently he serve as Research Coordinator of the ICMA.

Address

Quality and Usability Lab
Deutsche Telekom Laboratories
TU Berlin
Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7
D-10587 Berlin, Germany

BOOK CHAPTERS

• Essl, G. "Aspects of the

  Topology of Interactions on Loop Dynamics in One and Two Dimensions,"

  In the Proceedings of the International Symposium on Computer Music

  Modeling and Retrieval 2004, Esbjerg, Denmark, Lecture Notes in Computer

  Science 3310, Springer Verlag, 220-231, 2004.

JOURNAL PUBLICATIONS

• Essl, G., O'Modhrain, S.

  "An enactive approach to the design of new tangible musical

  instruments" Organised Sound: 11:3. 285-296, 2006.

• Essl, G., "Computation of

  Wavefronts on a Disk I: Numerical Experiments," Post-conference

  publication, "Third Irish Conference on the Mathematical Foundations

  of Computer Science and Information Technology, Dublin, Ireland, July

  22-23, 2004." Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science

  161, 25-41.

• Essl, G., ""Whispering"

  waves and Bate's ridges in numerical experiments" Acoustics Research

  Letters Online 6:3, 227-231, 2005.

• Essl, G., "Trapping and

  Steering on Lattice Strings: Virtual Slow Waves, Directional and

  Non-propagating Excitations," Physical Review E, 69, 066601-1-6,

  2004.

• Essl, G., Serafin, S., Cook, P.

  R., Smith, J. O., "Theory of Banded Waveguides," Computer Music

  Journal, 28:1, 37-50, 2004.

• Essl, G., Serafin, S., Cook, P.

  R., Smith, J. O., "Musical Applications of Banded Waveguides,"

  Computer Music Journal, 28:1, 51-63, 2004.

• Kapur, A., Essl, G., Davidson,

  P., Cook, P. R., "The Electronic Tabla Controller," Journal of

  New Music Research 32:4, 351-360, 2003.

• Essl, G. "On Gender in New

  Music Interface Technology," Organised Sound, 8:1, 19-30, 2003.

• Essl, G., Cook, P.R.,

  "Measurements and efficient simulations of bowed bars," Journal

  of the Acoustical Society of America, 108:1, 379-388, 2000.

• Li, K., et al, "Early

  Experiences and Challenges in Building and Using A Scalable Display Wall

  System," IEEE Compter Graphics and Applications, 29-37, July/August,

  2000.

INVITED PUBLICATIONS

• Essl, G. "Mathematical

  Structure and Sound Synthesis", Proceedings of Sound and Music

  Computing 2005, Salerno, Italy,

  Nov. 24-26 2005.

• Essl, G. "The Computational

  Structure of Waves on Drums for Sound Synthesis", Proceedings of

  Forum Acusticum, Budapest, Hungary,

  Aug. 29-Sept. 2,

  2005.

• Essl, G., "From

  Mathematical Concepts to Hands-on Interaction: Physical Modeling and

  Interaction Paradigms of Tablas and Singing Bowls" Invited paper, In

  the Proceedings of Frontiers of Research in Speech and Music, Annamalai,

  India, 6-8, January, 2004.

CONFERENCE PUBLICATIONS

• Rohs, M., Schöning, J, Raubal,

  M., Essl, G., Krüger, A. "Map Navigation with Mobile Devices: Virtual

  versus Physical Movement with and without Visual Context," to appear

  in Proceedings of the International Conference on Multimodal Interactions

  (ICMI), Nagoya,

  2007.

• Essl. G. "Iterated

  Fundamental Solution Simulations of Sections of Circular Membranes,"

  to appear in Proceedings of the International Symposium for Musical

  Acoustics (ISMA), Barcelona,

  2007.

• Essl, G., Rohs, M. "ShaMus

  - A Sensor-Based Integrated Mobile Phone Instrument" to appear in

  Proceedings of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), Copenhagen, 2007.

• Rohs, M., Essl, G.

  "Sensing-based Interaction for Information Navigation on Handheld

  Displays" in Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Human

  Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI),

  Singapore, September 9-12, 2007.

• Rohs, M., Essl, G. "CaMus2

  - Collaborative Music Performance with Mobile Camera Phones"

  Pro-ceedings of the International Conference on Advances in Computer

  Entertainment Technology (ACE), Salzburg, Austria,

  June 13-15, 2007.

• Rohs, M., Essl, G. "CaMus2

  - Optical Flow and Collaboration in Camera Phone Music Performance"

  In roceedings of the Seventh International Conference on New Interfaces

  for Musical Expression (NIME), New York, USA, June 6-10, 2007.

• Essl, G. Rohs, M. "The

  Design Space of Sensing-Based Interaction for Mobile Music

  Performance" Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on

  Pervasive Mobile Interaction Devices (PERMID), Toronto, Ontario, Canada, May 13, 2007

• Rohs, M., Essl. G. "Which

  One is Better? - Information Navigation Techniques for Spatially Aware

  Handheld Displays" in Proceedings of the International Conference on

  Multimodal Interfaces (ICMI), Banff,

  Nov. 2-4, 100-107, 2006.

• Essl, G., Rohs, M. "Mobile

  STK for Symbian OS" in Proceedings of the International Computer

  Music Conference (ICMC-06), New

  Orleans, 2006.

• Essl, G. "Circle Maps as a

  Simple Oscillators for Complex Behavior: I. Basics" in Proceed-ings

  of the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC-06), New Orleans, 2006.

