Music and Media

                                      

 

The next MaM conference will take place at the Institute for Musicology and Media Studies,

Humboldt University, Berlin, 26-27 June 2010.

Helga de la Motte (Berlin) will be opening the meeting with a key note lecture

on music and audiovisual cognition.

The program committee includes Jin Hyun Kim, James Deaville, Michael Saffle,

Tobias Plebuch and Emile Wennekes. Please consult the Institute's website for updated

information on the meeting at MaM Humboldt 2010

 

"Music and Media" was launched as an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary forum on July 4–5, 2009,

in Amsterdam. The IMS Directorium officially accepted MaM as a study group at the subsequent

joint IAML/IMS conference.

MaM welcomes a broad variety of subjects, methodologies and perspecitves.

At the kick-off meeting participants from over ten countries presented 25 papers on

subjects such as human-computer interface technologies, music in video games,

music in film and television, radio plays, commercials, the nature of listenership et al.

For those interested: MaM has also a group account within LinkedIn

 

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Report kick-off meeting of the Study Group Music and Media (MaM),

July 4 & 5, 2009, Amsterdam

 

Last July the IMS Study Group Music and Media (or MaM for short)

organized a two day symposium at the Amsterdam Orgel Park. It was scheduled as a

pre conference to this year’s joint IAML/IMS conference, where the IMS Directorium

officially accepted MaM as Study Group.

Prof. dr. Tilman Seebass, President of the IMS, was honorary guest of the Study Group.

We were very happy that he agreed to attend and address the festive launching of MaM.

Prof. dr. Emile Wennekes, initiator of the Study Group and organizer of the first meeting,

was elected as chair of MaM by acclamation. As of now, he will function as liaison officer

to the Directorium of the IMS.

During the weekend, two future meetings were scheduled:

in 2010, MaM will meet again in Berlin (at Humboldt University),

the 2011 gathering is planned to take place in Lisbon (Universidade Nova de Lisboa).

The ambition is to have the 2012 meeting take place in the United States.

 

The idea is furthermore that a selection of the papers presented at this ‘pre conference’

will be reworked as chapters for a book; the chair will function as its editor-in-chief;

the other moderators of the thematic sessions: Prof.dr. James Deaville (Ottawa),

Prof.dr. Tomi Mäkelä (Halle-Wittenberg), Dr. Tobias Plebuch (Berlin) and

Prof. dr. Michael Saffle (Virginia) will serve as editorial advisory board.

 

With this conference MaM has carried out some crucial, obligatory actions to become

an IMS Study Group:

-choosing a name that reflects the activities of the StG,

-organizing an international meeting and

-electing a chair.

 

Background:

Music plays an important role in media, both in old and certainly in new media:

commercials, games, films, ring tones and the like. The other way around, media

play an increasing role in music. They have changed the compositional process

and characteristics of style; media severely influences performances, composing techniques,

as well as means of recording and visualizing music.

 

What are the theoretical and philosophical consequences of mediatized music?

What are the economics behind these processes of mediatization?

What role does the process of ‘remediation’(Bolter & Grusin, 2000), from LP to MP3 and 4, play?

How has mediatization influenced performance practice, what is the ‘phonograph effect?’

(Katz, 1999).

What do processes of mediatizing music mean in terms of ‘liveness’

(Auslander, 1999), ‘animated liveness’ (Wennekes, 2009) and/or ‘immersion’ (Grau, 2003)?

 

The IMS Study Group Music and Media (MaM) intends to seek, to examine and

explore these and other relevant aspects of ‘mediatizing music’. In the two day expert

meeting, a first inventory has been made of who is working on the media and music theme

in general and on which specific topics. Setting the agenda for future (and perhaps joint)

research is one of the ambitions of the Study Group.

 

Kick-off Meeting:

Parts of the text above were incorporated in the open call for papers that was distributed

world wide in late 2008. The call was warmly received; some forty reactions were welcomed.

Twenty were selected. The definite program consisted of a varied set of program with

some 25 introductions and lectures by participants from over ten countries in front

of an audience attending from three continents.

The majority of papers were presented by musicologists, but cognitive researchers and lectures

by scholarly oriented makers (a film composer, a multi media musician) also participated.

 

The material and immaterial sponsors of the 2009 MaM kick-off meeting were

the IMS,

the Amsterdam Orgel Park,

the Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis,

wwclassics, and

the Research Institute for History and Culture (OGC) of Utrecht University.

