2022
Research Forum with Sarah Fdili Alaoui
Embodied Interaction in Dance: methods, creations, and critical reflections
Tid og sted: 21. nov. 2022 12:15 – 14:00, Salen, IMV ZEB
This talk is both a Research Forum event and a keynote presentation for the two-day conference: Embodied Perspectives on Musical AI (EmAI)
In this talk, I trace the various approaches that I have followed in designing embodied interactions in dance.
I describe how I apply first person methodologies including research through practice, user-centred design and ethnographic and phenomenological methods in order to design technologies that support creating, learning, performing and archiving dance. I describe several artworks and interactive systems that I developed in which I focus on dance vocabularies including that of Rudolf Laban’s Movement Analysis, vocabularies that are idiosyncratic to choreographers that I collaborated with and those emerging from my own research-creation endeavours.
I present how I choreograph dance pieces that integrate embodied interactive technologies in order to provoke critical questions. While providing poetic experiences, my artworks enact experimental situations that enable critical reflection on issues around how art can contribute to knowledge or around how humans co-exist with each other and with technologies.
Bio
Sarah Fdili Alaoui am an associate professor at LISN-Université Paris Saclay and Ex)Situ INRIA research team in interaction design, human computer Interaction and dance. She is a choreographer, a dancer and a Laban Movement Analyst. Before her current position, she was a researcher at the School of Interactive Arts+Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, within the MovingStories project. She holds a PhD in Art and Science from University Paris-Sud 11 and the IRCAM-Centre Pompidou and LIMSI-CNRS research institutes. She has a MSc from University Joseph Fourier and an Engineering Degree from ENSIMAG in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science and about 30 years of training in ballet and contemporary dance. Sarah is interested in intersecting research in interaction design with dance making and choreography. She has been involved in many art and science projects, collaborating with dancers, visual artists, computer scientists and designers to create interactive dance performances, interactive installations, as well as systems for supporting choreography and dance learning and documentation.
Works in progress : Manon Louviot
In this week's seminar, Manon Louviot will discuss her ongoing work on the idea of the "composer" in the Middle Ages.
Tid og sted: 27. okt. 2022 15:30 – 17:00, Grupperom 2
Manon Louviot will discuss a chapter that she is currently writing for a collection of essays (forthcoming 2023) on the idea of the “composer” in the Middle Ages. Her chapter focusses on a fourteenth-century motet (a polyphonic piece with different texts sung at the same time by each of the voices) which gives both the name of its composer and the date of its composition by way of acrostics in two of its four voices. This kind of information is highly exceptional in medieval music, and raises questions about the composer’s self-presentation and the negotiation of their identity in music and text. Manon will present her material and hypotheses, and welcome discussion of the ways in which the activity of composing music has been understood at different times and in different places and intellectual contexts.
Research Forum: New PhD candidates present their projects. Societal challenges and crises.
Three new PhD projects in musicology, commenced this autumn, address themes related to societal challenges and crises.
Tid og sted: 24. okt. 2022 12:15 – 14:00, Salen, ZEB
Programme:
Ieva Gudaitytė: "Joyful strategies of participation: the socio-political potential of community music radios".
Daniel Fong: "Sing like a ‘man’! - expounding the early theoretical reflections and methodological approaches in the exploration of gay singers and their masculinities in music conservatoires."
Mirjana Plath: "Operetta transfers from Vienna and Berlin to Stockholm, 1920s to 1940s".
Research forum with Prof. Margot Fassler
Lament, Liturgy and the End of Time in Hildegard of Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum
Tid og sted: 26. sep. 2022 12:15 – 14:00, Salen, ZEB building
This presentation is based on chapters from Margot Fassler’s forthcoming book Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century: Hildegard's Illuminated Scivias (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). The emphasis here is on Hildegard’s sung play, the Ordo Virtutum, and one aspect of that play, the laments that are found within it, as they develop within a single tonal area. These laments characterize both the singing of the congregate group of virtues and of the trapped soul, the character Anima. Two of the most complicated chants and their texts will be discussed in some detail, ‘O plangens vox’ and ‘O vivens fons’ which are bookends in the soul’s journey from sin sickness to redemption. A third chant to be studied is found at the end of the play, ‘In principio’.
This text was deeply meaningful to Hildegard for she quoted it again and commented upon it also in her treatise On the Divine Works. Fassler interprets the chant as it related to the cosmos, as Hildegard understood it, and to the inevitable end of time that comes with the achieving of the Golden Number referenced in this lamenting chant text. The lecture engages Hildegard as dramatist, poet, composer, theologian, and also as the leader of a community of Benedictine nuns, surely the original re-enactors of this cosmic display.
Prof. Margot Fassler
Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music History and Liturgy, University of Notre Dame (Emerita) and Robert Tangeman Professor of Music History, Yale University (Emerita)
Margot Fassler is renowned for her work at the intersection of musicology and theology and is a specialist in sacred music of several periods. Her book Gothic Song (Notre Dame Press), won both the John Nicolas Brown Prize of the Medieval Academy of America and the Otto Kinkeldey Prize of the American Musicological Society. Her interdisciplinary approach is demonstrated in her book, The Virgin of Chartres: Making History through Liturgy and the Arts (Yale University Press), a study informed by close work with architecture. The book has won both the Ace Mercers’ International Book Award (for a book on art and religion) and the 2012 Otto Gründler Book Prize (for a book in medieval studies).
Prof. Fassler has been a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, and a Luce Faculty Fellow in Theology. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and as a Fellow of the Medieval Academy, and has been named an Honorary Member of the American Musicological Society. In 2018, Fassler was President of the Medieval Academy of America, and in 2019-2020, she was a Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.
Works in progress : Introduction
In today's seminar, the three convenors will introduce the series and its aims.
Tid og sted: 15. sep. 2022 15:30 – 16:30, Grupperom 1
In today's seminar, the first of the series, the three convenors – Nicholas Ball, Manon Louviot, and James Tomlinson – will discuss their aims for the seminar. We welcome contributions from a wide range of stakeholders to make the series as productive and useful as possible for everyone.
Works in progress is a new seminar at IMV for fixed-term academic staff to present their ongoing research in an informal and supportive environment.
Each seminar will take place on the third Thursday of the month at 3.30pm, lasting for about an hour. Everyone is welcome to attend – temporary and permanent staff from IMV or RITMO and graduate students.
Presenters are invited to circulate any materials in advance of the session to encourage sustained and friendly engagement with their work. Please contact Nicholas Ball (n.d.y.ball@imv.uio.no) if you should like to speak or if you have any questions about the seminar.
Research forum: Presentation of the PLATFORM project
Transformations of production technology in the online environment
Tid og sted: 29. aug. 2022 12:15 – 14:00, Salen ZEB
This research forum will feature a presentation of the recently started PLATFORM project, funded by the Research Council of Norway and led by Associate Professor Yngvar Kjus.
“The platformization of music production: Developer and user perspectives on transformations of production technology in the online environment (PLATFORM)” explores how music production evolves in the digital and online environment. It combines a bird’s-eye view of technological change with a worm’s-eye view of transformations in cultural production.
Kjus and the project group will introduce the key hypotheses and goals of the project and open for comments and discussions on the ways in which contemporary platforms for music production are developed, and their significance for music making.
Read more about the project here.
Research forum with Marcel Cobussen: On Sonic Materialism
Since the turn of the millennium, philosophy has been enriched with a new “-ism”: New Materialism. However, as usual in most philosophical movements, this New Materialism is grounded in the visual and the existence of (static) objects. Building on the ideas to develop a Sonic Materialism as generated by (among others) Christoph Cox and Salome Voegelin, I will present – with the help of an unexpected (sounding) guest – an Auditory Ontoepistemology as an alternative way to encounter the world.
Tid og sted: 28. apr. 2022 14:15 – 15:30, Salen, ZEB-bygget, IMV
Prof. dr. Marcel Cobussen is Full Professor of Auditory Culture and Music Philosophy at Leiden University (the Netherlands) and the Orpheus Institute in Ghent (Belgium). He studied jazz piano at the Conservatory of Rotterdam and Art and Cultural Studies at Erasmus University, Rotterdam (the Netherlands).
Cobussen is author of several books, among them The Field of Musical Improvisation (LUP 2017), Music and Ethics (Ashgate 2012/Routledge 2017, co-author Nanette Nielsen), and Thresholds. Rethinking Spirituality Through Music (Ashgate 2008). He is editor of The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art (Routledge 2016, co-editors Barry Truax and Vincent Meelberg) and Resonanties. Verkenningen tussen kunsten en wetenschappen (LUP 2011). He is editor-in-chief of the open access online Journal of Sonic Studies. His PhD dissertation Deconstruction in Music (Erasmus University Rotterdam 2002) is presented as an online website.
2021
Marginalised Voices: Benedicamus Domino in ‘Peripheral’ Female Monastic Communities
Time and place: October 13th—15th 2021, IMV, ZEB 338
BENEDICAMUS Project Workshop with invited international guests
Research Seminar with Elodie A. Roy
We would like to welcome you to this Research Seminar with Elodie A. Roy titled: Infra-phonography: Towards a pre-history of home-recording practices.
Time and place: Apr. 19, 2021 2:15 PM–3:15 PM, Zoom
Amateurs and ‘hidden musicians’ have received the sustained attention of music sociologists and cultural anthropologists (Finnegan 1989; Théberge 1997; Hennion, Maisonneuve, Gomart 2000), yet there exist relatively few attempts at recovering the ‘deep time’ of home-recording practices. This talk seeks to resituate amateur recording within a larger techno-cultural moment, with a particular focus on the less known, heterogeneous ventures in home-recording in interwar Europe. Drawing from archival research conducted in Germany and the UK, from the existing corpus on music, technology and everyday life, and from recent publications in media archaeology and the art of record production (Levin 2010, Brock-Nannestad 2012), it aims to recover particular socio-material practices in the hope of shedding some preliminary light on a little-explored yet pivotal moment in the history of recorded sound. On a theoretical and methodological level, the paper asks how the study of scattered agents, peripheral sites and mundane materialities of sonic production may allow for alternative socio-material and critical understandings of phonography to emerge (see Bohlman 2017) – something that we could tentatively define as a radically multivalent ‘phonography from below’ or ‘infra-phonography’.
Biography
Elodie A. Roy is a sound and material culture theorist. Her research engages principally with the socio-material and environmental history of phonography; sound and intermedia studies; media objects in memory and heritage practices. She is the author of Media, Materiality and Memory: Grounding the Groove (Routledge 2015) and the co-editor (with Eva-Moreda Rodriguez) of Phonographic Encounters: Mapping Transnational Cultures of Sound, 1890-1945 (Routledge, forthcoming 2021). She is currently preparing a second monograph entitled Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture: Unsettled Matter (Amsterdam University Press), with support from the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (US). Roy notably held research and teaching position at the Glasgow School of Art, the University of Glasgow, Humboldt University of Berlin and is currently Associate Lecturer at Newcastle University.
IMV Research Seminars are open to the public. Please contact Ingrid Stange Ytterstad to receive the Zoom info.
Research Seminar with Professor Laudan Nooshin
The title of the talk is: From Lor Girl to May Lady: Music, Sound and Constructions of Womanhood in Iranian Cinema
Time and place: Mar. 15, 2021 2:15 PM–3:15 PM, Zoom
Abstract
The opening scene of the first Persian-language sound film, The Lor Girl. Or Yesterday’s Iran and Today’s (Ardeshir Irani), made in Bombay in 1933, is an extraordinary display of suggestive female performance. Beginning with a close-up of the gyrating hips of the main female protagonist, Golnar, the camera pans slowly up to her face and direct gaze. What must have been provocative for the time, one of the film’s narrative threads is the story of Golnar’s transformation from a captive female entertainer in a remote mountain inn to an educated, modern woman residing at a centre of imperial (British) power.
The Lor Girl was a pro-Pahlavi film and Golnar’s transformation was aligned with policies by which women were to become educated and ‘made modern’ in the service of the nation and existing patriarchal structures. This keynote presentation explores the role of music and sound in Golnar’s transformation, drawing parallels with a later film also made at an important political juncture in Iran’s history: the reform period of the late 1990s.
