Traveling once more, and a very good experience and entry into the US via San Francisco. Nice people, if still very busy and slightly confusing . . . Now completed the first leg of the tour, first to Lowell MA - beautiful little town north of Cambridge and Boston. Caught up with the good folks of UMass Lowell Music and their wonderful hospitality. They run some terrific degree programs in music education, sound recording technology, music business and performance. Many thanks to Alex Ruthmann and John Shirley:
[A great night out at Boston's Lennox Hotel, w/ an amazing glass of 'The Balvenie']
Then on to New York to catch up with Nora Farrell (now teaching part of the year in our Bachelor of Music Technology program) and Bill Duckworth who's also now supervising some of our QCRC PhD candidates. Thanks for a delicious Thanksgivings Day dinner (that's pumpkin pie, clementines and roasted chestnuts . .!) Or, as they also call it here – Turkey Day! Pics from the spectacular Macey's Thanksgivings Day Parade: Flying out today, onward and upward to Montreal & McGill University's Schulich School of Music. Looking forward to it.
A wonderful diversion. Last week we had the pleasure of presenting at and attending the International Music Education Society (ISME) 29th World Conference in Beijing.
I’m a baby boomer who grew up in Brisbane the 50s and 60s. Fresh out of school as a 18 year old guitarist, I bypassed university and joined a rock band, promptly heading off to Melbourne to find fame and fortune. Good times, cold weather, Lygon Street, Aussie Crawl, Skyhooks, Countdown, shared band houses and life in pubs and on the road.
c. 1974 – somewhat naive, but ready for the road
L-to-R: me (guitar), Tony Mockridge (vocals),
Harry Curtis (bass, sadly now passed away), Bob Peel (drums).
We never quite cracked the ‘big time’, whatever that really means in the common ‘stardom-or-bust’ vernacular. Perhaps this was to do with my attitude about money and pay-scales – somehow those record company deals never seemed to quite add up. In any case, I became increasingly interested in the idea of more strings to my bow (what they seem to be calling ‘portfolio careers’ these days) and there was no way to avoid the fact that this was based on an arsenal of high level skills.
I subsequently relocated to Sydney in the late 70s, feeling the needing a change of scene and better musical chops. Jazz fusion was emerging at the time and Sydney had a burgeoning jazz scene together with a Conservatorium of some note that offered programs led by some of the jazz stars of the time. I auditioned and enrolled, trouble was, I didn’t like it and I didn’t like what they taught. Academic content and delivery seemed to be quite disconnected to working, but moreover, the jazz was way too ‘straight’ for my liking, delivered by who I then thought of as ‘old guys’. So, I found private tuition from a number of gigging rock guys with huge chops, dropped out of the Con and for the next five years or so, practiced and played harder than I even had before in my life.
c. 1980s – some festival, somewhere
I moved back to Brisbane in the early 80s to take up a number of great recording and touring offers. This was also time of the birth of the PC, MIDI (the musical Instrument digital interface), the CD and digital sound. I jumped right in, using my experience and love of recording studios to build a facility in Brisbane, probably one of the first, affordable ‘Home studios’ here. This used emerging technologies to synchronise software and microphone recording to produce a lot of original music in the next decade or so.
c. 1987 - the first studio in a spare bedroom
It was this trajectory that first bought me to deliver an invited masterclass on film music and recording technology at the Queensland Conservatorium in 1998. The ‘technology’ moniker stuck, and I somehow became to default ‘music tech’ guy because of my work with computers primarily, but my rock, R&B, and jazz music never really got much of a look-in at a mostly traditional conservatoire at that time. Still. I loved the teaching – and the challenge of being part of a team to bring the conservatoire into the 21st century.
During the 90s, I subsequently designed and convened a range of music technology-related undergraduate, postgraduate degree programs and specializations. I also built a number of recording studios (including the staff research space IMERSD [Intermedia, Music Education & Research Design], networked facilities and computer labs.
The 2004 launch of the IMERSD recording complex.
L-to-R: Griffith Vice-Chancellor Prof Ian O’Connor, [then] Qld Govt Arts & Education Minister, Anna Bligh [now Premier of Queensland]; Mr Robyn James (CEO, Pacific Film & Television Corp.); Mr Mike Lake (Exec. VP, Warners Village Roadshow)
The design of online, variously termed ‘flexible’ or ‘blended’ learning has been a feature research interest throughout my university career. I also had to build and establish academic cred., and in 2000 I completed a Doctor of Education (EdD) entitled New Learning: The Challenge of Flexible Delivery in Higher Education. Drawing on this work, and influenced by new millennia ‘web 2.0’, I subsequently developed podcasting platforms via Radio IMERSD and our role in Griffith iTunes-U.