 

References

-Auslander, Philip, Liveness: Performance in a mediatized culture. (New York: Routledge, 1999).

-Bolter, Jay David & Grusin, Richard, Remediating: Understanding New Media

(Cambridge: MIT Press 2000).

-Grau, Oliver, Virtual art: From Illusion to Immersion. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003)

-Katz, Mark, The Phonograph Effect: The Influence of Recording on Listener, Performer,

Composer, 1900-1940. PhD Thesis University of Michigan, 1999.

-Wennekes, Emile, ‘Brief encounters of a third kind: First Life live concerts in

Second Life concert venues’. In: Thea Brejzek, Wolfgang Greisenegger and

Lawrence Wallen (eds.), Monitoring Scenography 2: Space and Truth / Raum und Wahrheit.

Institute for Design and Technology (idt) Zurich: Zurich University of the Arts, October 2009,

pages 48-57. 

 

FINALIZED PROGRAM:

Prof.dr. Emile Wennekes (organizing committee), Word of welcome

Dr. Helen Metzelaar (Board Member of the Royal Society for Music History of The Netherlands)

Dr. Hans Fidom (researcher Orgel Park), The Orgel Park & Mediatizing Music Machines

 

Session 1, Moderator Emile Wennekes (Utrecht University)

-Marjaana Virtanen PhD (University of Turku and Academy of Finland): From Rehearsals to Mediatized

 Performance: Musicians’ Gestures and their Changes

-Jannie Pranger M.A. (Utrecht University): Mediatized Performance: the Cultural and the Natural

-Dr. Christopher Morris (University College Cork): Digital Diva: Opera on Video

-Prof. dr. Tomi Mäkelä (Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg): Visualizing Virtuosity and the idea

 of Gesamtkunst

 

Session 2, Moderator Dr. Tobias Plebuch (Humboldt Universität Berlin)

-Dr. Jin Hyun Kim (University of Cologne): Interface Technologies of Mediatizing Musical Experience

-Dr. Isabella van Elferen (Utrecht University): Magic Mobile Mnemonic: The Musical Flâneur

-Melanie Fritsch M.A. (Universität Bayreuth): The History of Videogame Music Production

and Reception

 

Session 3: Moderator Prof.dr. Tomi Mäkelä (Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg)

-Dr. Martin Knust (Stockholms Universitet): European Pre-Filmic Conceptions of Mediatizing Music

 within a Dramatic Artwork

-Manuel Deniz Silva (Universidade Nova de Lisboa): The Politics of ‘Mechanized Sound’: Depictions of

Inappropriate Uses of Music Media in Portuguese Early Sound Comedies

-Brent A. Ferguson (Texas State University): Film Music and Emotion: A Bibliographic Essay

-Dr. James Deaville (Carleton University, Ottawa): Sounding the War in Iraq: The Politics of Television

 News Music

 

Sunday, July 5:

Prof.dr. Emile Wennekes (Utrecht University), Mediatzing Music as program,

Music & Media as IMS Study Group

 

Session 4, Moderator Dr. James Deaville (Carleton University, Ottawa)

-Dr. Angela Ida De Benedictis (Universiyu of Pavia, Cremona): History and Functions for Radio in Italy:

 Radio Play and Radio Operas

-Dr. Christophe Bennet (Orleans): The Radio Message: A Typical Opposition between Erudite

and Popular Cultures in the Music Broadcasting in France in the Thirties

-Prof. Michael Saffle (Virginia Tech, Blacksburg): Mediatizing Music in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s

 America

-Prof.dr. Sander van Maas (Utrecht University & University of Amsterdam), Mediation and Phantasm:

 On the Musical Constitution of Listenership

 

Session 5, Moderator Prof. Michael Saffle (Virginia Tech, Blacksburg)

-Rens Machielse (Utrecht School of Music & Technology): A Model for Dramatic Coding through Film

 Music

-Richard Brown (University of Southern California): ‘The Spirit Inside Each Object’: John Cage,

Oskar Fischinger, and the ‘Future of Music’

-Claudia Marisa Oliveira & Gilberto Bernardes (Superior School of Music and Performing Arts

of the Porto Polytechnic Institute): Sumbiosis: the Gesamtkunstwerk in the 21th Century.

Closing Remarks: Emile Wennekes  & Prof. dr. Tilman Seebass, President IMS. 

 

With thanks to drs. A Pabbruwe and K. van der Linden.