In The May Lady (Rakhshan Banietemad, 1998), sound is also used to challenge existing notions of Iranian womanhood. Whilst the film includes relatively little music per se, Banietemad circumvents and obliquely comments on official restrictions, both on music and on forbidden expressions of female desire, by creatively using poetry as a substitute musical soundtrack which becomes steeped in symbolic significance. In comparing these two films, I explore the ways in which the musico-sonic becomes a space for both constructing and contesting gender norms and expectations.
Biography
Laudan Nooshin is Professor of Music at City, University London. Her research interests include creative processes in Iranian music, music and youth culture in Iran, music and gender, urban music studies, and music in Iranian cinema. Her publications include Iranian Classical Music: The Discourses and Practice of Creativity (2015, Ashgate), Music and the Play of Power in the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia (ed. 2009, Ashgate) and The Ethnomusicology of Western Art Music (ed. 2013, Routledge). She is currently co-Editor of the new Cambridge University Press series Elements in Music and the City. Laudan is a Vice-President of the Royal Musical Association and co-Chair of the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Music Studies Network.
IMV Research Seminars are open to the public. Please contact Ingrid Stange Ytterstad to receive the Zoom info.
Research Seminar - Book Launch for Ellis Jones
Jones’ new book DIY Music and the Politics of Social Media asks: what is the political value of 'DIY' music today, when platform economies have made entrepreneurial independence the default option?
Time and place: Jan. 11, 2021 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, Zoom
Celebrating the launch of Ellis Jones’ monograph, this panel session brings three invited guests to the Department, each of whom will (along with Ellis) offer brief reflections on themes relating to music, technology, and politics, drawing on their wealth of experience and expertise. This will be followed by a discussion session during which audience questions and comments are very much encouraged.
Joanne Armitage is Lecturer in Media and Communication at University of Leeds and principle investigator on research projects investigating digital equality and sustainable production in digital technology; Joanne is also an acclaimed composer and performer with a specialism in live coding.
Kirsty Fife is Lecturer in Popular Music at Leeds Conservatoire, and a doctoral researcher at University College London researching archiving practices in contemporary DIY music; Kirsty also has extensive experience in queer and feminist cultural organising, as well as professional experience as an archivist and curator (including for the UK's National Science and Media Museum).
Stephanie Phillips is a musician and journalist based in London; she plays guitarist in the critically-acclaimed punk band Big Joanie, is a co-organiser of Decolonise Fest, and author of the forthcoming book Why Solange Matters (University of Texas Press, 2021).
To get the Zoom-link contact: Ingrid Stange Ytterstad
2020
Research Seminar with Dr. Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen
We would like to welcome you all to a seminar with Dr. Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen who will give the talk: Music-making in a Northern Isle: Iceland and the “village” factor
Time and place: Nov. 2, 2020 2:15 PM–3:15 PM, Zoom
The paper details a PhD project that was carried out under the supervision of Professor Simon Frith at the University of Edinburgh.
The research delved into the social dynamics of Icelandic musicians, making use of participant observation, in-depth interviews and the researcher’s career as a music journalist in his native country. A theoretical framework was built around a) the writings of sociologists Pierre Bourdieu and Howard Becker, b) theories on the difference between professional and amateur music making (with special emphasis on Canadian sociologist Robert A. Stebbins) and c) anthropologists Ruth Finnegan’s landmark study on the music life in Milton Keynes, in the book The Hidden Musicians – Music Making in an English Town.
A grounded theory arose from the interview data, confirming that the ‘village’ factor in the construction of the small Icelandic society (pop. 340.000) both frees musicians up and constricts them. On a positive note, the factor makes for a noticeable lack in bureaucratic formalities in terms of general communication, cultural institutions, etc., underpinning vibrant and active scenes where musicians move freely between genres. On the negative side, these qualities and the small scale of most operations also stifles and suffocates aspiring musicians.
About the speaker
Dr. Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen (b. 1974) is an Icelandic music journalist and scholar. Thoroddsen earned his Master’s Degree from the University of Edinburgh in 2013 and a PhD in 2019 from the same university, where he carried out a research on the social dynamics of Icelandic musicians under the supervision of Professor Simon Frith. He is now the director of the undergraduate media and communication studies programme at The University of Iceland (The Faculty of Social and Human Sciences), earning his B.A degree in sociology at the same university in 1999, with a thesis on The Simpsons. He's been writing professionally about music and popular culture since 1999, mainly for Morgunblaðið daily but his writings have also appeared in article collections and music sites abroad. He is the author of three books on Icelandic music with the fourth in the writing stage (will be published by the U.K. publisher Reaktion Books/The University of Chicago Press).
He has been a member of numerous jury panels and boards, both at home and abroad, and is also a regular commentator on music in television, radio and other media in his native Iceland.
Arnar has written extensively on Scandinavian music, especially about music from the Faroe Islands, and has been a member of the Nordic Music Prize jury since 2010. He has also presented his own radio shows and webisodes, DJ'ed, organized concert series and runs his own Reykjavik Music Walk company along with his wife. He also has his own website, http://arnareggert.is.
IMV Research Seminars are open to the public. If you are not a member of IMV and not on our internal mailing lists, please contact Ingrid Stange Ytterstad to receive the Zoom info.
Research Seminar with Assoc. Prof. Paul Rekret
We would like to invite you all to the Research Seminar with special guest Paul Rekret that will be talking about The Streaming Platform and Cultural Form
Time and place: Oct. 19, 2020 2:15 PM–3:15 PM, Zoom
Programme
- 30-40 minute presentation
- 20-30 minutes of discussion and questions
This talk examines changes to the experience of popular music given its consumption through mood-based playlists on internet streaming platforms. By displacing the ‘single’ and the album as a form of music distribution the platform represents a new mode of value production for the music industry, one where music sales are secondary to the generation of user data, branding, device and bandwidth sales.
The ubiquity of music across time and space that music streaming involves further entails changes to music’s social function and its aesthetic form. In enabling a frictionless harmony among sonic elements, genres, cultures and epochs, the playlist generates an imagined unity into which it interpellates the subject of interminable production and consumption.
About the speaker
Paul Rekret is Associate Professor of Politics at Richmond American International University and author of two books: Down With Childhood: Pop Music and the Crisis of Innocence (Repeater 2017), Derrida and Foucault: Philosophy, Politics, Polemics (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), and editor of a forthcoming edition of George Caffentzis's book, Clipped Coins, Abused Words & Civil Government: John Locke's Philosophy of Money (Pluto Press) along with many academic journal articles on political and cultural theory.
He hosts Beholder Halfway, radio essays airing regularly on Resonance.Extra, writes with Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective and, together with Anja Kanngieser and Rory Gibb, writes and performs around questions of sound's relation to ecological crisis.
IMV Research Seminars are open to the public. If you are not a member of IMV and not on our internal mailing lists, please contact Ingrid Stange Ytterstad to receive the Zoom info.
Research Seminar with Corinna Cambell
When performing within a touristic idiom, Surinamese Maroon folkloric groups face a conundrum—how and to what degree can they satisfy touristic appetites for the foreign and exotic, while promoting realistic self-images that validate their own experiences and cultural practices?
Time and place: May 25, 2020 2:15 PM–3:00 PM, Zoom
Maroons are especially marketable to tourists owing to their historical legacy as escaped slaves and freedom fighters, and the strength and alleged purity of their connections to the cultural practices of their African ancestors.
These narratives map neatly onto the format of a ‘cultural show’, which primes audiences to look for and affirm the differences and distances between performers and audiences. Often, however, characterization risks devolving into caricaturization, portraying Maroons and their traditions in a simplistic and potentially alienating or offensive light.
Using case studies from the folkloric group Saisa, this talk illustrates how Maroon performers employ a politics of recognition in order to complicate simplistic interpretations of Maroon culture and performance practice, unsettling dominant cultural narratives without overturning them outright.
Rather than disavowing touristic preoccupations with daily life and authentic experiences, Saisa's choreographies embrace such themes, but redirect them to known and unlikely references. When applied to more broadly recognizable scenarios and subject matter, the touristic gaze becomes stranger than the practices on which it is focused.
About the speaker
Corinna Campbell is Assistant Professor of Music at Williams College in the USA. Her book, The Cultural Work: Maroon Performance in Paramaribo, Suriname, will be published by Wesleyan University Press in June 2020. Her research covers topics including cultural tourism, nationalist performance, and music/dance interconnections.
2019
Research Seminar - Book Launch for Kyle Devine
Music is seen as the most immaterial of the arts, and recorded music as a progress of dematerialization—an evolution from physical discs to invisible digits. In Decomposed, Kyle Devine offers another perspective.
Time and place: Nov. 25, 2019 3:15 PM–4:15 PM, Ground floor, Humanities and Social Sciences Library in Georg Sverdrups hus
Kyle Devine shows that recorded music has always been a significant exploiter of both natural and human resources, and that its reliance on these resources is more problematic today than ever before. Devine uncovers the hidden history of recorded music—what recordings are made of and what happens to them when they are disposed of.
For the book launch we will be joined by special guest Dr Matt Brennan , Reader in Popular Music at the University of Glasgow.
Research Seminar with Jocelyne Guilbault
Jocelyne Guilbault (University of California, Berkeley) will be visiting us giving a talk on Party Music, Affect, and the Politics of Modernity. All welcome!
Time and place: Nov. 21, 2019 12:15 PM–2:00 PM, Salen, ZEB
As Danilyn Rutherford writes, “we need to think about power to understand affect.” She adds, “could it be that we also need to think about affect to understand the nature of power” (Ann Rev Anthropology 2016: 290)? Following this premise, this paper goes against the tendency to schematize and universalize emotions and affect. Instead, I argue for the need to address affect historically and ethnographically within the fields of power in which musical experience takes place.
This study focuses on the 2017 Road March song, “Full Extreme,” the song that played almost 500 more times than its closer competitor at the judging points during Carnival Tuesday in Trinidad (West Indies). I examine this song as an event to reveal the various forces that are at play in foregrounding simultaneously a “collective effervescence” (Durkheim 1995 [1912]) and the local tradition of calypso’s critical rhetoric. By exploring how it has galvanized massive support, I show how this song confronts what has been at the core of the exclusionist politics of modernity. I also call attention to what is called for not only to create mass appeal, but also to encourage public engagement and political debate in modern democracies.
Jocelyne Guilbault
is Professor of ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work is concerned with power relations, global industrialization, labor practices, cultural politics of aesthetics, and work ethics in Caribbean popular musics. Stressing a multidisciplinary approach, she addresses these issues in the scholarly intersections of music, anthropology, cultural studies, and history. Her research in Saint Lucia, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Dominica, and Trinidad is reported in articles and in Zouk: World Music in the West Indies, Governing Sound: the Cultural Politics of Trinidad's Carnival Musics, and Roy Cape: a Life on the Calypso and Soca Bandstand (co-authored with Roy Cape). Her latest project, co-edited with Timothy Rommen, is titled Sounds of Vacation: Political Economies of Caribbean Tourism (Duke U Press, August 2019).
Guest Lecture with Hallvard T. Bjørgum
Time and place: Sep. 3, 2019 11:15 AM–1:00 PM, Seminar room 1 (first floor)
We welcome you all to a lecture with Hallvard T. Bjørgum, one of Norway’s most legendary Harding fiddle players. In dialogue with professor Hans Weisethaunet, he will discuss the ‘the roots’ and ‘routes’ of Scandinavian music, the instrument, it’s origins, and connections to rock ’n’ roll and ’roots’ music. Be prepared to hear him demonstrate several famous Harding fiddle instruments.
Organizer
Hans Weisethaunet
Research seminar - Book Launch for Áine Mangaoang
Join us for the launch of Dangerous Mediations (Bloomsbury 2019), a book that examines the intersection of prison, pop music, and YouTube in the infamous 'Dancing Inmates' of Cebu Provincial Rehabilitation and Detention Centre, Philippines. Special guests Holly Rogers (Reader in Music, Goldsmiths University of London), and roundtable discussion with Holly, Nanette Nielsen (RITMO), Ellis Jones (RITMO), and Áine Mangaoang (Dept. of Musicology).
