Critical Media in the Arts: Time, Materiality, Ecology
Christopher Haworth
Critical Media in the Arts: Time, Materiality, Ecology
19th June 2018
Start time: 10.30am
Arts Lecture Room 3, University of Birmingham
Register here
Recent years have seen approaches associated with German Media Theory and Media Archaeology draw particular attention in Anglophone art history. The ideas of Luhmann, Kittler, and Siegert are regularly enrolled to support post- and anti-humanist accounts of art-historical and epistemic shifts and their relationship to changes in technological infrastructures; to sketch out alternative or counterfactual art histories through the recovery of dead,forgotten, or imaginary media; or to better understand the chemical and material bases of storage media so as to critically evaluate their cost to the environment. Yet these critical analyses of media are not only the preserve of theoretical writing about art but take place within art practice itself. Through artefacts, sounds and experiences, new media and sound artists have frequently posed questions about what media ‘are’: what they are made of, materially; what logics govern their development, and what histories these tell; what resources they consume; what ideas they bring into the world and materialise; how they configure subjects; and which skills and knowledges – discursive, theoretical, practical – are required to analyse media. Drawing together art historians, media theorists and creative practitioners, this event will ask: can attending to artistic engagements with media help support a better understanding of sound and new media art as critical disciplines?
Presenters will include:
(Keynote Speaker) Douglas Kahn, Survivable Communication: Trees
Michael Goddard, On Sonic Synaesthesia and Ritual/Psychedelic Functions of Music in Coil
Annie Goh, Gendy Trouble, Sonic Cyberfeminisms
Matthew Hayler, Wandering Bodies – Ambient Literature, Cognition, and Technology
Eleni Ikoniadou and Alastair Cameron, Sound, Art and Vibrational Technologies of Disruption
Thor Magnusson, Ergodynamics: Towards a Terminology Beyond “Guitarplay”
Patrick Valiquet, An Ear for Liberalism: Experimental Music Research and Mass Media Education, 1973-1990
Valentina Vuksic, Thermal Tripping Through Runtime
This Symposium is co-organised by Christopher Haworth and Valentina Vuksic.
The Symposium is supported by The School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music (LCAHM) and the Contemporary Philosophy of Technology Research Group.
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Christopher Haworth
St Cecilia’s Hall, University of Edinburgh
Patrick Valiquet (Edinburgh) & Christopher Haworth (Birmingham), convenors
Keynote presentation by Eric A Drott (UT Austin)
Symposium date: 24-25 October 2019
CFP deadline: 30 April 2019
Cybernetic thinking, engineering and pedagogy left indelible marks on the progressive arts and sciences of the late twentieth century. There is now widespread recognition of the role cybernetics played in inspiring many Cold War composers and improvisers, from Cagean experimentalists and Schaefferian acousmaticians to afrofuturists, conceptual artists, ravers and psychedelic rockers. Less widely acknowledged is the extent to which cybernetics shaped the epistemology of late twentieth century music theoretical, pedagogical and ethnographic research, including early iterations of what is now called sound studies, notably in the work of Jacques Attali, Christopher Small, Barry Truax, Charles Keil and Steven Feld. In fact, the impact of cybernetic principles and methodologies on our understanding of music and musicality is ongoing. They permeate the management and outreach discourse of the institutions that support music and music research. They lie at the foundation of recent accounts of cognition and brain function involving predictive processing, dynamic systems theory, and ecological models linking perception with action. They are even gaining a significant foothold in the study of music history, both directly in the computational techniques reshaping corpus studies and network analysis, and indirectly through the ideas of communication and social theorists like Friedrich Kittler, Niklas Luhmann, Michel Serres and Bruno Latour.
Assessments of the political and scientific value of cybernetics have been as varied as its applications. On one hand, it has been said to offer an open, nondualist alternative to the ontology of modern science (Pickering 2010). On the other, it seems to create the conditions for a permanent revitalization of the modern project, optimizing life, knowledge and society in terms of automated information exchange (Tiqqun 2001).
