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This article presents an insight into one of the regions with the fastest-growing economy, heavily based on an entertainment, gaming and tourism industry, and that is urgently looking for a sustainable model that articulates with complementary sectors within the cultural and creative industries – Macao. Macao is facing a major economic and social challenge; it has grown as a vulnerable economy relying almost exclusively on gaming revenues. Alternative activities to diversify the economy are urgently required to answer the competition risks haunting this industry. The cultural and creative industries could be a complementary activity – a vehicle for economic diversification. However, current public and private stakeholders for the cultural and creative sector might have been neglecting the unique cultural and heritage ecosystem of the territory, focusing on isolate opportunities and overlooking an inclusive and robust strategy. A sustainable model that attends to the local conditions and its people is required for alternative activities to become a meaningful sector for the social and economic development of Macao.

The concept of Soundscape was initially proposed to study the relationship between humans and their sonic environment. It has gathered momentum from academia to environmentalists and policymakers throughout the years. The study and characterisation of Soundscapes can be complex as it tries to take a holistic and qualitative approach rather than simply quantifying sound pressure levels. This paper introduces a comprehensive Soundscape study process in an ongoing research project in Macao (China), a small territory (32.9 km2) and one of the most densely populated areas in the world. The paper seeks to show a first version of a technical solution to systematically capture the local soundscape, analyse it, classify it, and ultimately deliver a dataset library and the intangible qualities of the environmental sound. This implementation, including technical documentation, code, and sound library with strong labelling, is presented under an open-source license to encourage future collaborative research. Finally, the paper offers suggestions on further developing the apparatus to reach a systematic and near real-time soundscape analysis with the development of a machine learning system.

Sounding Architecture, is the first collaborative teaching development between Department of Architecture and Department of Music at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), introduced in Fall 2016. In this paper we present critical observations about the studio after a final public presentation of all projects. The Review was conducted with demonstrations by groups of students supervised by different Lecturer, in each case focusing on a different strategy to create a connection between Sound, Music, Acoustics, Space and Architectural Design. There was an assumption that the core working process would have to include the design of a new musical instrument, which in some cases became the final deliverable of the Studio and in other cases a step in a process that leads to a different outcome (such as an architectural Design, a performance or social experiment). One other relevant aspect was that Digital technology was used in the design and fabrication of the physical instruments' prototypes, but in very few cases, it was used in the actual generation or enhancement of sound, with the instruments relying almost exclusively in acoustic and mechanical sound.

Research in ubiquitous networked music systems has unveiled the potential of behavioural-driven interaction interfaces as an effective model to cope with network communication delays in remote musical performances. Most of the techniques developed under these premises are based on digital music interfaces implemented on laptop computers or tablet devices, where a certain degree of gestural control comes as an added dimension. The purpose of this paper is to present an implementation of such type of interfaces in the form of a physical tangible musical instrument, contemplating multiple expressive possibilities. This is viable at the current stage of technological development thanks to leveraging 3D printing and laser cutting technologies for effective prototyping and testing of such a device. The paper seeks to demonstrate that this approach opens a wide range of possibilities for creating musical instruments with versatility and expressiveness beyond what is usually accomplished in traditional instruments. This implementation, entitled “Radial String Chimes,” is presented with its advantages, the challenges it faces, and the methods used to create it. Finally, the paper will offer suggestions for further developing such an instrument to unlock its potential.

Creativity and collaboration are crucial to learning development in today's fast-paced educational environment. New technology can bridge humans and their natural needs through immersion in digital environments with physical objects. As knowledge and information evolve, digital interactive experienc...

Macao SAR, China is one of the more densely-populated territories in the world, and as such necessarily struggles with Soundscape quality. Nonetheless, the territory has already been identified as a unique location for to function as a Soundscape living lab (Cordeiro et al., 2014), since it has a very small manageable area that includes many types of geographical varieties, from extremely high density urban areas to natural environments with dense vegetation highland or varied water front typologies. In addition, Macao has extremely wide multicultural population with a broad range of subjects that have diverse cultural perceptions and thresholds in regards to sonic cognition. The potential impact of this diversity has already been noticed in both tourism (To & Chung, 2019) and research (Chung et al., 2016). The concept of Soundscape itself is garnering increased awareness as a viable alternative to assess the quality of the sonic environment, of use to policy management and legislation, shown not only by the increasing numbers of scientific articles on the subject (Moscoso et al., 2018), but also by recent international standardisation efforts in measuring it (ISO,2018). In this talk we shall give a preliminary description and illustration of the Soundscape in a territory that is rich in diversity and has huge potential for citizen participation. This includes approaches like noise mapping, sound mapping, Soundwalks, grounded theory efforts for detailed descriptions of the environment and use of alternative objective metrics. We will describe how to use the richness of this gathered data in developing artificial-intelligence algorithms to autonomously assess and predict the evaluation of a given Soundscape based on recordings alone. This goal will alleviate the intense human effort in subjective assessment, and may prove to be an effective and substantial diagnostics tool in planning the soundscape for prospective built environments, functioning not only as an analysis and diagnostics tool, but as a design strategy for a sustainable sonic future.

The difficult task of innovation is a key facet of Research & Development (R&D) institutions. To Design, innovation is to make the project technically feasible, economically viable, merchandising interesting and emotionally engaging. Design Thinking integrated with R&D organizations can foster the relationship between Universities and new markets. By addressing these topics, this book researches new emerging design methods and provide an overview of Design Thinking tools that can be applied in an early stage of the R&D research process to produce meaningful results. It is taken into account that design, through Design Thinking, extends to the experience that costumers/users have with products/services or even multidimensional experiences, which is a relevant input for R&D innovation development. In fact, the establishment of coherent guidelines for the Design Thinking process is a very complex task, due to its interdisciplinary requirements, that convey many diverse mindsets. The main focus of this book is creating an analysis toolkit that enables non-specialist and specialist users to perform high-quality design solutions.