Given my positive EdD experiences, I also lobbied for the creation of a professional doctorate-by research in music. In 2005, QCGU introduced the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), these days bursting at seams with doctoral candidates researching aspects of their music.
Somewhat quizzically though, I sometimes reflect on the fact that while here and elsewhere in the arts higher education sector, we develop and assist some outstanding people to attaint their doctoral qualification though multi-exegetical thesis that incorporate creative products – it is much more problematic for academics to continue and be recognised for their own similar creative works. (see earlier 12 May 2010 blog entry, Monograph).
And this brings the story up to the present day: Since taking on the QCGU Deputy Director (Research) portfolio in 2009, this has most certainly allowed me considerable scope for refection(!) Steering an academic team and assuming responsibility for all QCGU RHD candidates in partnership with GGRS has provided me with a substantial ‘birds-eye view’ of complex viewpoints that I now deal with on a day-to-day basis.
This has allowed me to build on my past experience and to respond to the challenges of scaling, modifying, and/or refining my thinking. But also now, in terms of thinking about a research sabbatical (ASP, or Academic Studies Program as call it in Australia), something which I haven’t had the opportunity to engage with to date. I wonder if I can bring the musical past, the academic career and the future together in such a way that makes sense, that still serves my students and faculty well, but also allows me to rebuild some of my past music-making? A bit scary really – I have really ‘lived’ musicking for 15 years or so – that is, like a sports person needing the regular physical engagement: practicing, rehearsing, performing, composing.
We shall see. Next, I need to think about the instruments.
Lots of travel and interesting events over the last couple of weeks. I visited the very spooky Sydney College of the Arts (University of Sydney) for a PhD seminar.
Once a mental institution, now houses academic artists and designers (!) - very beautiful historic building, wonderful artwork and artists, but I'm positive its haunted. 'Nuff said.
Back to Brisbane next, to present a paper 'Authority 3.0' at the fourth annual international CreateWorld 2009 conference on Brisbane's beautiful South Bank.
On the Tuesday (1 Dec), one of the CreateWorld keynotes featured an iChat hook-up to New York with Bill Duckworth and Nora Farrell, talking about their latest Sonic Babylon project and new iPhone app:
Right after the CreateWorld conference, I flew back to Sydney again on 4 Dec to present at the ICoMCS2 conference (that's the second International Conference on Music Communication Science), at the University of New South Wales.
My paper was about a recent album recording project 'Foreign objects & the art of interpretation'. Overall, the conference presented fascinating interdisciplinary collection of people, from psychology, music, education and science.
Xmas soon. Best wishes to everyone for the holiday season.
Its conference season here in Australia once again. Now in beautiful Manley, Sydney for the eResearch Australasia 2009 conference, 10–12 Nov.
This year's theme is No Boundaries. What challenges are raised by a world with no boundaries? What potential can we unlock?
The conference features speakers and demonstrations from the Australian and international eResearch community, aiming to provide:
A catalyst for innovation and collaboration, by bringing together researchers, practitioners, and educators from diverse disciplines;
A forum to support the development, enhancement, and harmonisation of national, regional, and discipline-specific eResearch infrastructures and services;
A showcase for innovative science and research enabled through these technologies and services.
Here's a few snapshots of this:
What's all this got to do with music and the arts?
Well, interestingly the 'humanities' sessions are some of the most widely attended, with a range of interesting presentations about this work on line, and particularly in relation to understanding new digital data sets captured and modelled accordingly, then to the new kinds of research questions and projects that arise. A range of these with abstracts and contact info can be found on the conference program, here.
For example, here's one interesting project about the performing arts from AusStage – an accessible research facility for investigating live performance in Australia. It was built by a consortium of universities and industry partners with funding from the Australian Research Council.
AusStage and the Aus-e-Stage Project: Collaborative eResearch in the Performing Arts. This session presented researchers demonstrating innovations in performing arts eResearch, new research applications for the AusStage database and raised questions about the implications of visual interface design and collective approaches to data curation for research in the performing arts.
Elsewhere, there have been a range of sessions about training Research Higher Degree students, increasingly interested as they now are in using the web for their own variants of e-research, and increasingly wishing to model different kinds of modelling, and different kinds of exegesis (including interactive, web-based and the like). Here's a few related presentations:
Just back from Melbourne, a 1700k driving trip either way from Brisbane (!). Beautiful weather, wonderful Saab 93 cabrio, and glorious country – some pictures from the trip are available on MobileMe.
