Department of Music Research Seminar

LOCATION: Room AG09, College Building

We have two speakers on 27th November:
 
Diana Salazar
Corporeal Cartography: Navigating process in the development of an expressive system for dance and sound

In recent years there has been increased interest in developing systems for interactive dance and music performance (including Wechsler et al. 2002; Rubidge and MacDonald 2004; Antle et al. 2009; Schacher 2010; Diniz et al. 2012). This has been supported by sophisticated developments in motion capture technology as well as increased accessibility of wearable technologies and tracking devices. Such advances facilitate the investigation and development of new creative approaches and conceptual frameworks examining relationships between the body and technology in terms of interactivity, mediation and embodiment.

This presentation will introduce preliminary findings resulting from a research collaboration with dancer Maria Salgado and will examine our initial exploration of interactive and synesthetic relationships between sound and dance. Fundamental to this collaborative practice-led research project is the repositioning of research focus from product to process. The presentation will outline an approach to documentation of the creative process and examine how this contributes not only to the technical and artistic development of the work but may also reveal new paradigms. I will consider three key themes in our research process: the interrogation of relationships between sonic and human presence in a performance ecosystem, defining and exploring the concept of illusory sonic architecture as a musical composition tool for dance, and examining the application and experience of improvisation within an emerging interactive performance system.
 
Kyle Devine
Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music

This presentation introduces an ongoing study about the history of what recordingsare actually made of, and what happens when those recordings are disposed of. It inscribes a history of recorded music in five materials: shellac, polyvinyl chloride, polyester, polycarbonate, and data - otherwise known as 78s, LPs, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s. These earthy and potentially ugly material realities typically go unremarked in musical discourse, probably because they clash with the longstanding but mistaken belief that music is somehow an immaterial phenomenon. Correspondingly, the environmental impact of recorded sound is almost completely unaccounted for in cultural studies of music and media, which treat the musical commodity principally as a product of musical labour, an object of capitalist exchange, or a text for audience consumption. Yet without confronting the relationship between music's cultural and economic value, on the one hand, and its environmental cost, on the other, the field of music studies forfeits the opportunity for a fully interdisciplinary engagement with - and a holistic democratic ethics of - its object of study. One step toward achieving that goal is to formulate a political ecology of the evolving relationship between music and sound technology since 1900.

All welcome