Call for proposals

Future Directions of Electroacoustic Music Studies

Music, Technology and Innovation – Institute for Sonic Creativity (MTI²)
De Montfort University, Leicester UK
Wed. 17 – Sat. 20 June 2020

Deadline for paper submission: 20 February 2020

Celebrating 20 years of Music, Technology & Innovation at De Montfort University, and 25 years of the ‘Organised Sound’ journal, 2020 is an opportune moment to investigate the state of our field and, perhaps more importantly, look to the future. As sonic creativity continues to develop rapidly, its field of study is arguably still in search of itself. Are we suffering from the old adage that music cannot be studied until it has existed for a long time? Or perhaps from our field being too interdisciplinary in nature?

EMS20 seeks to present, alongside up-to-date research results, a number of papers investigating how today’s and tomorrow’s specialists expect this important field to evolve. Will it settle in as a contemporary sub-area of musicology? Or will it find its own foci of scholarly endeavour thanks to the fact that it incorporates all sounds as well as many forms of technology?

ADDITIONAL EMS20 THEMES

The conference is also open to other topics relevant to the history and/or contemporary practice of electroacoustic music. We encourage the submission of papers relating to any aspect of the field, including but not limited to analysis, perception, listening, terminology, composition, performance, cultural issues and education.

Analysis:

- What types of discourse are relevant to electroacoustic works?
- Which analytical methods are currently being developed?
- Can one adapt existent analytical methods of music to electroacoustic works, many of which involve no prescriptive notation?
- How can we further develop the field of study of electroacoustic musics?

Transcription and representation of sound, new audio-visual tools:

- How are analytical tools being produced and disseminated in the community?
- Which means are available for communicating this sonic art form through symbolic and graphic representations?
- Does the study of electroacoustic musics require specifically designed tools or can it take advantage of methods conceived for other musics?

Taxonomy, terminology - 'meaningful' units of music description:

- Which systems of classification are in use or should be developed?
- How can we become more consistent in our use of terminology in a field as dynamic as electroacoustic music?

Real-time music making:

- How can live performance/composition strategies be analysed
- What is 'live' electronic music?

Performance, presentation, dissemination:

- What is the 'work'?
- New presentation spaces, technologies.
- Aesthetical and musical issues raised by Internet communities, group compositions, telematics and performances.

Listening, Intention-Reception

- Issues of perception and interpretation.
- How do the composer's intentions relate to what is perceived?

Semiotics/semiology, 'meaning':

- What (and how) do different electroacoustic music genres express?

Soundscape, sound ecology:

- Analytical tools for the understanding of soundscapes.
- New approaches to sound ecology, sonification, sound environment.

Genres/styles, 'languages':

- Questions of unity, diversity, plurality, multicultural resources, polystyle, hybridisation, 'local music'.

Gender issues:

- Have gender balances shifted since the early days?
- The relationship between technology/electroacoustic music and gender.
- Unrecognised contributions: revising history.

Research on history of electroacoustic music:

- Research on historical documentation.
- Studies on the genesis, development and activities of private and public studios.
- How can and should we revise history?

Socio-cultural issues:

- What are the socio-cultural ramifications of electroacoustic music?

Pedagogy:

- Curriculum design.
- Balance between theory and practice, general and specific approaches.
- Real-time and interaction versus fixed medium and studio techniques.
- Teaching material: how to select it, and language issues.

Caution: Participants are discouraged from submitting proposals focusing on their own compositions as well as those discussing the development of new technological resources for musical application that have a better home at events such as ICMC.

Paper Submission

Please see Submission Guidelines.

Deadline for submissions: 20 February 2020

All approved/presented papers will be published on the EMS site that has an ISSN number.