Time and place: Oct. 28, 2019 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen. ZEB
Programme
- Welcome & Introduction by Kyle Devine (Head of Research, Department of Musicology, University of Oslo)
- Book Presentation by the author Áine Mangaoang (Postdoktor, Dept. of Musicology, University of Oslo)
- Invited Response by Holly Rogers (Reader in Music, Goldsmiths University of London)
- Roundtable Discussion on music, new media and audiovisual culture with Holly Rogers, Nanette Nielsen (Associate Professor, RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, University of Oslo), and Ellis Jones (Postdoktor // MASHED project, RITMO, University of Oslo).
About the book
In 2007, an unlikely troupe of 1500 Filipino prisoners became Internet celebrities after their YouTube video of Michael Jackson's ground-breaking hit 'Thriller' went viral. Taking this spectacular dance as a point of departure, Dangerous Mediations explores the disquieting development of prisoners performing punishment to a global, online audience. Combining analysis of this YouTube video with first-hand experiences from fieldwork in the Philippine prison, Áine Mangaoang investigates a wide range of interlocking contexts surrounding this user-generated text to reveal how places of punishment can be transformed into spaces of spectacular entertainment, leisure, and penal tourism.
In the post-YouTube era, Dangerous Mediations sounds the call for close readings of music videos produced outside of the corporate culture industries. By connecting historical discussions on postcolonialism, surveillance and prison philosophy with contemporary scholarship on popular music, participatory culture and new media, Dangerous Mediationsis the first book to ask critical questions about the politics of pop music and audiovisual mediation in early 21st-century detention centres.
Reviews for Dangerous Mediations
“In this rich ethnographic case study, Áine Mangaoang brings together a welcome, provocative and highly original mix of music, YouTube and prison. She raises thoughtful questions about participation and incarceration, leisure and exploitation, the global and the local, that will resonate far beyond her case.” – Nancy Baym, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research, USA
“An enlightening, extensive, and engaging work! Áine Mangaoang's explanation of the phenomenal popularity of the Dancing Inmates' Thriller, a YouTube sensation, unearths layer after layer of paradoxes embedded in Philippine history, musicological studies, prison performances and digital cross-currents. The tensions that spring from navigating between rehabilitation and oppression, creativity and captivity, entertainment and punishment, submission and assertion, cultural identity and stereotyping, among others, make Dangerous Mediations a cautionary tale in adapting inmate performance, especially of the digital variety, as a vehicle for prison reform.” – Ricardo Abad, Professor Emeritus, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines
“This book deepens our understanding of the mediation of music in the digital era. Through a wide-reaching analysis, Mangaoang reveals the subversive potential of music and how new media texts are bound up with power, punishment and postcolonialism.” – Barley Norton, Reader and Senior Tutor in Music, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK
Guest lecture: Dag Langfoss-Håland
Dag Langfoss-Håland will talk about his experience in music technology entrepreneurship, his startup company Soundio, the innovative Vibble App, and future plans.
Time and place: Sep. 5, 2019 10:15 AM–11:00 AM, MCT Portal, ZEB
Soundio is a creative technology studio from Bergen, Norway, working at the intersection of branding, music and media. In a world where streaming has made music available anywhere at any given moment, Soundio is enabling fans, artists and brands to come together and create new, fun and engaging music experiences. Technology has allowed us to move far beyond the iPod's "thousand songs in your pocket". Today we have a thousand playlists in our pockets, and Soundio thinks it's about time that people start being creative with all that music. Soundio is the maker of Vibble:
About the speaker
Dag Langfoss-Håland is the CEO of Soundio AS. Based in Drammen, Bergen and London, the company is developing vibble: The easiest, most fun and engaging DJ app in the world
This is a guest lecture in the course MCT4015 - Entrepreneurship for MCT
Guest talk: Relationships between cyborgs and wearables as paradigm of body enhancement
We would like to invite you all to Dr. Maria Castellanos Vicente's presentation in the MCT Portal.
Time and place: Aug. 30, 2019 1:00 PM–2:00 PM, MCT Portal
María Castellanos is a Spanish artist and researcher, she has a Degree and a Doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of Vigo, Spain, with an Extraordinary Phd Award 2016.
She researches about technological prosthesis, focusing on hybridizations between cyborgs and wearables as a paradigm of extending human sensorial capabilities.
She is currently a visiting lecturer in the Contemporary Art Master, at the University of Vigo.
You can read more about her work and installations here: http://mariacastellanos.net/
Pedro Pestana: Knowledge Engineering in Music Technology and Sonic Arts
A lecture by Pedro Pestana on music technology and emergent audio technologies.
Time and place: Apr. 9, 2019 10:15 AM–11:00 AM, MCT Portal, ZEB 129
In this talk we will address the current state of affairs and directions in the field of music technology, tying to the speaker's experience in both academia and industry, bearing in mind the possible goals an early career researcher/developer may consider when choosing projects and areas to work in.
In the second part, we will discuss three specific projects dealing with emergent audio technologies that made it to market over the last couple of years: a cross-adaptive audio processing system for intelligent mastering of music, a large-scale sound-art installation, and a sonic branding project that reacts to large scale analysis of crowds to generate interactive sound design.
About the speaker
Pedro Duarte Pestana was born in Lisbon in 1975, and has pursued an interdisciplinary career that always gravitates around sound and media. He has a PhD in Computer Music and is currently a Gulbenkian Professor of Interactive Sound Design at UCP in Porto. He has led the Research Center in Science and Technology of the Arts at UCP and taught extensively in several Universities in Portugal. Working in intelligent systems applied to audio, he has helped found two software companies in Canada and worked as lead audio research and consultant in the audio software industry. As a sound engineer he has worked with many prominent artists such as Teresa Salgueiro, Pedro Jóia, Mário Laginha, among others. He has worked in several media installations, drawing from his skills with physical computing, most recently with artist Bill Fontana.
Literature
Intelligent Audio Production Strategies Informed by Best Practices
This is a guest lecture in the course MCT4046.
Brainwashing Future Generations
A lecture by Ole Nieling: "OLME: Brainwashing Future Generations - How Sonic Exploration impacts cultural & humanistic traits"
Time and place: Apr. 8, 2019 11:15 AM–1:00 PM, MCT Portal, ZEB 129
Abstract
Children learn through playful interactions with their surroundings. Most childsplay is based on sandbox situations: actual sandboxes, construction toys, drawing and social roleplay. These forms of exploration are essential in the development of human traits. A field where this exploration is limited, is sound. Tools and toys manufactured for creative sonic exploration cater to conventional forms of music. Furthermore these tools require pre-existing knowledge and technique in order to be operated properly. This talk focuses on challenging these notions, and poses the question how sonic exploration can be expanded upon to benefit the development of future generations.
Bio
Ole Nieling (1987) is an interdisciplinary 'life-style' artist. He playfully researches the tension amongst the fields he is expert in: music, visual art, performance, new media and craftsmanship. These mixtures result in a diverse body of work with as common denominator the mentality that: Instead of accepting predetermined notions (the famous "It's just the way it is"), one could also wonder why things are the way they are and act upon the findings. In November 2017 Ole started an apprenticeship in recorder building at the world renowned workshop of Adriana Breukink. This allows a daily insight in traditional instrument-building alongside an artistic practise. As a result the discrepancy amongst perspectives both concerning the role of art in today's world and different already existing disciplines is reduced, resulting in new possibilities for both the audience and the artist.
Literature
Based upon his childhood experiences Harry Partch (1901-1974) developed an extensive collection of instruments to be used alongside his own interpretation of musical theory. The characteristics of his scale, that is largely based upon the human voice, resemble that of microtonal music. Partch fondly recollected those childhood memories where he heard native american songs and his mother would sing to him in Mandarin chinese. Family visits to oriental opera’s were not uncommon. He refused the definition of abstract music and rather considered his work to be corporal in nature. His musical work is still being performed on the original instruments till this day, see videos here: Part 1/ Part 2.
Most of us will be well aware of the concept that entails pseudo-individualisation, yet most will not be aware of its definition. In “On popular music” Theodor Adorno considered the ‘industrialization’ of music.
Not all of his views may not have aged well as displayed by the disassembly of his rigid perspective by Roger Scruton. However the notion of pseudo-individualisation and what elements define cultural definitions are extremely valuable in assessing what defines what tastes our ear fancies.
This is a guest lecture in the course MCT4046.
Pamela Z: Lecture-performance on voice and live electronics
A lecture-demonstration by Pamela Z on voice, processing, gesture control, and interaction with video
Time and place: Apr. 4, 2019 3:00 PM–4:00 PM, MCT Portal, ZEB 129
Voice and Instruments
Pamela Z 's performances range in scale from small concerts in galleries to large-scale multi-media works in theaters and concert halls. Her solo works combine experimental extended vocal techniques, operatic bel canto, found objects, text, and sampled concrète sounds. She uses MAX MSP and Isadora software on a MacBook Pro along with custom MIDI controllers. One of her early instruments,The BodySynth™, was created by Chris Van Raalte and Ed Severinghaus (Copyright 1994), a MIDI controller that transforms movement, gestures, and other muscle efforts into sounds. Another part of her setup has been custom MIDI interfaces including faders, footswitch control pod, light controllers, and ultrasonic controllers, developed and fabricated by Donald Swearingen as part of his "N Degrees" system of sensor controllers. In this session, Pamela Z will demonstrate her current solo performance set-up, discuss how everything works and give a live performance/demonstration of some of the tools she uses in performance (including voice, processing, gesture control, and interaction with video.)
About the speaker
Pamela Z is a composer/performer and media artist who makes solo works combining a wide range of vocal techniques with electronic processing, samples, gesture activated MIDI controllers, and video. She has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Japan. Her work has been presented at venues and exhibitions including Bang on a Can (NY), the Japan Interlink Festival, Other Minds (SF), the Venice Biennale, and the Dakar Biennale. She's created installations and has composed scores for dance, film, and chamber ensembles (including Kronos Quartet). Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation residency, the Herb Alpert Award, and an Ars Electronica honorable mention, and the NEA/Japan-US Fellowship.
This is a guest lecture in the course MCT4046.
What new challenges and opportunities arise while programming and playing sound inside 3D space?
A lecture by Edo Fouilloux on sonification, including sound design, interface implementation and perceptual analysis.
Time and place: Apr. 2, 2019 10:15 AM–12:00 PM, MCT Portal, ZEB 129
Abstract
We will demonstrate the new Interfaces, components and philosophies inside MuX, the Sandbox Instrument, where you can build and play sound machines in VR. There will be showcase examples from the beta community and different setups that connect to existing rigs, expanding the possibilities of creation outside MuX by exploring the power of modularity. MuX is in early access, and slowly forming a community of builders, musicians, composers and spectators that seek a new way to experience, share and build audio-visual interactions.
About the speaker
Edo is a visual innovator and a multidisciplinary craftsman of graphics, sound, computing, and interaction. He co-founded Decochon in 2015 to work with Mixed Reality (XR) technologies. Turning ideas into products, building teams, and collaborating with talents from different backgrounds. Decochon’s first project, MuX, is pioneering on the fields of interaction and Music in VR. Edo is Directing the concept and aligns the business strategy with Decochon's creative vision.
This is a guest lecture in the course MCT4046.
Open Guest Lecture with Arild Andersen
We would like to invite you all to the open lecture with bassist Arild Andersen.
Time and place: Apr. 1, 2019 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen. ZEB
Since the late 1960s, bassist Arild Andersen has been a leading force on the international and Nordic jazz scene, acclaimed for his musical interplay with Bill Frisell, Ralph Towner, Don Cherry, George Russell, Sheila Jordan, Stan Getz, Tommy Smith, Bobo Stenson, Edward Vesala, Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Radka Toneff, and numerous others.
In this lecture, he shares some of his musical experiences and understanding of improvisation in dialogue with professor Hans Weisethaunet.
Thomas Hermann: Sonification techniques beyond parameter-mapping for auditory data science
A lecture by Thomas Hermann (Bielefeld) on sonification, including sound design, interface implementation and perceptual analysis.
