Music: at the Final Frontier

We all know music and we all love music. We all surrender to it, when it speaks to us directly, and when it works its magic as a glue that brings people together. We dance and sing to it, and sometimes even dare to create it or play around with it. But have you ever wondered who dares to move it forward and set its new frontiers? And where the most audacious technologists play with music, and the most innovative musicians with technology.

Michela Magas and Andrew Dubber are the minds and hearts behind one such movement, a community known as the Music Tech Fest. They celebrate music as a force for human advancement and transformation, as it innovates and benefits from innovation, as it interacts with technology and social change. This episode is dedicated to the power of the music as a platform.

Michela Magas and Andrew Dubber, social innovators who are standing strong on the intersection of music and technology, are directors of Music Tech Fest, a global community platform of over 7000 creative innovators and scientific researchers, who work in science, art, engineering, humanities, activism, social science, policy and industry. The platform is a unique innovation ecosystem, festival of ideas and creative laboratory, which provides a test case for innovation in areas as diverse as neuroscience, forestry and microcomputing.

Michela has a track record of more than 25 years in innovation – she is innovation advisor to the European Commission and the G7 leaders, and the creator of the Industry Commons. In 2017 she was awarded European Woman Innovator of the Year and in 2016 she was presented with an Innovation Luminary Award for Creative Innovation. Andrew is a Steering Board Member of the Industry Commons Foundation, the founder and author of New Music Strategies, an advisor to Bandcamp and host of the weekly MTF Podcast. He is an academic, broadcaster, DJ, record producer and the author of several books about music, media and technological change.

This episode is in English.