We are delighted to announce the first round of projects to receive funding through the Resident Entrepreneurs strand of the Creative Informatics programme. Nine ambitious projects from a variety of creative companies and individuals will receive funding of up to £12,000 and placement with a host organisation in Edinburgh/South East Scotland.
Black Goblin Audio
Black Goblin Audio is an audio design company based in Edinburgh. Their Resident Entrepreneur project will focus on the development of a series of audio tools targeted at non-audio professionals. These tools will allow people to create computer-generated sound from scratch in an easy, non-technical way, negating the need for costly recording sessions.
By the end of their project Black Goblin hope to have a product that is ready for market, they will be expanding their product development team, recruiting a software developer and a UX/UI designer to support their work, and conducting market research to inform the best pricing and distribution channels for their product.
STATEMENTS
STATEMENTS is a search engine for conscious consumers, developed by Beatrice Mocci, that enables people to make informed decisions about the products they buy, based on their sustainable and ethical values.
Beatrice’s Resident Entrepreneur project will focus on the development of a unique data-driven methodology and scoring system to identify the social and environmental impact of products, enabling users to easily discover ethical products and track the positive impact of their purchasing history through the STATEMENT’S search engine.
Martin Disley
Martin Disley is a sound and new media artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. His Resident Entrepreneur project will use cutting-edge generative machine-learning technologies to unlock hidden value in digital archives and public collections held by cultural institutions such as libraries or museums.
Martin will use the data held within archives to communicate the character of a collection within a single new work of art which could take the form of text, images or sound. These new artworks will deepen public engagement with archives and collections that might otherwise go unseen.
BiaScan
BiaScan is an award-winning web-based artificial intelligence developed by software engineer Barbara Melville, which detects unconscious bias in language. Users can paste their copy e.g. job ads or marketing materials into BiaScan, which returns recommendations for more inclusive language, allowing businesses to reach more diverse audiences.
Barbara’s Resident Entrepreneur project aims to develop the scope of BiaScan, moving beyond job descriptions and marketing materials to consider datasets from lesser-used disciplines such as creative writing, narratology and journalism, which have been exploring language and subtext for centuries, making them rich untapped resources for better understanding unconscious bias.
Physical Audio
Physical Audio develops new ways of creating sound using a computer. Through a technique known as physical modelling synthesis, they build detailed digital models of the elements that make up musical instruments, developing innovative audio products that have real acoustic qualities and dynamic expression, expanding the range and quality of synthesized sounds that are available to sound designers, composers and musicians.
Through their Resident Entrepreneur project they will diversify the accessibility of their software for macOS and Windows computers and prototype new instrument plug-ins, based on their recent advances in algorithm design for real-time audio systems.
Screen Language
Screen Language is an Edinburgh-based media accessibility and translation company founded by Elena Zini. They work with subtitles and audio description to make film products more inclusive and accessible to all, including deaf, blind and foreign audiences.
In partnership with science and technology research company Lumakia, Screen Language is developing an innovative subtitling solution for cinema screenings. Through their Resident Entrepreneur project they will develop key digital aspects of their prototype, including in-cinema wireless data transfer, with the aim of providing more inclusive cinema experiences for deaf and hard of hearing communities in the UK and beyond.
http://screenlanguage.co.uk/
https://www.lumakia.com/
InChat
InChat combines design ethnography, chatbot technology, and data insights to support UX, ethnographic and service design research. Their approach utilises chatbots in simple conversation with users to elicit, gather, and understand their perspectives. Conversations are recorded and the outputs are visualised quantitatively and made readable for qualitative evaluation.
InChat co-founders Rory Gianni and Hector Michael Fried aim to establish their platform as an industry leader and become a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider.
Their Resident Entrepreneur project will focus on developing the platform using AI technologies to aid interpretation and analysis and creating a framework that will allow others to easily use the InChat service.
One Hundred Flowers
One Hundred Flowers is an Invention and Disruption Practice run by Don Smith. Don’s Resident Entrepreneur project will focus on the validation of Concept Theory, a strategic model for measuring the value of ideas, which draws on tools and techniques developed by some of the world’s leading innovators and disruptors.
The aim of Don’s project is to validate the effectiveness of Concept Theory, capturing data to prove that the application of this model can increase the percentage success rate of data-driven entrepreneurial ventures in Edinburgh and South East Scotland, from the investment industry standard of 25% (Harvard Business School statistics) to over 50% and up to 75%+.
Read more about Concept Theory.
Delic
Delic is a progressive asset management platform for independent music labels, management companies and artists. The platform is being developed by SuperRational Ltd to help artists maximise the value of their catalogues beyond streaming services, working towards a fairer, more efficient system for managing and monetising creative projects.
SuperRational’s Resident Entrepreneur project will test user interaction with the first iteration of Delic through qualitative and quantitative methods and explore the capabilities of data recognition technologies to optimise the media discovery features required for future development of the platform.