M/C Journal ‘Place’

The ways in which artists, musicians, filmmakers and other creative practitioners perceive, navigate and represent ‘place’ in their work is complex and multifaceted. Further, place-based conditions also influence the ways in which creative activity occurs in particular locales, raising questions regarding the role of history, economics, attitudes towards and perceptions of particular forms of arts and culture, shared social and creative contexts, and the geographical location of places, in shaping and fostering creativity. While the relationship between place and creative practice is now widely recognised across the social sciences, it remains poorly conceptualised at the level of specific forms of artistic and creative practices and creative industries. The aim of this issue is to therefore bring together scholarship from across a range of disciplines that is concerned with the relationship between place, broadly defined, and creativity, also broadly defined.
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Music, Pedagogy and Community

A symposium at University of South Wales, hosted by the Creative Industries Research Institute
Saturday, 5th of March 2016, the ATRiuM, 86-88 Adam Street, Cardiff

Keynote speaker: Professor Raymond MacDonald (University of Edinburgh)

The University of South Wales and the Creative Industries Research Institute will host a symposium on 5th of March on music, pedagogy and community. The symposium will explore ideas of how musical participatory practices can build a sense of community, and how pedagogical practices, formal but also and possibly more importantly informal, are a part of the process of social continuity in certain societies, cultures or sub-cultures.

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Music, Political Activism and the State

Wednesday 13 April 2016
University of Southampton, Highfield Campus, Southampton SO17 1BJ
One-day conference sponsored by the IMR and the University of Southampton
Keynote Speaker: Professor John Street (UEA)

In this one-day conference we seek to cultivate a dialogue concerning the intersections between music, political activism and the State, both among scholars from a range of disciplines and practitioners seeking to use music to contribute to social change. Whilst the importance of musical performance to political activism has long been reflected within the scholarly literature, more remains to be said about the ways that practices of protest or activist musicianship emerge in relation to the State, as an entity with a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, as a set of bureaucratic institutions (often with conflicting interests), and as a concept which individuals construct in everyday and official discourse. Particularly deserving of further attention are the ways that States – as legal institution and socially negotiated concept – may condition and create possibilities for creative musical practice.

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Perspectives on Popular Music and Sound Recording – I@J 6/2 (2016)

Special Issue Editors:

Dr. Samantha Bennett (Australian National University, Australia)
Dr. Eve Klein (University of Queensland, Australia)

Call for articles, to be published in 2016, highlighting a range of philosophies, mythologies, ideologies, and discourses that address the study of popular music in relation to sound recording.

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Royal Music Association Annual Conference 2016

Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London
3^rd– 5th September 2016

http://www.gsmd.ac.uk/about_the_school/research/whats_on/the_royal_musical_association_annual_conference_2016/

The Guildhall School will host the Royal Music Association Annual Conference 2016 on 3^rd– 5th September 2016. The conference programme will consist of panels, workshops and research presentations, including the Edward Dent medal award lecture and the Peter Le Huray lecture, as well as networking opportunities.

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Special Issue of Rock Music Studies – Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry
Guest-edited by Tom McCourt – Fordham University

“Chuck Berry is the greatest of the rock and rollers . . . his songs are still claimed as encores by everyone from folkies to heavy-metal kids. But Chuck Berry isn’t merely the greatest of the rock and rollers, or rather, there’s nothing mere about it. Say rather that unless we can somehow recycle the concept of the great artist so that it supports Chuck Berry as well as it does Marcel Proust, we might as well trash it altogether.” – Robert Christgau, The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll.

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PUNK NOW! Registration now open!

The 2nd Punk Scholars Network Annual Conference and Post-Graduate Symposium
29^th-30^th October 2015
Free registration via https://punk-now-2015.eventbrite.co.uk

Registration closes at 1700 on Wednesday 28 October 2015

Presented by Punk Scholars Network in conjunction with  Birmingham City University, Birmingham Centre for Media and Cultural Research, London College of Communication.

Thursday 29 October (0900-1730) and Friday 30 October (0900-1700)

The Shell
Birmingham City University
Parkside Building
Cardigan Street
Birmingham
B4 7BD

Map and directions

5 minutes walk from Moor Street Station, 10 minutes walk from New Street Station, 15 minutes walk from Snow Hill Station. Parking and accommodation are available nearby.

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Pet Shop Boys: Symposium

24/25 March 2016, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh

To mark the 30^th anniversary of the release of their debut album Please, the University of Edinburgh is pleased to announce that it will host a two-day symposium on the history and work of the Pet Shop Boys. Despite their prolific contributions to popular culture over the last thirty years – including music, theatre, cinema, books, and film soundtracks – very little scholarly work has been produced on the band. This symposium aims to begin to rectify this omission: the organisers hope to produce an edited collection of essays based on the talks at the symposium.

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Fringes, outsides and undergrounds: The aesthetics and politics of unpopular music

One-day conference to be held at Goldsmiths on 7 May 2016 

Musical forms such as noise, extreme metal, performance art, experimental techno, free improv and more take inspiration from both popular and art traditions without being fully identifiable with either.

These forms exist either on the fringes of, or outside, these commercial and cultural mainstreams, both in conventional musical centres such as London and Berlin and further afield, in South America, Japan and China.

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Hear The Music, Play The Game: Music And Game Design: Interplays And Perspectives

GAME – Games as Art, Media, Entertainment
www.gamejournal.it
Call for Papers – n. 6/2016

Hear The Music, Play The Game: Music And Game Design: Interplays And Perspectives
Edited by Hillegonda C. Rietveld and Marco Benoît Carbone

http://www.gamejournal.it/n-62016-hear-the-music-play-the-game-music-and-game-design-interplays-and-perspectives/#.VbCbv4cn91M

Music composition and sound design in video games are important dimensions in the experience of play, gaining increased acknowledgement and attention within the game industry. The growing relevance and success of several kinds of music-based games, and their codification in novel genres and sub-genres, illustrates one tendency in this shift of focus towards the aural in relation to the usually visual dominance of the medium. This calls for an attempt to reconsider the often-overlooked impact of music and its role in defining games. Arguably, a distinction can be made between games in which music functions in the background, and games in which music is an integral part of the game mechanics. For example, attention to game music demands a reconsideration of the importance of sonic content in past productions, and to look at practices like the revival of chip music, associated with early arcade, console, and home computer games. Meanwhile, the music industry has recognized the importance of game music, as demonstrated by the growing amount of releases of game sound tracks as well as occasional in-game music sales in and across new and different markets. Composers and sound designers have too often been regarded as contributors to the final phases of game development, despite the central affective power of music production in game design and the experience of play.

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