• Essl, G. "Circle Maps as a

  Simple Oscillators for Complex Behavior: II. Experiments" in

  Proceedings of the International Conference on Digital Audio Effects

  (DaFX), Montreal, Canada, 2006.

• Rohs, M., Essl, G., Roth, M.,

  "CaMus: Live Music Performance using Camera Phones and Visual Grid

  Tracking" in Proceedings of the International Conference on New

  Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME), Paris, France, 2006.

• Essl, G. Magnusson, C.,

  Eriksson, J., O'Modhrain, S. "Towards evaluation of performance,

  control and preference in physical and virtual sensorimotor integration

  ", Proceedings of Enactive 2005, Genova, Italy,

  November 17-18, 2005.

• Essl, G. "Towards the

  Synthesis of Wavefront Evolution in 2-D", Proceedings of the

  International Computer Music Conference, Barcelona, Spain,

  September 5-9, 2005.

• Essl. G., O'Modhrain, S.,

  "Scrubber: An Interface for Friction-induced Sounds," in

  Proceedings of the International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical

  Expression, Vancouver, Canada, May 26-28, 70-75, 2005.

• O'Modhrain, S. and Essl, G.,

  "PebbleBox and CrumbleBag: Tactile Interfaces for Granular

  Synthesis," in the Proceedings of the Conference for New Interfaces

  for Musical Expression, Hamamatsu, Japan, 74-79, 2004.

• Essl, G., Cook, P. R.,

  "The principle of closed wavetrains, resonance and efficiency: past,

  present and future," In the Proceedings of the Stockholm Music

  Acoustics Conference (SMAC-03), Stockholm, Sweden, 6-10 September, 385-388,

  2003.

• Young, D., Essl, G., "HyperPuja:

  A Tibetan Singing Bowl Controller," In the Proceedings of the

  International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression

  (NIME-03), Montreal, Canada, 22-24 May, 9-14, 2003.

• Essl, G., "The Displaced

  Bow and APhISMs: Abstract Physically Informed Synthesis Methods for

  Composition and Interactive Performance," in Florida

  Electroacoustic Music Studio Library (Proceedings of the Twelfth Annual Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival 2003), Gainesville, Florida,

  3-5 April,

  2003.

• Tzanetakis, G., Essl, G., Cook,

  P. R., "Human Perception and Computer Extraction of Musical Beat

  Strength," in Proc. of the 5th Int. Conference on Digital Audio

  Effects (DAFx-02), Hamburg, Germany, 26-28 September, 257-261, 2002.

• Essl, G., Cook, P. R.,

  "Banded Waveguides on Circular Topologies and of Beating Modes:

  Tibetan Singing Bowls and Glass Harmonicas," in Proc. of the

  International Computer Music Conference (ICMC-02), Göteborg, Sweden, 16-21 September, 49-52,

  2002.

• Kapur, A., Essl, G., Davidson,

  P., Cook, P.R., "The Electronic Tabla Controller," in Proc. 2002

  Conference on New Iinstruments for Musical Expression (NIME-2002), Dublin,

  Ireland, 24-26

  May, 2002.

• Tzanetakis, G., Essl, G., Cook,

  P.R., "Audio Analysis using the Discrete Wavelet Transform," In

  Proc. WSES Int. Conf. Acoustics and Music: Theory and Applications

  (AMTA 2001) Skiathos, Greece, 2001. Reprinted in

  ``Mathematics and Simulation with Biological, Economical and

  Musicoacoustical Applications'', WSES Press, 318-323, 2001.

• Tzanetakis, G., Essl, G., Cook,

  P.R.,  "Automatic Musical Genre

  Classification of Audio Signals," In Proc. Int. Symposium on

  Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), Bloomington, Indiana, 2001.

• O'Brien, J.F., Cook, P.R.,

  Essl, G., "Synthesizing Sound from Physically Based Motion," In

  Proc. SIGGRAPH 2001, Los Angeles, CA, August, 529-536, 2001. 

• Essl, G., Cook, P.R.,

  "Banded Waveguides: Towards Physical Modeling of Bar Percussion

  Instruments," In Proc. Int. Computer Music Conf. (ICMC), Beijing, 22-28 October, 321-324,

  1999.

• Cook, P.R., Essl, G.,

  Tzanetakis, G., Trueman D., "N >> 2: Multi-speaker Display

  Systems for Virtual Reality and Spatial Audio Projection," In Proc.

  Int. Conf. Auditory Display (ICAD), Glasgow,

  1-4

  November, 1998.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS

• Essl, G., "Book Review of

  'Computational Line Geometry' by H. Pottmann, J. Wallner" SIGACT News

  36:3, 13-17, 2005.

• Essl, G., "Physical Wave

  Propagation Modeling for Real-Time Synthesis of Natural Sounds,"

  Ph.D. thesis, Computer Science Department, Princeton University,

  2002.

• O'Brien, J. F., Cook, P. R.,

  Essl G., "Synthesizing Sounds from Physically Based Motion." (computer

  generated animation), The visual proceedings of ACM SIGGRAPH 2001, Los Angeles, CA,

  August 11-17. In the ACM SIGGRAPH 2001 Animation Theater.

• Essl, G., "Possibilities

  for a Hyper-G-WWW-gateway," Master's thesis, Graz University of

  Technology, 1996.