Artificial Intelligence & Innovation
In addition to their mastery of a diverse range of musical instruments, Charlie Chan leads a highly technical life when it comes to music and innovation.
Charlie currently works at the vanguard of Artificial Intelligence - for the past eight years they’ve been developing their own AI, known as Ch.AI.
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Ch.ai
Ch.AI is an Artificial Intelligence application that revolutionises the way music is composed and experienced by creating original and rights-compliant soundtracks for a vast range of content, media and technology/software at an exponentially faster rate than ever before.
Meet Baxter the robot
In 2017 the Interactive Orchestra, a Global Orchestra project, took to the stage at the Sydney Opera House in a groundbreaking performance that saw music and technology working hand-in-hand.
Under the direction of Artistic Director Charlie Chan, the Global Orchestra worked alongside the Accenture Liquid Studio team to create an orchestra like no other: A part-human, part-robot collaboration.
In a world first, an artificial intelligence robot - named Baxter - was a key member of an orchestral jazz performance, playing the marimba as part of the ensemble.
Global Orchestra
conductor-cam
In 2012, Charlie founded the Global Orchestra Foundation with Nathan Waks (Cellist) & Justin Baird (Technologist). The Global Orchestra is a not-for-profit organisation with an ambitious vision: to use music as an agent for social and environmental change.
During Earth Hour 2015 the Global Orchestra, with the support of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, facilitated the Concert for the Planet, a mass participation, multi-location, simultaneous performance of Holst’s The Planets.
Direct from the Sydney Opera House, a live stream of chief conductor David Robertson was beamed across the globe via Charlie’s Conductor-Cam technology, which for the first time ever enabled conducting and performance online in perfect sync.
MUSIC TECHNOLOGY & DIGITAL INNOVATION
Working AS A Yamaha product demonstrator as a teenage keyboard prodigy put Charlie in front of the gamut of new music technology in the early 1980s.
Charlie became proficient on the Yamaha DX7 – the first commercially successful digital synthesizer. They also took to the Minimoog – a monophonic analog synthesizer released in the early 1970s. This led to further experimentation with keyboards, sequencing software and electronic sampling, all of which Charlie continues to incorporate into their work.
Charlie was among the first group of Australian musician/composers to fully embrace technology. As noted by journalist Bridget McManus in the Sydney Morning Herald: "Buzzing with creative energy and driven by an insatiable desire to learn, this composer, performer and cyber-chick is tuned in and logged on".
This sentiment was echoed by Cal Clugston writing for Revolver magazine: "As well as being known for their forays into sampling and electronica, this cutting-edge pianist and composer has an association with technology and the internet."
In the early to mid-2000s, Charlie expanded their label, Martian Music, into a successful independent online music distribution service for themselves and other artists in Australia and around the world.
Martian’s Internet-based sales and distribution mechanism pioneered digital downloads and music e-commerce in Australia.
Charlie has since moved on into the field of application development, partnering with technology firms to develop new music distribution models. Their projects now feature generative composition tools such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.