The International Symposium on Assistive Technology for Music and Art (ISATMA) started as a forum for new technologies and artistic experiences dealing with the physical limitations of the human body and with embodiment in general. ISATMA activities continue for artists and other specialists who are interested in extending their physical and mental abilities through novel technologies and practices to perform music and create art.
In spring 2025, the symposium expands its scope to workshop immersive technologies and holistic exercises for reducing stress and improving well-being in learning environments. Two single-day convenings invite intellectual discourse and provide practical resources for individuals who are interested in this topic.
Reconnecting with Nature: Immersion, Embodiment, and Well-being
Wednesday, March 26, 2025, 2–5PM
The first workshop includes a panel focused on breathing techniques to reduce stress and a session demonstrating new AI developments for musical instrument interfaces.
The conscious control of breath is important in many music and recreational activities such as singing, performing wind instruments, and diving. In this open workshop, experts discuss how conscious breathing methods in music and sports can help to control stress.
The discussion includes practical breathing exercises, like Box Breathing to induce calm in stressful situations, as well as practices to excel in performance, such as circular breathing on a wind instrument to play continuous sounds. The panel also touches on Pauline Oliveros’s Deep Listening Practice, which includes bodywork, sonic meditations, and interactive performance to enhance creativity, improve well-being, and better understand the world by listening. These practices are put in the context of our scientific understanding of the world.
The panel is followed by a session dedicated to the use of new AI methods for musical instrument interfaces to assist musicians with physical disabilities and how these methods can benefit musicians at large.
Neurodivergent Knowing and Creating: Media, Thinking, Scholarship, Pedagogy, Crip Curation
Wednesday, April 9, 2025, 2–5PM
The second workshop features a panel discussion, which opens and closes with 30-minute periods reserved for participants to gather and rest in a 360-degree space of ambient sound and moving image.
When we talk about “neurodivergence,” what exactly do we mean? Within EMPAC’s 360-degree projection space, this open dialogue brings together researcher-practitioners making valuable contributions to the field to consider how neurodivergent body-minds relate with their environment, technology, humans, and the more-than-human. Framed by Hanne De Jaegher’s theory of Participatory Sense-Making and co-facilitator Jonny Drury’s Autism Dialogue Approach, we explore neurodivergent media, thinking, scholarship, and pedagogy, as well as crip curation. This includes the subject of access in academia, a lens through which the breadth of institutional colonialism may be discussed. Together with the audience, the collective acumen and experience of our hybrid panelists will be dreaming these subjects forward.
Main Image: Adaptive kayaking on Lake Moreau, 2023. Photo: Jonas Braasch. Courtesy EMPAC Research.
Inline Image: Allison Leigh Holt, Neurodiversity Resembles the Cloud a Whole Lot More Than the Rainbow, 2024. Courtesy the artist.
