Big Data and “Algorithms vs. Curators” are themes at the Digital Culture and Creative Technology gathering

Brian Eno will give the opening talk at Barcelona’s Sónar+D, the Digital Culture and Creative Technology conference to be held June 16,17, and 18, parallel to the Sónar music festival.

Eno has just released the 21-minute title track of his upcoming album The Ship, due April 29 from Warp Records.

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In an announcement detailing the conference program, Sónar organizers called the iconic producer and composer an artist “in complete harmony with the basic concepts behind Sonar+D...his huge contribution to the reflection and cultural analysis of our time, in terms of science, technology, art and culture...converge in a question he has been asking himself for years: ‘What difference does it make to the world?”

The fourth annual edition of Sonar+D will also feature a series of talks presented under the title “Algorithms vs. Curators,” during which Spotify’s Matt Ogle and Ajay Kalia will disclose new company research on the subject of music recommendation.

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Jeff Smith of the BBC will discuss the role of radio in the era of algorithms, and Kate Crawford, who directs Big Data projects at Microsoft Research, will talk about consumer privacy issues in the era of digital music.

Google Data Arts’ Takashi Kawashima and the developers behind the Barcelona-based Domestic Data Streamers will talk on "Data Powered Art."

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Representatives from the European Organization for Nuclear Research and Chile’s ALMA, the world’s largest astronomical observatory, will speak about their collaborations with artists.

A series of sessions on “Entrepreneurship in the World of Creation” will include “Learning From Minecraft,” with Vu Bui, the COO of Mojang, maker of the far-reaching game.