Time and place: Mar. 29, 2019 10:15 AM–12:00 PM, MCT Portal, ZEB 129
Abstract
Sonification is the systematic and reproducible auditory display of data, enabling users to understand patterns in data by listening. The lecture will give an introduction and overview of the research field of auditory display and sonification and demonstrate the available sonification techniques with many sound examples. Selected applications including sonification of EEG and ECG will be shown and demonstrate how sound can help to explore, diagnose or monitor data, and how sound can support users in coordinated motor tasks. Most sonifications today are a 'mapping' of data to perceptual qualities (e.g. pitch, level, pulse rate, etc.). This technique – known as Parameter Mapping sonification – comes with a number of design problems. We will discuss Model-based Sonification and Wave-Space Sonification as alternative approaches beyond mapping, since they open up new perspectives for auditory data science.
About the speaker
'Thomas Hermann studied physics (Dipl.-Phys.) and received a Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2002 from Bielefeld University. He is currently head of the Ambient Intelligence Group within CITEC, the Center of Excellence in Cognitive Interaction Technology at Bielefeld University. Thomas Hermann initiated and co-organised all triannual European Interactive Sonification Workshops since 2004. He was vice-chair and German delegate of the EU COST Action IC0601 on Sonic Interaction Design from 2008-2011. He is Guest Editor of four Special Issues on Interactive Sonification (IEEE Multimedia and Springer Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces) and editor of The Sonification Handbook (2011). Publications and sound examples are available at <https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/person/11596>. His research focus is on sonification, data mining, human-computer interaction and ambient intelligence.
Literature
Hermann, T. (2011). Model-based sonification. In Hermann, T., Hunt, A., Neuhoff, J. G., editors, The Sonification Handbook, chapter 16, pages 399–427. Logos Publishing House, Berlin, Germany. online / media examples
Hermann, T. (2018). Wave Space Sonification. In Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD 2018). Michigan, US: ICAD. online / PDF / Supplementary material
This is a guest lecture in the course MCT4046.
Using speech as source material for making improvised music
A lecture by Daniel Formo (NTNU) on sonification, including sound design, interface implementation and perceptual analysis.
Time and place: Mar. 28, 2019 10:15 AM–12:00 PM, MCT Portal, ZEB 129
Abstract
This talk will be about the artistic research project The Music of Language and Language of Music (2013-2018), and how that project explored the underlying musical structures of speech as source material for creating music – not what is said, but how it is said, what in linguistics is called prosody. Part of this project involved developing an instrument for real time analysis and transformation of such speech features into musical structures for use in the improvised performance concept The Orchestra of Speech. This lecture will focus on the sound design decisions and the mappings strategies used in this project.
Bio
Daniel Formo is a musician, composer and researcher working within a broad range of music from improvised and written contemporary music, to jazz and popular genres, as well as electroacoustic music and electronic art.
Literature
Documentation of the artistic research project
A compact description of just the instrument system
Some background on the concept of prosody
This is a guest lecture in the course MCT4046.
Leif Arne Rønningen: Sonification and Sound Design
A lecture by Leif Arne Rønningen (NTNU) on sonification, including sound design, interface implementation and perceptual analysis.
Time and place: Mar. 27, 2019 10:15 AM–12:00 PM, MCT Portal, ZEB 129
Leif Arne Rønningen (NTNU)
Part 1. Advanced Collaboration Spaces, requirements and possible realisations
A simple collaboration space could include a single 2D screen, camera, microphone, two loudspeakers and PC. A really advanced collaboration space would have the floor, the ceiling, and all walls as displays, a large number of cameras integrated, and microphones and loudspeakers for 'position sound'. When moving in the space, you should be able to see any side of spatial static objects on the screen from correct direction - multi-view. Requirements and possible realisations will be presented. The cameras have to be nearly invisible, and placed in calculated positions. Using lens arrays and tiny RGB laser scanners, it is possible to build multi-view displays with cameras from a basic module. Furthermore, the sound from a person should be localised to his mouth. To make the experience near-natural, the networks and equipment used, have to guarantee minimum spatial and temporal resolutions, and maximum optical end-to-end delay. This cannot be supported by existing Internet, but with future networks with delay-guarantees provided by e.g., Quality Shaping.
Literature
- L A Rønningen. "The Distributed Multimedia Plays Architecture". NTNU/IIK 2011 (Cristin) Parts 1, 3, 4, (5), 6, Fig 7.1, 8 (not details, short about LFC), 13 (definition - Quality Shaping).
- L A Rønningen. "CSBB - Collaboration Space Building Blocks. Multi-view Display". NTNU/IIK 2012.
- L A Rønningen. "CSBB - Collaboration Space Building Blocks. Multi-view LRGB GRIN Sparse Aperture Camera Array". NTNU/IIK 2012.
Part 2. The Nidarø Sculpture - dynamic vision and audio sculpture/Shell Senior Village on top of Nidarøhallen
The Nidarø Sculpture is a dynamic vision and audio sculpture/Shell Senior Village, on top of Nidarøhallen. The audio sculpture will be transformed from vision in real time. The playout network can be built with existing small, cheap computers cooperating via WiFi routers.
Literature
- L A Rønningen. "The Cliff - Performing Arts Centre on the Fjord". Volume 103, Ercim News 2015.
- L A Rønningen. "Nidarø Collaboration Sculpture". Tripleplay, 2019.
About the speaker
Leif Arne Rønningen graduated as MSc in 1976 and PhD in 1982, from the Dep. of telematics, NTNU. He has experience from R&D, project management, marketing, general- and top management and teaching, within ICT, song drama, and combinations, and several start-up of new companies. Positions held are as diving instructor, project manager, marketing-, research-, managing- and technical director, steering-board member, and chairman of the board. From 1995-99 he was engaged by Telenor as a consultant, and was deeply involved in the introduction of digital TV and specification work on future digital TV in Europe (DVB, DigiTAG and NorDig). In 1999 he was research director at Dep. of signal processing and system design, SINTEF. From 2000 he has been full professor at the IIK/ NTNU, since 2014 as emeritus. Current R&D areas are collaboration spaces & music drama, and city planning.
This is a guest lecture in the course MCT4046.
Composition and mapping in sound installations “Flyndre” and “VLBI Music”
A lecture by Øyvind Brandtsegg (NTNU) on sonification, including sound design, interface implementation and perceptual analysis.
Time and place: Mar. 26, 2019 10:15 AM–12:00 PM, MCT Portal, ZEB 129
Abstract
The sound installations "Flyndre" (2006-2026) and "VLBI Music" (2013-2020) are long-running public sound works based on algorithmic composition techniques and mapping of environmental data. In this talk, Brandtsegg will look at the ideas behind each of the works, the composition process, and how the data is mapped to audible changes in the resulting music.
About the speaker
Øyvind Brandtsegg is a composer and performer working in the fields of algorithmic improvisation and sound installations. He also produce software for audio processing and performance. Perhaps most renowned is the Hadron Particle Synthsizer VST plugin, and the feature extration and modulation package "featexmod". As musician and composer he has collaborated with a number of excellent artists, e.g. Motorpsycho, Maja Ratkje, and he runs the ensemble Trondheim EMP. The latest release with Trondheim EMP is "Poke it With a Stick" / "Joining the Bots" on the Crónica label in March 2019. Recent writings include Csound: A Sound and Music Computing System (Springer, 2016, with J. ffitch, S. Yi, J. Heintz, O. Brandtsegg, and I. McCurdy).
Literature
Øyvind's web page contain a detailed description of the work VLBI Music. Especially the section “Data and composition” contain technical details that might be useful as preparation for formulating questions during the session.
This is a guest lecture in the course MCT4046.
Book launch: A Phenomenology of Musical Absorption
We would like to invite you all to celebrate the launch of Postdoctoral Fellow Simon Høffding's new monograph A Phenomenology of Musical Absorption
Time and place: Mar. 18, 2019 11:00 AM–12:45 PM, Forsamlingssalen, Harald Schjelderups hus
This book presents a detailed analysis of what it means to be absorbed in playing music. Based on interviews with one of the world’s leading classical ensembles, “The Danish String Quartet” (DSQ), it debunks the myth that experts cannot reflect while performing, but also shows that intense absorption is not something that can be achieved through will, intention, prediction or planning – it remains something individuals have to be receptive to.
Based in the phenomenological tradition of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty as well as of Dan Zahavi and Shaun Gallagher, it lays out the conditions and essential structures of musical absorption.
Employing the lived experience of the DSQ members, it also engages and challenges core ideas in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, enactivism, expertise studies, musical psychology, flow theory, aesthetics, dream and sleep studies, psychopathology and social ontology, and proposes a method that integrates phenomenology and cognitive science.
The book will be discussed by Frederik Øland from the Danish String Quartet and Nanette Nielsen, Bruno Laeng, and Simon Høffding from UiO.
Simon Høffding
I am interested in the nature of musical absorption and what it does to our consciousness. Therefore I work with some of the best "classic" and Jazz musician in the world doing in depth interviews and also physiological measures. The backbone of my investigations, however, are philosophical or phenomenoloigical. This is because experiences of absorption essentially are experiences of altered senses of self and consciousness. To understand absorption, we therefore need storng theories of what it means to be a self, what it means to be in command of one's actions (the sense of agency) and what it means to let go of control and yet maintain the highest level of mastery over one's playing. I examine these questions through my interviews and quantitative data from the perspective of phenomenology, enactivism, embodied cognition, social ontology, psychology of music and expertise theories. I am also interested in the phenomenology of aesthetics, in psychopathology and in research on dreaming and sleeping which potentially can enlighten the phenomenology of musical absorption.
Frederik Øland
Frederik Øland plays the violin in the Danish String Quartet. Among today’s many exceptional chamber music groups, the Danish String Quartet continuously asserts its preeminence. The Quartet’s playing reflects impeccable musicianship, faultless intonation, exquisite clarity of ensemble, and, above all, an expressivity inextricably bound to the music, from Haydn to Shostakovich to contemporary scores. Their performances bring a rare musical spontaneity, giving audiences the sense of hearing even treasured canon repertoire as if for the first time, and exuding a palpable joy in music-making that have made them enormously in-demand on concert stages throughout the world.
Nanette Nielsen
I hold a BA in Music and Philosophy from the University of Copenhagen and an MMus and PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London. I joined Oslo in January 2015, after having been Associate Professor and Lecturer at the University of Nottingham (2009-15) and at the University of East Anglia (2005-9). I work on music and philosophy, especially ethics and aesthetics in twentieth- and twenty-first century music, and on opera and music criticism in the Weimar republic. Other interests include film music, pervasive drama, popular music, melodrama, and music in Scandinavia.
Bruno Laeng
Bruno Laeng is professor in cognitive neuropsychology. Bachelor in experimental psychology from Universitá La Sapienza (Roma, Italia) and Ph.D. in biological psychology from The University of Michigan (Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA). He has previously held positions at the University of Bergen, University of Tromsø, University of Guelph (Canada), Harvard University (USA) and he has been a Clinical Research Fellow at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (USA). He is currently faculty member of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion (RITMO). In 2018 he has been inducted as member of The Norwegian Academy of Science (Humanities and Social Sciences Division).
After the event there will be a reception in the RITMO kitchen with light refreshments from 12:00 to 12:45. All welcome!
Organizer
RITMO and Department of Musicology
Book Launch "Polyphony in Medieval Paris"
This is the event for everyone interested in medieval music and music history! The new book Polyphony in Paris, focuses on the history of medieval music in thirteenth-century Paris, the ways in which music was created, and the contexts in which it was performed.
Time and place: Mar. 4, 2019 1:15 PM–2:30 PM, Scene, HumSam 1. floor, Georg Sverdrups hus
Welcome to the launch of Catherine A. Bradley's new book Polyphony in Medieval Paris. The Art of Composing with Plainchant.
About the book
Polyphony associated with the Parisian cathedral of Notre Dame marks a historical turning point in medieval music. Yet a lack of analytical or theoretical systems has discouraged close study of twelfth- and thirteenth-century musical objects, despite the fact that such creations represent the beginnings of musical composition as we know it. Is musical analysis possible for such medieval repertoires? Catherine A. Bradley demonstrates that it is, presenting new methodologies to illuminate processes of musical and poetic creation, from monophonic plainchant and vernacular French songs, to polyphonic organa, clausulae, and motets in both Latin and French.
