London Metropolitan University Music and Technology Research Seminar
Autumn Term 2006-2007

Please find below details of the October meetings of the Music and 
Technology Research Seminar.  Though all three of the confirmed 
presentations here have a musical impetus, it is hoped that the breadth 
of their cultural references - technological, artistic, historical and 
museological - will be of interest to a wide-ranging community.



10 October: Ardal Powell (Hudson NY): Change Lays Not Her Hand: 
Organology and the Museum

The study of musical instruments inherits a conceptual framework and a 
metanarrative of progressive development borrowed from studies of 
biology and technology.  Its traditional priorities support, and are 
supported by, the prestige of institutional instrument museums formed in 
a climate of intense national, colonial, and class ideologies a century 
ago.  Nonetheless in the light of recent studies of music as culture, 
the sociology of technology, and the production of knowledge, an 
approach to studying instruments is now emerging that treats them not as 
evolving entities but as dynamic components of a cultural context.  This 
paper locates this shift in ideals in explicitly theoretical terms and 
gives an introductory survey of relevant scholarly work.


17 October: Ardal Powell (Hudson NY): Technologies of Music, 
Technologies of Self

Recent interdisciplinary studies of music and technology have provided 
rich empirical evidence of how new technologies of music such as 
recording and digital sampling have shaped musical ideals and 
expression.  These studies illustrate the sociologists’ axiom that 
technologies are no mere inanimate tools we create to do work, but 
scripts that mediate and direct social action, including musical 
performance, listening, and discourse.  After surveying recent 
achievements in music-and-technology studies and the sociology of music, 
the seminar will discuss how adopting the broadest possible concept of 
technology – to include scores, traditions, and instruments – might help 
us address some central questions in music and performance.


24 October: to be confirmed


31 October: Ben Hebbert (University of Oxford; Christies, London): A 
Musical Rosetta Stone: The Geometry of the English Viol

(Abstract to follow)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

The London Metropolitan University Music and Technology Research Seminar 
exists for the study of all aspects of the history and use of musical 
instruments, and of the relationship of music and technology.   Seminars 
are usually on Tuesdays, from 5.15 to 6.45, in the ILRC Seminar Room 
(room 310, approached via the second-floor Library entrance), London 
Metropolitan University, 41-71 Commercial Road, London E1 1LA (Aldgate 
East underground).  Each presentation lasts approximately one hour and 
is followed by questions and discussion.  Open to all staff, students 
and visitors: please bring these events to the attention of all who 
might be interested.

Further information from Lewis Jones: [log in to unmask]; tel. 020 
7320 1841.


===============================
Lewis Jones
London Metropolitan University
===============================