We seek to gather researchers interested in cultivating a deeper understanding of the ways cybernetics, systems theory and information theory have informed musical practice, theory, policy and industry since the Second World War, with a particular emphasis on perspectives from cultural, social and intellectual history. We are especially interested in proposals that expand the framework of normal musicological inquiry to encompass: the role of cybernetics and information theory in constructions of race, gender, sexuality and/or ability; connections between music and other cultural or scientific practices; ideas and practices inherited from the work of 19th and early 20th century educationalists, scientists and spiritualists; and connections with the management of decolonization and deindustrialization in science, culture and education policy at local, national and/or international levels.
Presenters will be allotted 30 minutes each plus 15 minutes discussion time. Proposals of 250-300 words should be submitted as pdf of docx attachments to Patrick....@ed.ac.uk by 30 April 2019. A programme will be announced in mid June.
Christopher Haworth
Symposium date: 24-25 October 2019
CFP deadline: 30 April 2019
Christopher Haworth
Cybernetic thinking, engineering and pedagogy left indelible marks on the arts and sciences of the late twentieth century. There is now widespread recognition of the role cybernetics played in inspiring many Cold War composers and improvisers. Less recognised is the way cybernetics shaped the epistemology of late twentieth century music theoretical, pedagogical and ethnographic research. In fact, the impact of cybernetic principles and methodologies on our understanding of music and musicality is ongoing. They permeate the management and outreach discourse of the institutions that support music and music research. They lie at the foundation of recent accounts of cognition and brain function. And they are even gaining a significant foothold in music historiography, both directly in the computational techniques reshaping corpus studies and network analysis, and indirectly through the ideas of communication and social theorists. Recursions seeks to cultivate a deeper understanding of the ways cybernetics, systems theory and information theory inform musical scholarship, practice, policy and industry, with a particular emphasis on perspectives from cultural, social and intellectual history.
Recursions features a keynote lecture by Eric A Drott of the University of Texas at Austin, and a panel on history of Music Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, convened by Peter Nelson.
The conference programme, travel and registration information can be found at http://recursions.org
Thanks to the generous support of the British Academy and the Edinburgh College of Art, we are pleased to offer registration free of charge. As space and resources are limited, non-presenting attendees must register for admission as soon as possible using the link provided on the website.
Convenors: Patrick Valiquet (patrick....@ed.ac.uk) and Christopher Haworth (c.p.h...@bham.ac.uk)
Christopher Haworth
Fixed term from 1st of April 2020 to 31st of March 2021
Grade: Grade 7, 30 or below pro rata
https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BWB470/research-fellow
This post will support Music And The Internet: Towards A Digital Sociology of Music, a project funded by the AHRC and led by Dr Christopher Haworth. DIGSOCMUS will explore the use of digital methods for the analysis of electronic music from the 1990s to the present, addressing research questions on the changing relations between art and popular electronic musics; ‘major’ and ‘independent’ labels; and local and transnational musicking in the age of the internet.
The post will be centred on devising bespoke digital methods to further the analysis of the research questions. These may involve text-mining and social data analysis techniques, and the postholder will be expected to analyse, interpret and visualise data using Gephi or an equivalent network visualisation software. The postholder will be expected to participate in workshops and other events associated with the research project, and to produce and present research papers in seminars and at conferences.
You should have completed a PhD in music computing, music technology, digital humanities, computer science or a related field, and you should have an interest in one of the following fields: twentieth-century music, digital music, electronic music, media history, or ethnomusicology.
The Department of Music recognises that scholars and practitioners from minority backgrounds are under-represented in music-related fields. We welcome applications from all candidates regardless of gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and/or transgender status.
Informal enquiries should be directed to Christopher Haworth at c.p.h...@bham.ac.uk / 0121 414 6177