This book engages with questions of text-music relationships, liturgy, and the development of notational technologies, exploring concepts of authorship and originality as well as practices of quotation and musical reworking.
Programme
- Book presentation by Catherine A. Bradley
- Panel discussion with Susan Rankin, Ildar Garipzanov and Catherine A. Bradley
- Q&A
About the speakers
Catherine A. Bradley is Associate Professor at the Department of Musicology, UiO. She completed her undergraduate and masters degrees at the University of Oxford and received her Ph.D. from The University of Cambridge in 2011.
Susan Rankin holds a personal chair in the University of Cambridge as ‘Professor of Medieval Music’. She was educated at the universities of Cambridge, King’s College London and Paris. Her scholarly work engages with music of the middle ages through its sources and notations and through its place and meaning within ritual.
Ildar Garipzanov is Professor of History at the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, UiO. His academic interests are late antique and early medieval history in general (c. 300–1000), and more specifically, Carolingian history, the history of the Viking Age, and late antique and early medieval cultural history.
Organizer
Humanities and Social Sciences Library and Department of Musicology
Open Lecture with Georg Wadenius
Time and place: Feb. 11, 2019 11:15 AM–1:00 PM, Salen, ZEB
We would like to welcome you all to a lecture with one of the most experienced studio musicians in the world, guitarist Georg «Jojje» Wadenius. He has experience playing with Steely Dan, Donald Fagen, Made in Sweden, Blood, Sweat & Tears and more.
2018
Research Seminar: Motion Capture
Time: Nov. 12, 2018 1:15 PM–3:00 PM
- Marcelo M. Wanderly - Overview of motion capture systems for music research
- Panel discussion: Possibilities and challenges with motion capture (led by Alexander Refsum Jensenius)
Research Seminar with Aaron Allen: "Musics, Environments, Humanities"
Join us for a research seminar featuring Aaron Allen (University of North Carolina at Greensboro), who will discuss the role of music in the environmental humanities.
Time and place: Oct. 29, 2018 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen, ZEB
Programme
- Introduction by Kyle Devine, an associate professor and the head of research at IMV.
- Aaron Allen will then give a keynote lecture on "Musics, Environments, Humanities."
- This will be followed by brief responses by Ingrid Halland (IFIKK) as well as Tore Størvold and Stéphane Aubinet (IMV).
- The research seminar will conclude with an open discussion.
Jubileumsforelesning med Kjell Skyllstad
It is an honour to welcome Professor Kjell Skyllstad back to IMV on the event of his 90th birthday. Skyllstad will share his experiences and observations from an extensive and rich international academic career traversing musicology and cultural, political and social history across many countries.
Time and place: Oct. 12, 2018 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen, ZEB
Professor Hans Weisethaunet will engage in dialogue with Skyllstad on his career spanning 6 decades. The discussions will shed light on the changing face of musicology and highlight some of the most challenging and urgent issues of our times, and musicology's contribution in addressing these challenges. The connection between research and activism characterises much of Skyllstad's work.
Skyllstad is a major figure in Norwegian musicology and was professor at IMV until his retirement in 1998
Hosted by Kyle Devine.
Ultima - Presentations from Diversity Lab
We invite you to the presentation of the results from the two-day workshop that intends to explore how contemporary music can promote aesthetic diversity.
Guests: George Lewis and Rolf-Erik Nystrøm
Time and place: Sep. 17, 2018 3:00 PM–4:00 PM, Salen. ZEB
In a rare visit to Norway, the distinguished US composer, improvising trombonist and teacher George Lewis, plus Norwegian saxophonist Rolf-Erik Nystrøm, will bring together Oslo based musicians to investigate how an art form such as contemporary music – so deeply rooted in post-war central European aesthetics – can engage with notions of diversity.
Modern music’s core values include a constant search for the unknown, and a voyage of artistic discovery involving research and experimentation. How can those values be channeled into creating diversity? Lewis and Nystrøm will attempt to answer some of these questions in collaboration with their invited participants. A open-form piece by George Lewis will form the basis of the workshops’ musical and discursive work, and the sessions will conclude with a presentation.
Ultima Context is supported by Norsk Komponistforening, Fritt Ord and Bergesenstiftelsen.
More informaton can be found on Ultimas's website.
The event is open for all staff and students. Welcome!
The official opening of the new Music, Communication and Technology Master's programme
Time and place: Aug. 29, 2018 11:00 AM–3:00 PM, MCT Portal, ZEB, UiO / Studio Olavskvartalet, NTNU
Programme
- Welcome greetings by the Heads of Departments (Peter Edwards & Jørgen Langdalen)
- Performance: "Superstring theories" (Øyvind Brandtsegg & Bernt Isak Wærstad)
- A whirlwind tour of MCT by the programme leaders (Alexander Refsum Jensenius & Sigurd Saue)
- Official opening by the UiO and NTNU rectors (Svein Stølen & Gunnar Bovim)
- Performance: "Stillness under Tension" (UiO-NTNU muscle band)
- Initial meetings with new technology: 'the ultimate unifier?' (Arild Boman)
- Telematic Performance: On-dislocation (Ximena Alarcón)
- Art and Technology at NTNU - Case: Adressaparken in Trondheim (Andrew Perkis)
- Immersive technologies in education and training (Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland)
Seminar Abstracts
Initial meetings with new technology: 'the ultimate unifier?' Arild Boman, University of Oslo
New post-WW2 communication technologies in the 1960s, like video, computers, VR, satellite/cable networks, were marketed and celebrated by industry and establishments as 'revolutions','unifiers of mankind', etc. But also met by strong rejection and 'technophobia' from the rising counter-cultures, including academic and political criticism. Even of empirical experimentation with such technologies, as 'distractions' from the struggles of the working class.
As the development provided possibilities of studying initial encounters with the new technologies, series of such studies were carried out at the University of Oslo from the 1960s, and leading to the inter-disciplinary MediaCulture network, (later the present Kunnskapskanalen (Knowledge Channel)). An important part were experimentations with artists' first encounters with one-way and interactive net- and satellite systems, including audio, visual and kinetic/ballet communication from 1973-, leading to a model of different strategies, like principles of composition.
In music, western classical musicians, jazz musicians, third world (Jamaican rasta) roots musicians, and children's singing between Nairobi and Oslo were included. The experimentation showed that though the new systems were efficient providers of one-way communication, it indicated grave problems, even excommunication due to inherent transformations/ delays in such systems, like in the temporality of acts in parallel two-way communication.
They also indicated that non-western cultures may be more capable of dealing with such systemic antinomies than the western one producing and controlling that technology. Later general 'technosophy', even in arts, has celebrated new possibilities, but not solved such basic problems in intended or incidental new net-based 'world culture'.
The experimentation was stressing equipments to their limits, and various recording tapes are now difficult to replay during restoration. Here we will concentrate on experimentation with music students' initial encounters with playing chamber music via net-, their realizing of technological systematic distortions of their playing-, and their ways of trying to overcome them. And consider the empirical relevance of some of the initial hypotheses and principles of composition in net-based systems.
Arild Boman
Associate professor emeritus, sociologist, musician: recordings with Public Enemies, Jan Garbarek, Karin Krog, George Russell; first works into video and computer art from the1960s; satellites, holography, VR (w/Erkki Kurenniemi), from the 70s. Composer, theater: including Ibsen plays; film: Hurra for Andersen, Red-Blue Paradise; tv: Interludium, (w/S.E.Børja, new tv-language), Pompel&Pilt, Diade. Started the video art teaching at the State Academy of Art 1974, and the first African video art workshop, Lagos 1977. Research stays at Schaeffer's labs, Paris 1970, and UC Berkeley, 2005. Works presented at Biennale de Paris 69, World Exhibition, Hannover 2000, VR at Biennale di Venezia 2003, Documenta 2012, National Museum: I Wish This Was A Song 2012/13. Worked in Telenor longterm planning, and Norwegian state media commission, 70s/80s, Conductor of experimentation in residents' use of their own internal cable nets in several countries from the 80s. Conductor of MediaCulture interdisciplinary research network and studio/labs, UiO, from the 70s, now coordinator Kunnskapskanalen (Knowledge Channel), transmitting universities' programs via NRK.
Telematic Performance: On-dislocation, Ximena Alarcón, University of Oslo
In this talk I will share my experience in creating telematic sonic performances using long-distance bi-directional transmission of sound through the Internet: a mediation that strengthens metaphors of migration and dislocation. From this experimental, compositional and collaborative art practice, inspired by Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening, my art research has evolved into the creation of INTIMAL: an embodied physical virtual system for relational listening. INTIMAL interrelates body movement, vocal expression, memory and sense of place in a telematic system, expanding the technical possibility of 'streaming sound' to the one of 'sensing vibrations', in the distance.
The system is being informed by a group of Colombian Migrant Women living in three European cities, involved in a fieldwork that uses Deep Listening and Embodied Music Cognition methods. INTIMAL is using technologies that augment and inter-relate feelings, body movements, and vocal expression in migratory contexts, for people to playfully improvise their migratory journeys, finding connections with themselves and others, physically and virtually, opening paths for healing.
Ximena Alarcón (BA, MA, PhD)
A sound artist and researcher interested in listening to interstices: dreams, underground public transport, and the migratory context. Her research focuses on the creation of sonic telematic performances and networked environments to expand our sense of place, using Deep Listening, telematic improvisation with field recordings and spoken word, and interfaces for relational listening. She has a Ph.D. in Music, Technology, and Innovation (De Montfort University), and has been a Leverhulme Trust postdoctoral researcher at the IOCT - Institute of Creative Technologies (DMU) and a Research Fellow at CRiSAP -Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice (LCC-UAL). She is now a Marie Skłodowska Curie Individual Fellow 2017-2019 at RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion, Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo, developing her project INTIMAL.
Art and Technology at NTNU – Case: Adressaparken in Trondheim, Andrew Perkis, NTNU
Abstract: Digital storytelling is at the heart of new digital media and the ability to tell stories in various formats for multiple platforms is becoming increasingly important. The drive today is towards creating immersive and interactive digital stories for a diversity of services and applications, spanning from pure entertainment through art, edutainment and training towards digital culture and destinations. The case study will evolve around how one can use sensors and actuators to tell digital stories and its impact the participants. The case study will be from Adressaparken – an interactive installation park – being developed in Trondheim as a platform for sensor based digital storytelling.
Adressaparken is a public park of around 1300 square meters surrounding the head office of the local newspaper – Adresseavisen. In 2014, the municipality of Trondheim Adresseavisen and NTNU agreed to collaborate on designing this park as an interactive installation park creating a public arena for projects exploring the convergence of art, media and technology.
The driving force was to provide the city and its citizens with an arena for artistic experiences, development of knowledge and a site for societal debates, and in this way, contribute to strengthen and make visible the knowledge/culture city of Trondheim.
Andrew Perkis
received his Siv.Ing and Dr. Techn. Degrees in 1985 and 1994, respectively. In 2008 he received an executive Master of Technology Management in cooperation from NTNU, NHH and NUS (Singapore). He has been with NTNU since 1993 and currently holds a chair within Media Technology. His current research focus is within the synergies of art and technology, methods and functionality of content representation, quality assessment and its use within the media value chain.
His application focus is on art in public spaces, sensor based digital storytelling and business modelling for the creative and media industry. He was one of the founding authors of the concept of Universal Multimedia Access (UMA) and Quality of Experience (QoE). He is coordinating ARTEC at NTNU, a task force for setting up directions and visions for new research within art and technology as well as directions for innovations in Immersive Media Technology Experiences.
He has been involved in the start-up company Adactus and commercial aspects of Digital Cinema role out through running the Norwegian trial project NORDIC. He is currently board member of NxtMedia a nationally funded industry consortium working for the media sector in developing new ways of digital publishing, GAMI – WAN-IFRA Global Alliance for media innovation and NEM – New European Media a European Technology Platform. Currently he is Principle Investigator for NTNU in H2020–ITN-QoE-Net.
He is member of The Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences (NTVA), senior member of the IEEE, member of ACM, member of The Norwegian Society of Chartered Engineers.
