Name: Nicola Davanzo

Birth date: 12 March 1992

PhD

I’m a PhD student in Computer Science within Laboratorio di Informatica Musicale at University of Milan, Italy. My research project is about Development and testing of accessible Digital Musical Instruments dedicated to quadriplegic users. Thus, instruments playable hands-free, exploiting unconventional interaction channels such as eye tracking, mouth position tracking, breath pressure, head movement.

Master degree

I’ve got my Master Degree in Computer Engineering (2018) at University of Pavia, Italy, following a course entitled Computer Science and Multimedia. My Master Thesis project is entitled Development and testing of graphical Interfaces for gaze-controlled musical instruments: a study and the development of virtual Digital Musical Instruments (DMI) operated through an eye tracker and a switch. The main focus of the project was developing an instrument suitable for those who cannot use their hands (useful both for disabled people and for musicians who want to play more than one instrument at a time). The instrument Netytar was born from this project. From this thesis work, a paper was extracted and presented at ETRA COGAIN 2018 (Warsaw, June ‘18).

Bachelor degree

I’ve got my Bachelor Degree in Ingegneria Elettronica/Informatica (2015) at University of Pavia, Italy. My Bachelor Thesis project is entitled Development of a softwa for writing using an eyetracker.

Publications

• Davanzo N., Dondi P., Mosconi M. & Porta M. (2018). «Playing Music with the Eyes through an Isomorphic Interface». In Proc. of the Workshop on Communication by Gaze Interaction, 1–5. Warsaw, Poland: ACM Press, 2018. Link (DOI)
• Davanzo N. & Avanzini F. (2020). «Hands-Free Accessible Digital Musical Instruments: Conceptual Framework, Challenges, and Perspectives». IEEE Access 8 (2020): 163975–95. Link (DOI).
• Davanzo N. & Avanzini F. (2020). «A Dimension Space for the Evaluation of Accessible Digital Musical Instruments». In Proc. 20th Int. Conf. on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME ’20). NIME ’20, 2020. Link (NIME)
• Davanzo N. & Avanzini F. (2020). «A Method for Learning Netytar: An Accessible Digital Musical Instrument». In Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Education, 620–28. Prague, Czech Republic: SCITEPRESS - Science and Technology Publications, 2020. Link (DOI)
• Davanzo N. & Avanzini F. (2020). «Experimental Evaluation of Three Interaction Channels for Accessible Digital Musical Instruments». In Proc. ’20 Int. Conf. on Computers Helping People With Special Needs, 437–45. Online Conf.: Springer, Cham, 2020. Link (DOI).
• Davanzo N., De Filippis M., Avanzini F. (2021). «Netychords: an Accessible Digital Musical Instrument for playing chords using gaze and head movements». In In Proc. ’21 Int. Conf. on Computer- Human Interaction Research and Applications (CHIRA ‘21). Online Conf.
• Davanzo N., Avanzini F. (2021). «Resin: a Vocal Tract Resonances and Head Based Accessible Digital Musical Instrument». In Proc. 2021 AudioMostly conf.. Trento, Italy. Online Conf.
• Davanzo N., Avanzini F. (2022). «Design Concepts for Gaze-Based Digital Musical Instruments». In Proc. 2022 Sound and Music Computing conf.. To be held (submitted and accepted).

Personal interests

• Computer science
• Music (see the page Music)
• Psychology (Jung’s theories, evolutionary psychology, human social networks)
• Philosophy
• Historical swordfighting (HEMA and related)
• Capoeira
• Nature and camping
• Cooking