Rollen und Funktionen von Musik in der digitalen Aera

Organization: Institut für Musikwissenschaft und Musikpädagogik / University Koblenz- Landau, Institut für Musikwissenschaft / Leipzig University, Field unit Sociology and social history of Music in the GfM, and the DFG-funded project “Classical musicians’ presentation and reception on YouTube: performance and life practices in the digital age“ 09.-11.06.2022, Location: Campus Koblenz

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Digitalization is changing every aspect of our society as well as the humanities and cultural and social sciences. The rapidly expanding field of ‘digital humanities’ explores perceived changes in society through the new technologies (Berry/Fagerjord 2017). On the other hand, advocates of a ‘digital sociology’ emphasize the need to also keep an eye on societies evolving side by side with digital technologies, i.e. “how sociality itself is undergoing transformation in digital societies” (Marres 2017, p. 3, see also Nassehi 2019). Hence, one of the symposium’s central aims will be the examination of changes in the traditional (e.g. economic) structures of musical life as well as to question how music’s performance and experience develop through digitalization. On a practical level new digital structures and mechanisms have evolved and changed the music market and the developments’ pace has been forced through Covid. Developments include the streaming of concerts, digital opera transmissions, the evolving of platforms such as YouTube or Spotify but also Apps like TikTok. At the same time music’s ‘worth’ has changed through these new forms of distribution. Apart from individual examinations music in research is often focusing rather narrowly on its acoustics (Harenberg 2012, Volmer/Schröter 2013) or the question of digitalization’s impact is reduced to the topic of musical composition (Katz 2010, Lehmann 2012). The ever intensifying bond between music, musical individual and (digital) technology (Born 2012, 2013) should be investigated in view of production (music software development), music performance (in the digital world) as well as reception. Media studies proclaim a change of the phenomenon via its perception: we no longer hear music, but ‘mediamusic’ (Harenberg 2012, 14). Accordingly, the frameworks for music’s perception have changed and new practices for living with digitally mediated music evolve (see also Reckwitz 2016). At the same time new performance practices in the digital era are developing. This concerns less the mediatization of image and sound but the products’ global and permanent availability, changes in reception as well as the evolving of new live practices through this constant availability. Furthermore new economic structures evolve through the input of user-generated content, meaning less cost for the providers who nevertheless need a target-orientated use of algorithms and accordingly still man- or womanpower. Concerning music production in times of ‘digital mediamorphosis’ (Smudits 2013) we are interested in differentiating between live recordings that stress their ‘liveness’ in comparison to videos using explicitly cinematic means of representing the musicians’ music making. Thus the conditions of public musical interpretation (i.e. the ‘classical concert’) are being added to – or even redefined - according to a new digital framework.