Immersive technologies in education and training, Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland, NTNU
Immersive technologies, as an umbrella term for virtual, augmented reality and mixed reality (VR/AR/MR), have had an explosive development in recent years and open great opportunities in the context of education and training. Hardware and software are becoming more available and affordable.
As learning environments, these technologies afford immersive, adaptive and explorative learning spaces, well suited for developing high-impact pedagogies. This talk provides an overview of cross-disciplinary research and education activities at the Innovative Immersive Technologies for Learning group (IMTEL) and VR/AR lab at NTNU Dragvoll, including cross-campus collaboration in VR.
Ekaterina Prasolova-Førland
Professor at the Department of Education and Lifelong Learning at NTNU. She has been working with educational virtual worlds and immersive technologies since 2002, with nearly 100 publications in the field. She has been involved in developing educational virtual reality simulations for a wide range of stakeholders, from aquaculture industry to the Norwegian Armed Forces.
Ekaterina has founded and is leading Innovative Immersive Technologies for Learning (IMTEL) research group and 'Lifelong learning' VR lab at Dragvoll, as well as '4 campuses 1 reality' initiative with the goal of connecting the distributed campuses of NTNU with a network of VR labs.
She is founder of Women in VR/AR Norway and frequently gives public speeches and interviews on immersive technologies for learning and training. She is currently leading the development of innovative VR/AR solutions for the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration to assist and empower young job seekers.
She is also working on a number of projects on educational applications of immersive technologies in medicine, sports, therapy, career guidance, collaborative work, emergency management and other areas.
Research Seminar / Forskningsforum: Guest lecture by Benjamin Piekut
Benjamin D. Piekut (Cornell University) will be giving a talk on "The Vernacular Avant-Garde."
Time and place: May 28, 2018 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen, ZEB
About the speaker
Benjamin Piekut is a historian of experimental music, jazz, and rock after 1960. His monograph, Experimentalism Otherwise: The New York Avant-Garde and its Limits, was published in 2011 by the University of California Press. Situated at the intersection of free jazz, the Cagean avant-garde, Fluxus, radical politics, and popular music, the book portrays New York experimentalism in the 1960s as a series of conflicts, struggles, and exclusions.
His second monograph, The World Is a Problem: Henry Cow and the Vernacular Avant-garde, is under contract with Duke University Press. That research explores the movement of experimentalism into popular music domains and how such transformations might suggest a reformulation of avant-garde theories.
He is also the editor of two books. The first, Tomorrow is the Question, was published in 2014 by the University of Michigan Press; the collection explores new corners of experimental music history, most notably those in popular culture, in performance and recordings, and in sites outside of North America.
The second, The Oxford Handbook of Critical Improvisation Studies (co-edited with George E. Lewis), is a two-volume set with 60 contributors from the arts, humanities, social, and natural sciences (2016). With David Nicholls, he co-edited a special issue of Contemporary Music Review for John Cage’s 100th birthday.
He has published articles in a wide range of journals and edited collections. His essay in TDR, “Deadness: Technologies of the Intermundane,” co-authored with Jason Stanyek, received the “Outstanding Article Award” in 2011 from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and was selected by MIT Press as one of its 50 most influential articles in all disciplines in the history of its Journals Division.
Previously a Lecturer at the University of Southampton in the UK, he is now an associate professor in the Department of Music at Cornell.
Abstract
In this talk, I attempt to nudge the theory of the avant-garde to take account of historical developments in vernacular music making at the end of the twentieth century. Influential theorizations of the historical and neo avant-gardes have engaged the popular only sporadically, often as a set of materials or techniques that elite artists might use to push their interventions into the realm of daily life.
Drawing on the work of Miriam Hansen, I develop the concept of the vernacular avant-garde to describe developments within popular music after the second World War, when changing material conditions (cheap LP records and consumer-grade tape decks) allowed a generation of rock musicians to encounter, imitate, and extend the new musical vocabularies of electronic, experimental, and contemporary music, as well as those of the jazz avant-garde.
Like other avant-gardes, this one critiqued its conditions of production, challenged aesthetic autonomy, sought a radical transformation of society, and engaged productively with new technological means of aesthetic experience. I share examples from my research on the British rock band, Henry Cow (1968-78), and a string of associated groups and artists: Intermodulation, Dagmar Krause, Anthony Moore, Faust, and Slapp Happy.
Welcome to the launch for Nanette Nielsen’s book «Paul Bekker’s Musical Ethics»
Time and place: Apr. 28, 2018 12:30 PM–2:30 PM, Formidlingssenteret, The Opera house
The book launch will include a panel discussion on the topic:
‘Staging morality in the 1920s and 2020s: should opera be political?’
Panel speakers include: Peter Edwards (University of Oslo), Peter Franklin (University of Oxford), Sarah Hibberd (University of Bristol), Astrid Kvalbein (NMH) and Aksel Tollåli (Oslo). The event is introduced and moderated by Hallgjerd Aksnes (University of Oslo).
Central questions for discussion
When and how should opera be a tool for moral and/or political expression? What might contemporary opera directors learn from the past? While working as an opera director in the Weimar Republic between the two World Wars, the German-Jewish music critic and public intellectual Paul Bekker claimed that he did not present works on the stage with the purpose of serving particular political perspectives. In the politically turbulent period of his time, this may have been a wise move: perhaps it was due to this explicit distancing to politics that Bekker in 1932 – amidst the powerful rise of Nazism – managed to stage works that had been met with significant Nazi protests, and that other opera producers did not dare touch.
An expression of his musical ethics, Bekker’s stance for opera was all about enabling what he saw as music’s ‘socially forming force’, its power to unify the German people in a society which needed to pick itself up in the aftermath of World War I. Forced to flee the country in the face of Nazism due to his Jewish ancestry, Bekker’s ‘ethical project’ in the end, however, did not succeed.
The purpose of this panel is to discuss the extent to which contemporary opera enthusiasts might find the example of Paul Bekker instructive for opera’s moral and political engagement today. Like in the 1920s, today’s Western world is politically fragmented, alienated, and constantly on the brink of several wars and disasters, financially, technologically, and environmentally. What are the moral ‘oughts’ and ‘shoulds’ in relation to opera’s engagement in such matters?
About the author
Nanette Nielsen is Associate Professor at the University of Oslo. She works on music and philosophy, especially intersections between ethics and aesthetics, on opera and music criticism in the Weimar republic, and on Scandinavian music and culture.
Her publications include Music and Ethics (2012), co-authored with Marcel Cobussen, the article 'Ernst Krenek's "problem of freedom" in Jonny spielt auf' (Twentieth-Century Music, 2013) - for which she won the 2014 Jerome Roche Prize - the Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy, co-edited with Jerrold Levinson and Tomas McAuley, and the newly published monograph Paul Bekker’s Musical Ethics (Routledge, October 2017).
Future projects include the monograph The Sense of Music: Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, and Embodiment (under contract with Routledge).
Academic writing and publishing seminar with prof. Sarah Hibberd
Professor Sarah Hibberd (University of Bristol) will give a seminar on academic writing and publishing.
Time and place: Apr. 27, 2018 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Seminar room 1, ZEB
In this seminar, Professor Sarah Hibberd will draw on her wide experience as a journal editor, book editor, and author, and share examples of dos and don’ts from the world of academic publishing. Topics include:
- Book contracts – approaching potential publishers; how to write a winning book proposal.
- Articles for journals – getting your manuscript ready for initial submission; choosing your journal.
- The peer review process.
- Reviewing books.
There will be plenty of opportunity to share experiences and ask questions, and if anyone would like to offer in-progress book proposals, we can workshop them in the seminar (please send in two weeks beforehand).
About the speaker
Sarah Hibberd is Stanley Hugh Badock Chair of Music at the University of Bristol. She has been a co-editor of Music & Letters (2009–17), and is just taking over as a co-editor of the Cambridge Opera Journal.
She has edited and co-edited a number of volumes, including Melodramatic Voices: Understanding Music Drama (Farnham, 2011) and (with Richard Wrigley) Art, Theatre and Opera in Paris 1750–1850: Exchanges and Tensions (Farnham 2014), and guest-edited a special issue of 19th-Century Music devoted to Music and Science in Paris and London (2015).
She has published in a variety of journals, including Cambridge Opera Journal, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 19th-Century Music, Music & Letters, Laboratoire Italien, and contributed chapters to edited volumes.
Her monograph French Grand Opera and the Historical Imagination was published by Cambridge University Press in 2009, and she is currently completing a second monograph entitled French Opera and the Revolutionary Sublime.
2017
Popular Music and Dust - Archives, Memory, Heritage, Historiography
A Seminar Co-Organized by the National Library (NB) and the Department of Musicology (IMV), University of Oslo. Keynote speaker Marion Leonard (Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool).
Time and place: Nov. 15, 2017 9:00 AM–12:30 PM, Auditoriet Nasjonalbiblioteket
Programme
- Hege Høsøien (NB): Welcome address
- Ivar Håkon Eikje (NB): Introduction
- Students from the Department of Musicology. Chair: Kyle Devine (IMV)
- Eirik Øverby Vist: The Oslo Jazz Festival: Revivals and roots in jazz
- Geir Stadheim: Rock Posters from the National Library of Norway Collection
- Simon Bakke Frøystadvåg: A historiographic view on JR Ewing
- Keynote: Marion Leonard (University of Liverpool): 'This really happened'. Confirmation, memory and the representation of popular music history. Chair: Áine Mangaoang (IMV)
- Kyle Devine (IMV): Discussion & Closing Remarks
Envy as a social emotion
Visiting postdoc Alba Montes Sánchez (University of Copenhagen) will give a talk on the topic: Envy as a social emotion.
Time and place: Oct. 17, 2017 10:15 AM–11:30 AM, Georg Morgenstiernes hus, Seminarrom 144
Abstract
Within emotion theory envy is generally portrayed as a purely individualistic emotion: the rivalry envy involves, so the thought goes, indicates that the relation between the envier and the rival is exclusively antagonistic in nature and, hence, anti-social. This paper aims at resisting this view by arguing that envy necessarily presupposes a sense of us-ness.
To put this claim in more technical terms, envy can be described as a hetero-induced self-conscious emotion, i.e., as an emotion that, although being about the self, is induced by somebody who is perceived by the emoting subject as an in-group member.
A talk in three parts
The presentation is organized in three parts. In the first part, we argue that envy is always a hostile emotion by focusing on Scheler’s theory of envy and, in particular, on his idea that envy presupposes a sense of impotence on the side of the envier as well as a psychological tendency to compare oneself with others.
In the second part, we introduce the notion of “hetero-induced self-conscious emotions” by focusing on the paradigmatic case of being ashamed of somebody else.
In the third part we apply this framework to envy and argue (i) that the impotence felt by the subject signals the emotion’s self-reflexivity and (ii) that the target of the comparison is somebody who the emoting subject conceives of as an in-group member. The paper ends by assessing the extent to which envy presupposes a sense of us.
About the presenter
The talk is presented by Alba Montes Sánchez, who earned her PhD in 2014 from Carlos III University of Madrid with a thesis on the moral significance of shame. She is currently employed as a post doctoral researcher at the Centre for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen as part of an interdisciplinary project on the “Genomic History of Denmark” focusing on personal identity and group membership. Publications include Salice, A., & Montes Sánchez, A. (2016). Pride, Shame and Group Identification. Frontiers in Psychology, 7(557). DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00557 and Montes Sánchez, A. (2014). Shame, recognition and love in Shakespeare’s 'King Lear'. Azafea, 16, 73-93.
Research Forum: Prof. Chris Stover (Arizona State University) and "meet-the-postdocs"
Prof. Chris Stover from the Arizona State University will give a guest lecture entitled "Eight Axioms for a Theory of Timeline Music."
Time and place: Oct. 16, 2017 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen, ZEB
Professor Chris Stover presents his talk
In this talk I will introduce a theory of how a number of musical layers come together to define a class of musical expression that I call timeline music. I will begin by introducing eight axioms, each of which outlines a property that I suggest is shared by all musics that fit within the category of timeline musics. I will illustrate each with musical examples from West Africa, Cuba, and Brazil, showing how each axiom contributes crucially to my larger definition. I will conclude with some thoughts on how this framework affects and engenders groove, including issues of expression, feel, and microtiming.
