A musical visit to York as part of the Yorkshire Technician Exchange Programme
We hear from colleagues in the School of Music during Technicians Week, following a site visit to the University of York as part of the Yorkshire Technician Exchange Programme.
Technicians from Leeds and the University of York successfully bid to the Technicians Commitment Collaboration Fund last year to pilot the Yorkshire Technician Exchange Programme (YoTEP).
During the pilot, 27 technicians, distributed across a range of disciplines and topics, participated in exchanges to gain insights into new developments, see alternative technologies in action, and deepen ties on a personal level.
The aim of YoTEP is to establish a supportive and informative network between the technical communities of the Yorkshire Universities – starting with Leeds and York but with a plan to expand to include all higher education institutions in the Yorkshire region in the future.
Colin Bradbourne, Jack Cradock and their manager Dan Merrick, all from the School of Music, explored creative uses of audio technology with their opposite numbers at York.
Dan Merrick, Strategic Development Manager, said: “The site visit was specifically to learn about York University's music department's implementation of Dante.
“We met Ben Eyes (tech manager) and Amandine Pras (music academic) and got some real insight into how they'd integrated Dante and how they were using it.”
Colin Bradburne, Recording & Music Technology Technician, said: “It was a good experience to meet people in a similar position to myself and see how they’d implemented certain technologies to enhance teaching and offer new pathways for learning.
“We were already exploring incorporating a Dante network within the school, so it was a perfect opportunity to visit another university with it already in place.
“Put simply, Dante is a way of streaming multichannel audio over a computer network at very low latency. This allows you to connect audio between spaces which have been nearly impossible before. This would enable an event in our concert hall to be linked with our recording studios, lecture theatres, and computer clusters, where you could either be part of the performance, or record in multiple locations including as part of a lesson in any of these spaces.”
Dan added: “There is so much potential here and this all aligns perfectly with our ambitions for world-class production technology and truly exciting applications for music and humanities students, staff and researchers.”
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