Balandino Di Donato
balandino di donato

Dr Balandino Di Donato

Lecturer

 0131 455 2495

  B.DiDonato@napier.ac.uk

   

Biography

Balandino Di Donato is Lecturer in Interactive Audio at Edinburgh Napier University (ENU).

Currently, he is leading research looking at people's experience and evaluation of sound in mountaineering environments. He is also PI of the ongoing xr-network+ funded project on Sound Design Pipeline For Cross-platform 360 Virtual Productions.

He chaired the Audio Mostly 2023 International Conference on Sound and Interaction Design. In 2023, he also led the Creative Informatics-funded project entitled BSL in Music Embodied Interaction.

He received a PhD in Designing Embodied Human-Computer Interactions in Music Performance from Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, Birmingham City University in 2021.

Before joining ENU, Balandino was Lecturer Creative Computing at University of Leicester. He was Research Assistant at Goldsmiths - University of London's Embodied AudioVisual Interaction Unit (EAVI), working on the ERC-funded project BioMusic led by Prof Atau Tanaka. In this project, Balandino was Interaction and Sound designer for a wireless EMG board and AI-driven software for musical applications.
Balandino collaborated with De Montfort University on the Creative AI Dataset for Live Co-operative Music Performance project founded by the EPRSC HDI Network; and with the University of Leicester on the Innovating and Crafting Sustainable Digital Ecosystems (INCITE) project. He worked at Integra Live on the Integra Live development, and at Centro Ricerche Musicali di Roma, he assisted the Composer Michelangelo Lupone and the artist Licia Gallizia in the realisation of interactive sound art installations.

Alongside his academic career, Balandino is a Sound Artist. He realised award-winning sound art installations (Biennale of Contemporary art and Design 2018, Biennale ArteScienza 2019) and performed in international conferences (NPAPW, ICMC, Audio Mostly, EmuFest and ElectroAQustica). From 2007 to 2014, he was a freelance Sound Engineer and Audio Technician supporting international music productions (Katie Perry, Backstreet Boys, McBusted, The Voice, Carl Palmer, etc).

School

Research Groups

Research Areas

Esteem

Conference Organising Activity

  • Audio Mostly 2022 Paper session chair
  • Audio Mostly 2022 Best Short Paper Award Jury
  • Audio Mostly Workshop Chair

 

External Examining/Validations

  • MA Music & Sound Design programme validation at University of Greenwich
  • BA Music & Sound production programme validation at University of Greenwich
  • Examiner for Creative Technologies MA/MSc program at De Montfort University

 

Invited Speaker

  • Talk at Mixed Reality Meetup
  • Human-Sound Interaction workshop
  • Human-Sound Interaction (HSI)

 

Public/Community Engagement

  • Mixed Reality Scotland

 

Reviewing

  • XXIII Colloquium of Musical Informatics
  • Audio Developer Conference 2022
  • SoniHED Reviewer
  • Audio Mostly Reviewer
  • ACM CHI
  • Human Technology Journal
  • Digital Creativity - Taylor & Francis Online

 

Filter by

Date


18 results

Scottish Mountain Soundscapes

Presentation / Conference
Di Donato, B., & McGregor, I. (2024, June)
Scottish Mountain Soundscapes. Presented at Invited seminar at UniMont, University of Milan, Edolo, Italy
Mountain environments provide an immersive auditory experience shaped by natural forces and human interactions. This seminar presents results from an ongoing project that delv...

The digital Foley: what Foley artists say about using audio synthesis

Conference Proceeding
Di Donato, B., & McGregor, I. (2024)
The digital Foley: what Foley artists say about using audio synthesis. In Proceedings of the 2024 AES 6th International Conference on Audio for Games
Foley is a sound production technique where organicity and authenticity in sound creation are key to fostering creativity. Audio synthesis, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and In...

An End-to-End Musical Instrument System That Translates Electromyogram Biosignals to Synthesized Sound

Journal Article
Tanaka, A., Visi, F., Di Donato, B., Klang, M., & Zbyszyński, M. (in press)
An End-to-End Musical Instrument System That Translates Electromyogram Biosignals to Synthesized Sound. Computer Music Journal, https://doi.org/10.1162/comj_a_00672
This article presents a custom system combining hardware and sortware that sense physiological signals of the performer's body resulting from muscle contraction and translates...

Proceedings of the 18th International Audio Mostly Conference

Conference Proceeding
(2023)
Proceedings of the 18th International Audio Mostly Conference. . https://doi.org/10.1145/3616195
Audio Mostly is an interdisciplinary conference on design and experience of interaction with sound that prides itself on embracing applied theory and reflective practice. Its ...

Sign in Human-Sound Interaction

Book Chapter
Di Donato, B. (2022)
Sign in Human-Sound Interaction. In J. L. Drever, & A. Hugill (Eds.), Aural Diversity (187-192). New York: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003183624-21
This chapter explores the concept of Human–Sound Interaction (HSI) in music performance in the context of Aural Diversity. HSI focuses on human factors in experiencing sound a...

Procedural Audio For Virtual Environments Workshop

Presentation / Conference
Di Donato, B., & Selfridge, R. (2022, September)
Procedural Audio For Virtual Environments Workshop. Presented at Audio Mostly, St. Pölten, Austria
Sound design is a crucial aspect of interactive virtual environments (VEs). Often, this activity is fixated by the constraints of the tools we use or our perception of that me...

From a PhD to Assisting BioMusic Research

Book Chapter
Di Donato, B. (2021)
From a PhD to Assisting BioMusic Research. In C. Vear (Ed.), The Routledge International Handbook of Practice-Based Research (642-649). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429324154-50
This chapter describes the author’s practice and experience in transitioning from being a PhD in Music Technology candidate to a research assistant on a large-scale funded pro...

Disembodied Voice

Exhibition / Performance
Di Donato, B. (2021)
Disembodied Voice. [Music Performance]. Performed at Naples (Italy). 27 November 2021 - 27 November 2021. (Unpublished
Disembodied Voice, for live electronics and voice, uses of electroacoustic technologies to disembody the voice from its singer. The singer will articulate and conduct her voic...

Disembodied Voice

Exhibition / Performance
Di Donato, B. (2021)
Disembodied Voice. [Live performance]. Performed at Matera Intermedia Festival 2021, Matera, Italy. 21 November 2021 - 5 December 2021. (Unpublished
Disembodied Voice, for live electronics and voice, uses of electroacoustic technologies to disembody the voice from its singer. The singer will articulate and conduct her voic...

tiNNbre: a timbre-based musical agent

Conference Proceeding
Bolzoni, A., Di Donato, B., & Laney, R. (2021)
tiNNbre: a timbre-based musical agent. In 2nd Nordic Sound and Music Conference
In this paper, we present tiNNbre, a generative music prototype-system that reacts to timbre gestures. By timbre gesture we mean a sonic (as opposed to body) gesture that main...

Current Post Grad projects