Meet the postdocs
Our new postdocs will give a short presentation of their projects followed by a few minutes of questions and comments.
- Ximena Alarcon Diaz: INTIMAL (Interfaces for Relational Listening): Body, Memory, Migration, Telematics
- Mari Romarheim Haugen: Will present her project linked to the research project TIME: "Meter as shape in Scandinavian Folk Music".
- Victor Evaristo Gonzales Sanchez: My talk will be about the MICRO project and some of our initial experiments, results and plans in our quest to understand the physiological, physical, and cognitive links between music and human micro-motion.
- Georgios Sioros: Moving in Sound, and Musical Micro-Rhythm
- Visiting Post Doc: Alba Montes Sánchez (University of Copenhagen) "What can we learn from fiction? A phenomenological approach to an old question”
We will also have presentations by the incoming Post doc Autumn 2018: Simon Høffding (University of Copenhagen/UiO) "Where Musicology, Phenomenology, Psychiatry and Embodied Cognitive Science meet: What the .... is Musical Absorption?”
Book Launch: The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music and Gender
The first Research Seminar of the semester will feature the launch of the new international anthology,The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music and Gender (New York. Routledge, 2017), edited by Stan Hawkins and published this year.
Time and place: Sep. 18, 2017 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen, ZEB
Program
- Welcome (Nanette Nielsen, Head of Research)
- Overview of the book (prof. Stan Hawkins)
- Guest lecture by Phil Purvis: In Support of Gendered Musicology: A Poulenc Case Study
- Panel and Q&A (including any of the contributors present and editor)
Why is gender inseparable from pop songs? What can gender representations in musical performances mean? Why are there strong links between gender, sexuality and popular music? The sound of the voice, the mix, the arrangement, the lyrics and images, all link our impressions of gender to music. Numerous scholars writing about gender in popular music to date are concerned with the music industry’s impact on fans, and how tastes and preferences become associated with gender. This is the first collection of its kind to develop and present new theories and methods in the analysis of popular music and gender. The contributors are drawn from a range of disciplines including musicology, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, philosophy, and media studies, providing new reference points for studies in this interdisciplinary field. Stan Hawkins’s introduction sets out to situate a variety of debates that prompts ways of thinking and working, where the focus falls primarily on gender roles. Amongst the innovative approaches taken up in this collection are: queer performativity, gender theory, gay and lesbian agency, the female pop celebrity, masculinities, transculturalism, queering, transgenderism and androgyny. This Research Companion is required reading for scholars and teachers of popular music, whatever their disciplinary background.
Guest lecturer Phil Purvis
Currently the Director of Music at d’Overbroeck’s, Oxford, Philip holds undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Lancaster and a PGCE from the University of Cumbria. In 2015, he was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts. Philip writes on issues of gender and sexuality in different musical contexts. His first book Masculinity in Opera (Routledge, 2013) was nominated for both the Philip Brett and AMS Best Edited Collection Awards. Philip’s second book, Music & Camp, co-edited with Christopher Moore (University of Ottawa) will be published by Wesleyan University Press in early 2018. Philip is also working on a Routledge Research Companion on Music & War with Rachel Moore (University of Oxford). Recently, he has examined for the University of Cambridge and National Music GCSE and A level exam boards.
Workshop: Dance Music, Diverse Perspectives
Dr Luis-Manuel Garcia (University of Birmingham) and Dr Maria Witek (Aarhus University) will be guest presenters at Dance Music, Diverse Perspectives.
Time and place: Sep. 8, 2017 12:30 PM–4:30 PM, Seminar room 2, ZEB
Dance music
Electronic dance music engages scholars across the world in a wide range of academic fields, spanning the music-theorietical, neuroscientific, philosophical, and more. The goal of this small workshop is to take our common research interest as a departure point for conversations that might otherwise never occur, between scholars who might otherwise never meet. In what ways can such an “undisciplined” approach to researching dance music—where our starting points, paradigms, methodologies, and vocabularies differ so substantially—be fruitful? What and how might we learn from each other?
Programme
- Welcome by Prof. Stan Hawkins
- Introduction by Dr. Tami Gadir
- Dr. Maria Witek
- Dr. Luis-Manuel Garcia
- Discussion
Biographies
Dr Luis-Manuel Garcia, Lecturer in Ethnomusicology and Popular Music Studies, University of Birmingham, UK.
Luis-Manuel Garcia researches electronic dance music scenes (e.g., house, techno, etc.), with a special focus on issues of affect, sexuality, tourism, and the creative industries. His ethnographic fieldwork focuses primarily on Berlin, Germany. He is also an active member of the queer-forward, women-led Room 4 Resistance collective, which organises electronic music events that feature femme-identified, queer, non-binary, and trans artists as well as artists of colour.
Dr Maria Witek, Assistant Professor, Department of Clinical Medicine - Center for Music in the Brain, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Maria A. G. Witek is Assistant Professor at Center for Music in the Brain, Dept. of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University & Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus/Aalborg, Denmark. Her research addresses the psychology, phenomenology and cognitive neuroscience of rhythm, body-movement and pleasure in groove music, using methods such as brain imaging, motion-capture and music analysis. She has won a number of awards, most recently the Adam Krims Memorial Prize from the Society for Music Analysis.
Guest Lecture on Prison Music with Prof. Ben Harbert
Prof. Ben Harbert from the Department of Performing Arts, Georgetown University (Washington DC), will present his research on music in Louisiana prisons on August 24, and participate in a free film screening and public Q&A on August 21.
Time and place: Aug. 24, 2017 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen, ZEB
Lecture by Prof. ben Harbert: Musical Vestiges of Prison Reform at Louisiana State Penitentiary
Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is simultaneously one of the most notorious and most musical prisons. The prison’s roster of musicians includes Leadbelly and Robert Pete Williams, well-known blues musicians who worked with folklorists John Lomax and Harry Oster respectfully. As a result of folkloric collection in prisons, blues and chain-gang songs represent the voice of the American prisoner. There is, however, a more diverse musical tradition of music tied to the ways that imprisonment changed through the twentieth century.
The prison newsmagazine, local newspapers, and interviews with prisoners and staff alike show that jazz was the most active and popular musical practice through the 1960s. Small combos toured the dilapidated prison camps on prison farm playing current arrangements and original songs. Musicians worked the fields as they silently rehearsed Coltrane’s harmonic innovations. Bands toured outside the prison—the administration showcasing aural results prison reform. Angola’s prison drew heavily upon professional black musicians from New Orleans. These musicians capitalized on the new institutions that arose from 1950s reforms—the education and recreation departments and the prisoner-run Inmate Lending Fund.
This talk describes how the professional and amateur jazz scene was entangled with the administration and contemporary practices of incarceration. It offers new ways of thinking about how creative practices connect to the ever-changing and ever-growing carceral practices in the United States.
About the speaker
Ben Harbert joined the music faculty at Georgetown University after receiving his Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. His current research interests include documentary film, international extreme metal, and music of the Near East. His theoretical approach connects investigations of musical experiences to analyses of musical phenomena. Harbert has been a teaching fellow at University of California, Los Angeles and a lecturer at Pomona College as well as a resident artist at the Performing Arts Center of Los Angeles County.
Programme
Harbert’s guest lecture on 24 August, 13:15-15h will be followed by responses from Prof. Even Ruud and Prof. Hans Weisethaunet before opening to questions from the floor.
The lecture is preceeded by a free public screening of Harbert’s ethnographic documentary Follow Me Down: Portraits of Louisiana prison musicians. This takes place at Eldorado bokhandel at 17-19:30h on Monday 21 August.
Music 2020: Interdisciplinarity, Innovation, Impact
Welcome to the International Music Research Summer School, which will take place in Oslo June 2017. The event is a collaboration between Grieg Research School, the Norwegian Academy of Music and the University of Oslo, Dept. of Musicology.
Time and place: June 13, 2017 11:00 AM–June 16, 2017 3:00 PM, IMV and NMH
We are delighted to announce the International Music Research Summer School in Oslo, which will run from June 13th-16th 2017. The event is organized by the Grieg Research School in Interdisciplinary Music Studies (Western Norway), the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo, and the Department of Musicology, University of Oslo.
Invited speakers/presenters include
- Kenneth Aigen, New York University Steinhardt (USA)
- Georgina Born, University of Oxford (UK)
- Jane Davidson, University of Melbourne (Australia)
- Mine Doğantan-Dack, University of Oxford (UK)
- Sarah Hibberd, University of Nottingham (UK)
- Øivind Varkøy, Norwegian Academy of Music (Oslo/Norway)
Music research is increasingly formulated and assessed in terms of the three i´s - interdisciplinarity, innovation, and impact. The aim of this event is to consider these concepts and their influence on current practices and policies in music research.
Globally the move from disciplinary specificity to interdisciplinary breadth has become a major trend across academia, but how has such a movement changed thinking in traditional music disciplines? Focusing on musicology, music education, music therapy, and artistic research/arts-based research, this summer school will provide opportunities to present, debate, and better understand knowledge production in and between these fields of study.
Innovation and impact have become central concepts in the development of research policy and as criteria for research assessment. Indeed, the biggest EU research funding program, Horizon 2020, binds research to innovation by defining it as an “investment in our future”. How are these, and similar, formulations influencing the way music research is undertaken? As the three i´s shape intellectual topography, are they creating an environment in which music research can thrive and grow in the years to come?
Social Activities
- Tuesday 13th: Evening Reception
- Wednesday 14th: Conference dinner (free for all participants)
- Thursday 15th: Dinner / Cultural event
Research seminar/Forskningsforum Monday 8 May, with Professor Jessica Wiskus
Professor Jessica Wiskus (Duquesne University) will give a guest lecture on Rhythm and Retention: Thinking through Husserl’s Phenomenology of Time-Consciousness
Time and place: May 8, 2017 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen, ZEB
Abstract
Among those working at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and the arts today, the particular philosophical framework known as phenomenology is well appreciated for its emphasis on the bodily experience of perception. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work, with its focus on painting, for example, is understood to thematize the intertwining of body-subject and world, taken within the domain of the present. Less appreciated among today’s multi-disciplinary researchers, however, remain classic phenomenological explorations, through the musical melody, that address what might be termed the “other side” of the present: retention, memory, and transcendental subjectivity.
My research engages with Husserl’s work on the problem of time-consciousness, paying particular attention to the notion of retention and its relevance to music. According to Husserl, retention functions not as a repository of sensorial impressions that, through an act of re-presentation, would make every “past” into a “present”; rather, it sustains the past as absence – as potential – and serves as access to memory. Developing Husserl’s themes, I make two claims: 1) that musical rhythm pertains specifically to the field of retention, and 2) that in this way musical rhythm opens up our way of thinking about transcendental subjectivity.
Biography
Jessica Wiskus works at the intersection of music and continental philosophy. She is the author of The Rhythm of Thought: Art, Literature, and Music after Merleau-Ponty (University of Chicago, 2013). Her articles have appeared in Musiktheorie: Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Philosophy Today, Epoché, Angelaki and other journals. Currently, she is working as a Fellow at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies in Aarhus, Denmark, where her research concerns the phenomenology of time-consciousness in music and the foundations of ethics. In 2018, she will return to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA, USA, where she serves as Professor of Music.
Nordic Sounds meeting
The next Nordic Sounds meeting features a presentation from Astrid Kvalbein (Post-Doctoral Researcher, Department of Musicology, University of Oslo) on Fartein Valen's compositions titled "A Melancholic Modernist of the North?"
Time and place: Apr. 26, 2017 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, 103, ZEB Bygningen
A melancholic modernist of the north?
“The melancholy of Valen’s music, however passionate it may become at times, inhabits a northern climate” stated Deryk Cooke in the cover text to an LP with works by Fartein Valen released in Britain in 1958. The atonal music of the Norwegian composer, who in his home country was considered anything but “national” was often recognized as Nordic when performed abroad. This apparent paradox will be a starting point for discussing the tensions between the Nordic, the modern(ist) and the national in discourses on Valen and his music.