The main reason for the long drive was to show our visitors from New York, Bill Duckworth and Nora Farrell around the country – especially the outback and some wonderful towns on the slow drive back to Brisbane, including Rutherglen, Katoomba and Bellingen.
In Melbourne, we stayed in the glorious Paramount Apartments overlooking the city.
Bill Duckworth gave lectures about his work at RMIT and at VCAM (Victorian College of the Arts & Music, UniMelb). Here's a video of his lecture from VCAM's cross media workshop (to VCAM's Mark Pollard – thanks so much for the hospitality!):
We also went to SIAL (RMIT's Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory) where Bill also delivered a lecture, but also got to tour their facilities with Lawrence Harvey. Of note was their wonderful studio 'pod', a purpose-built room-within-a-room that looks incredible:
Lawrence and Bill – inside The Pod.
Bill & Nora out front
Thanks to Lawrence, Bill, Nora, Jenny, Glyn, Margaret, John, Mark, Sue, Ian – and the Saab – for a great trip and wonderful memories of Melbourne and the Australian outback.
Back in Australia now, and into CreateWorld 2008, the Australian national digital arts conference, hosted by the Apple University Consortium (AUC) and Griffith University. Now in its third year, the 2008 conference must have been the most successful, with a terrific attendance and a wide range of panels, papers, keynotes, performances and podcast program.
AUC chair, Denis Antionelle opens the conference.
Some of the highlights for me were the various performance /talk events, including some stunning music-scored-to-speech patterns from Brisbane's Topology ensemble . . .
. . and some engaging VJ work from Adelaide's Luke Toop, featuring Apple's Quartz Composer software tools.
There were also a good range of academic papers and session presentations. Stephen Emmerson and I presented some of our recent recording work in IMERSD around our paper on Music, Recording and the Art of Interpretation (see earlier blog entry). Great fun to try to squeeze that many people into a recording studio control room!
A Podcast Team (Allan Carrington, Kate Foy, Cat Hope and Ian Green) were cruising the conference, audio recorders in hand, gathering short interviews to help better understand the conference themes in their broader context, and to tease out their implications for learning, teaching, research and creative performance in higher education.
Look out for the final series of refereed papers in the conference proceedings, to be published shortly on the Create World 2008 site. Thanks everyone, for a great conference.
An inspirational address to the National Press Club in Canberra today, by the (new-ish) Australian Government and Senator the Hon Kim Carr. Things are looking up . . . I'll just skip ahead to these concluding remarks from the speech:
Why the humanities matter
As I said at the beginning, the humanities, arts and social sciences are critical to solving our most pressing real-world problems. These are problems so complex that our only hope of sorting them out is through a multidisciplinary effort.
We can’t improve Indigenous health without understanding the social and cultural circumstances of the people involved. We can’t build better cities without understanding how people live, how they want to live, and how the different parts of their lives fit together. We can’t adapt to global warming without understanding what people’s capacities are, how they interact, and what motivates them.
The humanities, arts and social sciences also have important political work to do. They can give a voice to people who might otherwise be silent. They can articulate the needs of people whose needs might otherwise be overlooked. They can defend the rights of people whose rights might otherwise be denied. Without them it would be impossible to create an innovation system that was truly inclusive, democratic and just.
Without them life would also be pretty dull.
My cultural activities are fairly restricted these days, but a couple of things I’ve enjoyed recently are:
* Peter Temple’s novel The Broken Shore; and
* the Bell Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet.
The first showed me a world similar enough to my own to feel familiar, but different enough to make me look at my own world with fresh eyes. The second reminded me where a great deal of our language comes from, and left me with a strong sense of the continuity between past and present.
Did the book and the play turn a dollar? I hope so. Did they add to the nation’s bottom line? No doubt, in a small way. Is that why I enjoyed them? No, it’s not.
I believe the creative arts – and the humanities and the social sciences – make a terrible mistake when they claim support on the basis of their commercial value.
Whatever they may be worth in the marketplace, it is their intrinsic value we should treasure them for. We should support these disciplines because they give us pleasure, knowledge, meaning, and inspiration.
Now completed the first leg of the tour, first to Lowell MA - beautiful little town north of Cambridge and Boston.
Caught up with the good folks of UMass Lowell Music and their wonderful hospitality. They run some terrific degree programs in music education, sound recording technology, music business and performance. Many thanks to Alex Ruthmann and John Shirley:
[A great night out at Boston's Lennox Hotel, w/ an amazing glass of 'The Balvenie']
Or, as they also call it here – Turkey Day! Pics from the spectacular Macey's Thanksgivings Day Parade:
Flying out today, onward and upward to Montreal & McGill University's Schulich School of Music. Looking forward to it.
