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Bill Manaris is professor of Computer Science at the College of Charleston. He is currently director of the Computing in the Arts program.

His interests include human computer interaction and artificial intelligence. He explores statistical, connectionist, and evolutionary techniques in computer music and art with an emphasis on computer modeling of aesthetics and creativity. Earlier research includes development of natural language and speech user interfaces. He has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Louisiana Board of Regents, and Google.

Manaris is Associate Editor of the International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools, a founding member of the ACM SIGCSE Committee on Computing and Music, and has served as chair of several research conferences and conference tracks. He is involved in curricular efforts related to computing in the arts and human-computer interaction.

Dr. Manaris holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of New Orleans, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Louisiana. He is a member of ACM, IEEE CS Society, and Upsilon Pi Epsilon.

Courses

• Course materials for Spring 2013:
  • CITA 210 - Game Programming
  • HONS 381 - Computer Music on a Laptop
  • CITA 295 / 495 - Computing in the Arts Seminar / Capstone
• Office hours

* Advising calendar (Spring 2011)

Publications

• B. Manaris and A. Brown, Making Music with Computers: An Introduction to Programming in Python, Chapman & Hall/CRC Textbooks in Computing, October 2013.
• B. Manaris, P. Roos, D. Krehbiel, T. Zalonis, and J.R. Armstrong, "Zipf's Law, Power Laws and Music Aesthetics", in T. Li, M. Ogihara, G. Tzanetakis (eds.), Music Data Mining, pp. 169-216, CRC Press - Taylor & Francis, July 2011.
• B. Manaris, D. Hughes, and Y. Vassilandonakis, "Monterey Mirror: Combining Markov Models, Genetic Algorithms, and Power Laws", Proceedings of 1st Workshop in Evolutionary Music, 2011 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2011), New Orleans, LA, USA, June 5, 2011, pp. 33-40.
• B. Manaris, P. Roos, P. Machado, D. Krehbiel, L. Pellicoro, and J. Romero (2007), "A Corpus-Based Hybrid Approach to Music Analysis and Composition," Proceedings of 22nd Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-07), Vancouver, BC, pp. 839-845, Jul. 2007.
• B. Manaris, J. Romero, P. Machado, D. Krehbiel, T. Hirzel, W. Pharr, and R.B. Davis (2005), "Zipf's Law, Music Classification and Aesthetics," Computer Music Journal 29(1), MIT Press, pp. 55-69, Spring 2005.
• More...

Activities

Armonique and Armonique Lite - an NSF-funded music similarity engine based on computational aesthetics.

• Music information retrieval, computational aesthetics, and artificial creativity.
• Computing in the Arts (CITA) - a new major combining creativity, problem solving, and computational thinking (funded by NSF).
• Associate Editor, The International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools (IJAIT).
• Program Committee, Evomusart 2013: 2nd International Conference and 10th European Event on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design, 11-13 April, 2012 - Vienna, Austria.
• More...

Other

• Antikythera Mechanism - 2100-year-old computer is working again. ("Its user interface is deceptively simple; it hides a complex mathematical model, which tracks the movements of planetary bodies.")
• Computer program self-discovers laws of physics. ("In just over a day, a powerful computer program accomplished a feat that took physicists centuries to complete: extrapolating the laws of motion from a pendulum's swings.")

Analyzing music the digital way - computers have exquisite ears.

• Researchers play song recorded before Edison.

Contact Info

Βασίλης Μάναρης, Βασίλειος Μάναρης