Astrid Kvalbein
Astrid specialises in Norwegian music history from the 1900s to the 2000s. Her PhD thesis was about Pauline Hall (1890-1969) who was a Norwegian composer, music critic and founder of Ny Musikk, the Norwegian section of the International Society for Contemporary Music. Currently, she is conducting research on Norwegian composer Fartein Valen (1897-1952).
Research seminar: Justin London
At this year's second Research Seminar Professor Justin London (Carleton College) will give a talk on "Really Bad Music: Musical and Moral Mistakes". The seminar will be moderated by Anne Danielsen.
Time and place: Mar. 20, 2017 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen, ZEB
There are perhaps three kinds of bad music: music that makes you cringe, music that makes you laugh, and music that makes you angry. These three responses to bad music are indicative of the structural and social dimensions of bad music, as well as the ways in which our value judgments, and the emotional and aesthetic reactions that undergird them, are grounded in the social significance of music and music making. The lecture is illustrated with delicious examples from a wide range of musical styles.
Justin London
is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music, Cognitive Science, and the Humanities at Carleton College, Northfield, MN USA, where he teaches courses in Music Theory, The Philosophy of Music, Music Psychology, Cognitive Science, and American Popular Music. He received his B.M. degree in Classical Guitar and his M.M. degree in Music Theory from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and he holds a Ph.D. in Music History and Theory from the University of Pennsylvania, where he worked with Leonard Meyer. His research interests include rhythm and meter, music perception and cognition, sensorimotor synchronization and joint action, and musical aesthetics. He served as President of the Society for Music Theory in 2007-2009, and is currently President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition.
2016
Book launch: Digital Signatures. The Impact of Digitization on Popular Music Sound
Is digital production killing the soul of music? Is Auto-Tune the nadir of creative expression?
Time and place: Sep. 5, 2016 1:15 PM–3:00 PM, Salen, ZEB-building, Blindern campus
In this book, UiO professors Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen and Anne Danielsen examine the ways in which digital technology can be used beyond the quest for «digital perfection», that is, as a new compositional palette.
Panel and Introductions:
- Nick Prior (University of Edinburgh)
- Jon Marius Aareskjold (University of Tromsø/University of Agder)
- Ragnhild Brøvig-Hanssen (University of Oslo; author of the book)
- Anne Danielsen (University of Oslo; author of the book)
- Moderator: Stan Hawkins (University of Oslo)
Nick Prior is senior lecturer and former Head of Department of Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. He has published widely on the sociology of music, including on iPod use, laptops, music scenes and the voice. He is currently completing a book on digital technology and popular music since 1982 and is Lead Editor of the journal Cultural Sociology.
Jon Marius Aareskjold is associate professor of music technology at the University of Tromsø and teaches music production at the University of Agder. He is also professional music producer and sound engineer and has worked with an eclectic mix of Norwegian and international artists, including a-ha, Nils Petter Molvær, Train, Rihanna, and Beyoncé. He is associate professor of music technology at the University of Tromsø and teaches music production and laptop as main instrument at the University of Agder.
Organizer: Department of Musicology, Faculty of Humanities
2015
The Electric Space Concert Series: Concert 1
Welcome to a new concert series featuring 3D electroacoustic acousmatic music. In each concert, we will play modern and classic immersive and dynamic spatial music on a 47 speaker ambisonics array installed in the motion lab at IMV.
Time and place: Nov. 19, 2015 4:00 PM, ZEB Building
Program
In this first concert it seems appropriate to explore the historical and stylistic extremes of the acousmatic repertoire. Short works from as early as 1968 are interpreted over our latest spatialisation technology, and contrasted with recent compositions that have been performed world-over. The program explores the diversity of the acousmatic genre displaying influences ranging from environmental-based sound-art through to intense concert experiences.
The concert will begin with a short introduction about the Technology we are using and about the works that we shall play.
- David Monacchi: A Path Into the Rainforest. 6'00. (2013). Ambisonics Soundfield composition.
- Francois Bayle: L'expérience acoustique, Part III. La Preuve par le sens - 12. it. 3'52. (1968-1971). Stereo source spatialised over ambisonics.
- Bernard Parmegiani: Dedans-dehors, Part I - En phase / hors phase 2'29. (1977). Stereo source spatialised over ambisonics.
- Natasha Barrett: Hidden Values, Part II - Optical Tubes. 7'00. (2012). 6th order 3D ambisonics.
- Manuella Blackburn: Switched on. 8'00. (2011). Stereo source spatialised over ambisonics.
Organizer: Department of Musicology
Fartein Valen Research Seminar
Prof. Tomi Mäkelä will give a guest lecture entitled Does the North still have a chance? Open for all.
Time and place: Nov. 13, 2015 10:30 AM–3:30 PM, National Library of Norway, Oslo
Professor Tomi Mäkelä, from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, is a leading international musicologist with Nordic music as his specialty.
Organizer: The Valen-project at the Department of Music (UiO).
The MotionComposer-software: turning movement into music
Persons with disabilities such as blindness, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s can express themselves musically through movement. Open for all.
Time and place: Oct. 13, 2015 1:00 PM, Bevegelseslab ZEB-bygningen
Robert Wechsler (choreographer) and Andreas Bergsland (composer) will present a workshop concerning interactive technologies and approaches for turning human movement into music.
Together with colleagues they have developed a new hardware/software device for persons with disabilities called the MotionComposer and in the process, they have created a number of interactive dance pieces for non-disabled professional dancers.
Their approach to human machine interface champions intuitiveness and transparency (clear causality) in the interactive relationship and differs in some important ways from the more common skeleton extraction and gesture recognition approaches, particularly as they concern kinesthesia, synaesthesia and the perception of sound and music.
2014
Seminar: Spatial audio from IRCAM
Latest developments in spatial audio and computer-aided composition tools from IRCAM.
Time and place: Nov. 24, 2014 10:00 AM–4:00 PM, ZEB, motion capture lab (1st floor)
Program
- Recent research and developments in spatial audio and computer-aided composition. Thibaut Carpentier, Jean Bresson, Dimitri Bouche
- Presentation focusing on spatial audio Practical spatialisation demos and workshops (in horizontal ambisonics up to 11th order over 24 speakers – a preview of the future norm.)
- Short presentations from IMV on current spatial and motion research
- Workshop continuation and discussions.
- Informal work and further demonstrations in the studio (Thibaut Carpentier)
Invited guests
- Jean Bresson: Leading the Research and Development part on computer-aided composition at IRCAM.
- Thibaut Carpentier: Research and Development Engineer; Acoustic and Cognitive Spaces Team, responsible for Spat’s design and development.
- Dimitri Bouche: Ph.D Candidate in Computer Science applied to Music.
Carpentier, Bouche and Bresson are deeply involved in the development of IRCAM’s spatial audio and computer aided composition tools. Recently, spatial audio within spat has grown to include very high order 3D ambisonics and wavefield synthesis in an efficient, flexible and powerful configuration. Likewise, OpenMusic has transformed as tool for instrumental composers to a tool that integrates signal processing. Our guests from IRCAM will present their latest developments in a morning of research-oriented presentations and in an afternoon of practical spatial audio demos and workshops.
Rock Logic
Guest lecture with Professor Dmitri Tymoczko (Princeton University) where he will outline an indigenous theory about Rock harmony. The event is open to the general public.
Time and place: June 13, 2014 2:15 PM–3:00 PM, Sem 1, ZEB
Using some of the ideas in his book, A Geometry of Music, Tymoczko will outline an indigenous theory of Rock harmony, showing how these musicians uncovered a natural and deeply logical alternative to traditional harmonic procedures--one in which harmonies tend to go "backwards."
Tymoczko will show that similar ideas can be found in the music of the late 16th and early 17th century, including Morley and Schutz. From this point of view, the "functional" harmony of the baroque and classical period represents a departure from a larger norm.
Professor Dmitri Tymoczko is a composer and music theorist who teaches at Princeton University.
Organizer
Department of Musicology
Decomposed: Political Ecology and Recorded Music since 1900
This presentation by Kyle Devine is about what recordings are made of, and about what happens to those recordings when they are disposed of. The presentation is open to the general public.
Time and place: Apr. 28, 2014 9:15 AM–11:00 AM, seminarrom 2, ZEB, IMV
Kyle Devine inscribes a history of recorded music in three main materials: shellac, plastic and data. These materials correspond to the five most prevalent recording formats since 1900: 78s, LPs, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s. The goal is to forge a political ecology of the evolving relationship between popular music and sound technology, one which accounts not only for human production and consumption but also material manufacture and disposal.
Devine suggests that such an orientation is useful for developing an analytical framework that is adequate to the complexities of the global material–cultural flows in which the recorded music commodity is de/constituted.
He concludes by noting that whereas the political economy of music follows a path of abstraction, from the solidity of manufacturing to the airiness of rights agreements, the same perhaps cannot be said of the political ecology of music.
About Kyle Devine
Kyle Devine is Lecturer in Music at City University London, as well as a Research Associate with the Music and Digitisation Research Group at the University of Oxford. He has published in journals such as Popular Music and Popular Music History, and is currently co-editing two books: Living Stereo: Histories and Cultures of Multichannel Sound (Bloomsbury) and The Sociology of Music Reader (Routledge).
Organizer: IMV
How to study musical rhythm: Disciplinary approaches and research notes
Guest lecture by Justin London from Carleton College, Minnesota, USA. This lecture is open to everybody.
Time and place: Apr. 3, 2014 9:15 AM–11:00 AM, ZEB-bygningen, seminarrom 1
Justin London is a Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, where he teaches courses in Music Theory, The Philosophy of Music, Music Perception and Cognition, and American Popular Music. He is the author of Hearing in Time: Psychological Aspects of Musical Meter (Oxford 2012) and is currently a Fulbright Professor at the University of Jyväskylä. The lecture is supported by Fulbright.
Researching Brass Bands in the Streets of New Orleans
Guest lecture with Matt Sakakeeny. The lecture is open to the general public.
Time and place: Apr. 1, 2014 12:15 PM–1:30 PM, IMV, Sem Sælandsvei 2 a, Salen.
In New Orleans, jazz funeral processions and community parades called “second lines” move through the city’s neighborhoods to the beat of the brass band.These groups have also marched off the streets and into nightclubs, concert halls, and festival grounds.
In their movements, these musicians provide a research model for how to conduct fieldwork. By staying in step, following them as they march from back street to backstage, researchers can situate the experiences of musicians in broader cultural, economics, and political contexts.
About Sakakeeny
Matt Sakakeeny is an ethnomusicologist and journalist, New Orleans resident and musician. An Assistant Professor of Music at Tulane University, he initially moved to New Orleans to work as a co-producer of the public radio program American Routes. Sakakeeny has written for publications including The Oxford American, Mojo, and Wax Poetics. He plays guitar in the band Los Po-Boy-Citos.
Black Music and White Appropriation in 1960s Rock
Guest lecture by Patrick Burke from Washington University in St. Louis, USA. The lecture is open for everybody.
Time and place: Mar. 18, 2014 2:15 PM–4:00 PM, ZEB-bygningen, seminarrom 1
Abstract
Many white rock musicians in the US and western Europe during the late 1960s were deeply invested in a vision of cultural and political revolution drawn from the Black Power movement. Prominent examples include the Rolling Stones and Jefferson Airplane. These musicians’ identification with black radical politics was paralleled and dramatized by a fascination with African American music that they explored by adapting and synthesizing black traditions. White rock performers altered and combined genres from avant-garde jazz to blues to funk in a variety of self-conscious ways to pay homage to black tradition, evoke a sense of militant commitment or encourage creative freedom.
It is commonplace to explain the surreal juxtapositions of 1960s rock as signifying psychedelic explorations of an interior landscape, but few critics have noted the extent to which such juxtapositions are rooted in distorted signifiers of blackness. Indeed, the very construction of “rock” as a genre distinct from “rock ‘n’ roll” was marked by a racial paradox: the interracial foundations of the music were masked even as white musicians’ anxieties about racial authenticity became central to the music. In this talk, Burke examines the historically distinct position of 1960s rock within the long tradition of white appropriation and adaptation of black music.