****Forwarded message from Bennett Hogg  
<[log in to unmask]>****

"Music and Machines IX: Resistant Material"

Thursday 15th - Friday 16th January, 2009

The "International Centre for Music Studies" (ICMuS) and "Culture Lab"  
at Newcastle University announce a two-day symposium on resistant  
materials in musical creativity as part of the "Music and Machines"  
research series.

Musical practices encounter many sites of resistance/resistivity
- the engagement with or overcoming of physiological restrictions
- the technological limitations of instruments, voices, computer  
systems, and other performance media
- constraints imposed by musico-theoretical systems such as "common- 
practice" tonality and other formalistic issues
- the unpredictability and/or ambiguity of some of the newer creative  
tools such as interactive software, circuit-bending or distributed  
performance systems
- the critical dissonances that must be negotiated in much  
interdisciplinary collaboration, and so on.

Developing out of a series of research events that began in 2004,  
"Music and Machines IX: Resistant Material" pulls together some of the  
different ways that contemporary musicians and theorists have  
thematized or had to work through the issue of resistant materials.   
As well as core members of the CETL-funded ICMuS research grouping in  
Postvernacular Music, the symposium will include guest presenters from  
Glasgow Caledonian University, Royal Conservatory in The Hague,  
University of East Anglia, Edinburgh University, Culture Lab  
Newcastle, and the Psychology and Philosophy departments at Newcastle  
University.

Sessions will take the form of short presentations by invited  
presenters, followed by round table discussions, with members of "the  
audience" actively encouraged to become involved.  Session  
presentations will include position statements, project reports,  
theoretical perspectives, and live performances.  There are also live  
concerts each evening held in Culture Lab.

Participants will include
Paul Bell (ICMuS - Culture Lab)
David Clarke (ICMuS)
John Ferguson (ICMuS - Culture Lab)
Bennett Hogg (ICMuS)
Lars Iyer (Philosophy, Newcastle)
Raymond MacDonald  (Psychology, Glasgow)
Peter Nelson (Music, Edinburgh University)
Sally Jane Norman (Culture Lab, Newcastle)
Joel Ryan (Royal Conservatory in The Hague)
Simon Waters (UEA)
Nick Williams (ICMuS - Culture Lab)
Graeme Wilson (Psychology, Newcastle)

Topics covered will include turntablism in free improvisation,  
learning Indian Classical Music, ambiguity and indeterminacy in bent  
circuits, modelling resistivity in virtual environments, formalism and  
subjectivity, the instrument in free improvisation, philosophical and  
cultural-theoretical perspectives on ideas of resistance in musical  
materials, and issues raised by the development of interfaces between  
musical performers and digital technologies.

A conference fee of £10 to cover coffee and tea is payable to Culture  
Lab, Newcastle.  For registration please contact Carine Aguet at [log in to unmask]

For further information please contact Dr. Bennett Hogg at [log in to unmask]

Details of registration procedures and a more detailed outline of the  
event will be posted on the "Culture Lab, Newcastle" website in due  
course.

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/culturelab

****End of forwarded message****

______________________________________

Dr J. P. E. Harper-Scott
Lecturer in Music
Department of Music
Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham, Surrey TW20 0EX, Great Britain
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Music/jpeh-s.html
______________________________________