Dr Massimiliano (Max) Di Luca
Associate Professor
Dr Di Luca investigates the mechanisms of human perception using psychophysical methods and computational modeling.
Intellectual Property: Joint Active Music Sessions (JAMS)
Virtual reality to unlock creativity, collaboration and experimentation in music practice, teaching and performance.
Fans have already enjoyed VR concert experiences from artists like Travis Scott and Charli XCX. But the technology also has the potential to revolutionise the process of making music and create new experiences for the artists themselves.
The Joint Active Music Sessions (JAMS) platform aims to reshape how musicians collaborate, practice, teach, and perform. It allows musicians to customise avatars of themselves and share them with others for virtual concerts, practice sessions, or music education. Unlike static backing tracks, virtual collaborators can adjust speed, ability, and style to fit the real musician, creating a more personalised and effective learning environment.
Initially conceived through the academic Augmented Reality Music Ensemble project, with support from Enterprise, the project is now moving into the commercial space with confidence. “Over time, it became clear that there was potential to go beyond pure research, and that’s when we started exploring commercialisation,” said Dr Max Di Luca, Associate Professor in Psychology.
This began with support from the ICURe Explore programme, a market discovery initiative helping Dr Di Luca’s team map out the commercial landscapes, and then ICURe Exploit, the next phase of the support process which offers business mentoring and readiness.
At the beginning, we were quite naive and new to the business side. As an academic, I’m used to advertising my publications to build collaborations, or crafting grant proposals. But from a business perspective, you have to consider a new audience of potential clients and investors, and frame your work in a totally different way.
The team became aware of the potential to market individual components of the tool separately from the platform, and explored new visions for the project, including providing some of these components as plugins for existing platforms such as TikTok. “This has all been made possible because we had access to support from Enterprise,” said Dr Di Luca. “I wouldn’t have done this if it were just up to me.”
Enterprise helped the team bridge the funding gap and ultimately form a company to take the work forward. They are additionally connecting with local business networks.
One of JAMS’ first practical deployments was a collaboration with the Local Authority Heritage department in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. “They record students in local schools, and we can resynchronise those recordings with others and visualise the whole thing inside an augmented reality experience,” said Dr Di Luca.
These immersive virtual experiences can enable educational, heritage, and cultural projects to come alive in digital spaces. Looking ahead, the team envisions an evolution into more intelligent, communicative avatars. To make the product a reality, the priority is to grow the business side. “I could see there was a real need for what we’re building,” said Dr Di Luca. “I kept thinking, why doesn’t this already exist?”