Research Colloquium - Updating sources, preserving ideas: Approaches to archiving computer music

Join us for a presentation from Dr Miriam Akkerman, Lecturer at the Institute for Art and Musicology, Technische Universität Dresden - part of the School of Music Research Colloquia.

Abstract

Archiving genuinely technology-based music comes along with several new challenges, especially as collecting, documenting, and preserving music and its artifacts has long been based on texts or written materials.

One of these new challenges is that the state of source material is subject to two seemingly opposing trends: on the one hand, there is the aim of preserving the historical content which implies saving historical testimonies of a musical works and its performances, at the other hand, there exists the need of constant updates of the technology involved in order to support new performances of the archived music which also changes the information archived.

At the same time, both developments are strongly interlinked. In this presentation, Dr Miriam Akkerman will reflect on this mutual relationship and discuss how this constellation influences the way we think about archiving electroacoustic (and computer) music. 

About Dr Miriam Akkerman

After completing her Doctorate in musicology at the Berlin University of the Arts called ‘Between Algorithm and Improvisation’, Miriam took up a position as a Lecturer with focus on "Sound" at the Department of Media Studies, University of Bayreuth (2015–2019), and then at the Technical University of Dresden as a Junior Professor in Empirical Musicology.

She is also a visiting researcher at Hanyang University, Seoul (KOR) and at IRCAM, Paris (F) (2015).

Her research interests include music of the 20th and 21st century with focus on electroacoustic music, computer music and mixed music, archiving of musical works in with emphasis on digital resources, studies on (historically informed) performance practices and their development (mixed methods), and audioecology. She speaks English, French, German, and Italian.

How to join the seminar

Join Zoom meeting.