Please find below the Spring Semester programme of Visiting Research Seminars hosted by the Department of Music and Media at the University of Surrey.
All are welcome to attend. No booking is required and entry is free. Discussion continues in the bar afterwards.
Location: University of Surrey, Teaching Block, room TB6. See campus map here, where the Teaching Block is labelled no. 21:
https://www.surrey.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2018-10/campus-map-2018.pdf
Time: Wednesdays, 4pm
13 February Martin Scheuregger (University of Lincoln)
'Teaching composers to lie: methodologies and measures of composition research in UK higher education'
Scholarship around the place of creative practice in/as research has blossomed in the last decade (cf. Biggs and Karlsson, 2011; Nelson, 2013; Impett, 2017), but composition is under-represented in such methodological debate. More recent discourse around composition-research (cf. Pace, 2015; Reeves, 2015; and Reeves 2015) has uncovered the latent unease of UK composer-researchers without substantively addressing the implicit critique of research policy. Issues of methodology, research validity and the need to ‘explain’ composition-based outputs are raised in this literature: by embracing wider arts-research methodologies, and contextualising the UK research environment, this paper begins to address these issues.
This paper brings together issues raised in Practice-as-Research (PaR) studies, Critical University Studies (CUS) and wider literature on composition in/as research to critically evaluate the place of composition-research in UK higher education. Specifically, comparisons will be drawn between the experiences, expectation and practices of PhD composition candidates and those of composer-researchers working in HE. The findings of a completed project/chapter – ‘Self-analysis versus auto-ethnography: a case for honesty in composition research’ (Scheuregger & Leedham) – informs an understanding of the former group, whilst a new project engaging specifically with PaR and CUS contextualises the latter. PaR methodologies and ‘neoliberal’ research policy (as understood by CUS) are synthesised to interrogate the tensions between composition-research methodologies and the mechanisms (both institutional and national) through which this work is measured. A single ‘solution’ to the problems raised is not proposed, instead a critical position is presented that takes into account the interlinked problems of composition-research methodologies, and research policy and auditing.
27 February David Frohlich (University of Surrey)
'Mobile digital storytelling in a Brazilian care home'
Digital stories are short personal films made up of a series of still images with voiceover, music and text. The technical barriers to creating such stories are falling with the use of mobile apps which make it easy to assemble story elements as audiophoto narratives on a smartphone or tablet. In this case study, we explored the potential of mobile digital storytelling in a care home context. It was used for four weeks as form of multimedia communication between formal and informal carers inside and outside the home, and a care home resident suffering from dementia. We expected the technology to be used for creating past life history records of the resident but in fact it was used for a variety of purposes, including the documentation of her current life and interests for later reminiscence by her family. The implications for a custom communication system are discussed.
13 March Katia Chornik (Surrey County Council and University of Manchester)
'Whose Voices Should We Listen To? Expanding the Memory Archive of Pinochet’s Chile (1973-1990)'
The year 2018 marked the twentieth anniversary of the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet in London, after a Spanish court issued an international warrant for extradition, indicting him for human rights violations. Central to his politics was the extended use of political detention centres, in which thousands were tortured, disappeared and executed. Music was commonly present in these centres. Until recently, however, survivors would often self-censor memories of their musical experiences in detention as only testimonies shedding light on judicial investigations were valued. Positive, empowering experiences such as music festivals organised by prisoners are examples of what the cultural critic and former political prisoner Jorge Montealegre (2018) terms “paradoxical happiness”. Remembering these stories has prevailingly been considered as inadequate, inopportune and inconsequent with the tragic discourse around the dictatorship. In this talk, I will discuss the implications of spotlighting survivors’ memories of empowering musical moments, as well as musical pieces composed in detention that convey happiness, fun and so on. I will also explore the implications of directing attention to the music and memories of other types of witnesses such as perpetrators and casual visitors to political detention centres. I ultimately ask: Whose voices should we listen to?
27 March Beth Snyder (University of Surrey)
'Once Misjudged and Banned: Promoting the Musical Heritage in the GDR and Discourse Surrounding the 1959 Felix Mendelssohn Festwoche'
In
In February 1959 East Germany fêted the legacy of Felix Mendelssohn with a week-long celebration. Like earlier festivals honouring composers such as Handel, these festivities provided a site for working out in practical terms abstract theories of the ethico-political value of the Germanic cultural heritage to a socialist German state. Yet, discourse surrounding the Festwoche indicates a unique approach to such negotiations. Debates surrounding the festival are analysed, including publications in journals and newspapers as well as speeches, in order to demonstrate that the circumstances surrounding the Mendelssohn festivities fomented remarkably diverse responses to issues pertaining to the value of the musical heritage and to Mendelssohn’s place within that heritage. Further, the problems Mendelssohn’s life and work presented led one of the most important musicologists in the GDR—Georg Knepler—to embrace a radically Marxian (rather than Marxist-Leninist) account of the significance of the composer’s music to East German audiences.
1 May Gascia Ouzounian (University of Oxford)
'Powers of Hearing: Acoustic Defence and Technologies of Listening during the First World War'
During the First World War new forms of warfare necessitated new methods of acoustic defense: tracking the enemy through listening and acoustic sensing. Referencing now-declassified military reports, military manuals and scientific literature from this period, this talk investigates the development of WWI-era acoustic defence technologies, including geophones, double trumpet sound locators, sound mirrors, acoustic goniometers, the Baillaud paraboloïde and the Perrin télésitemetre. It examines new modes of listening that emerged in relation to these devices, including “alt-azimuth" listening and other modes of collaborative and cooperative listening. It further uncovers historical phenomena like the establishment of Écoles d’écoute, “Schools of Hearing” where Allied soldiers received training in operating acoustic defence technologies, and it examines the design of ear training exercises for a new class of expert military auditor. It argues that, during this period, the listening act was reconfigured as a complex, fragmented act of data collection in ways that prefigured modern notions of “machine listening.” Similarly, directional listening, which had previously been studied in terms of perceptual psychology, was newly understood in strategic terms: a tactical activity that could determine human and even national survival.
_____________________________
Dr Jeremy Barham
Reader in Music
Director of Research
Department of Music & Media
University of Surrey
Guildford
Surrey GU2 7XH
UK
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/DMM/People/jeremy_barham/
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