ISME Beijing 2010

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.

Along with others from the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, myself and colleague Scott Harrison presented a research paper entitled, Reflecting on reflection-in-action: Supervising practice-based doctorates in music.

What an incredible – and gigantic city! The culture, the friendliness and the wonderful music and art will never be forgotten.

Below, here's a slideshow with images from around Beijing, from the conference & music underscore from the spectacular Chinese opening ceremony.

Winter in Manhattan . .

Back at work in sunny Brisbane now . . after spending some snow time in Manhattan late Jan /Feb.

We loved the snow, being so rare in Australia. Problem is, a good thing can go a little too far sometimes: turns out we got snowed in – what the New Yorkers are calling the 'Blizzard of 2010" - they made celebratory hats and everything! Took us another five days to get a flight out, and got home just in time for those start of year 'working retreats' . . .

However, the extra days did allow me time to argue with myself some more, and finally relent to pick up a gorgeous private stock PRS 513 from the amazing people at Rudy's Soho (ask for Marco if you're there).

Back at the Queensland Conservatorium in Australia, we're now bustling the new year arrival of hundreds of new students. The research higher degree cohort is just growing exponentially - wonderful people with great ideas, in Masters, M.Phil, PhD and our Doctor of Musical Arts. Much new staff work also planned for our research centre, a couple of new albums out, and a new podcast series called 'Behind the Music'.

From the promo:

Behind the Music presents intimate insights from leading musicians into what happens ‘behind the scenes’ as they prepare their art. In music performance, technology, composition, education and research, creative activities are often a response to musical questions arising directly from their artistic practice. These presentations offer a valuable opportunity to reveal a range of creative processes as artists share their personal approaches to such issues.

http://www29.griffith.edu.au/rss/imersd_podcasts.xml

Enjoy.

Colbert at the Grammys

Check it out . . .

digital arts conference season

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.

A great turn out again, with artists from all over the country, from New Zealand and the US. This time, with a new AUC CreateWorld blogsite and well as CreateWorld09 on Twitter.

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.

QCRC videos

Here's a nice little widget from vimeo, for all of our Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre (QCRC) videos.

Sonic Bablyon

We welcome back to Brisbane, New Yorker internet music pioneers William Duckworth and Nora Farrel who were with us for the iOrpheus project in 1997.



This time, they're here to inaugurate a multi-year project titled Sonic Babylon, an art project planting gardens of sound around the world; invisible gardens hanging in the air and heard on mobile devices when visitors pass through.


Occuring from July to September 2009, these gardens include the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre's Media Gardens in Queensland (Cairns, Noosa, and South Bank), The National Film and Sound Archive's Permanent Sound Garden and National Sound Day 2009 in Canberra, and a Sound Garden Happening at the Apple Store in Melbourne (tbc, September).


Tweets at timecurve (Bill), hypnotone (Nora) and sonicbablyon.

Musical Futures

Sunday, 10 May 2009 saw a host of performances of asian musics at Brisbane South Bank. Entitled 'Musical Futures', this launch was part of a Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre initiative set up to support the outcomes of a five year international research project, Sustainable futures for music cultures: Towards an ecology of musical diversity.

Prof Huib Schippers (Director, Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre)

The project is funded by the Australian Research Council and involves ten partners across Australia, Europe and the US, including the International Music Council founded by UNESCO in 1946. It aims to increase understanding of the mechanisms of musical sustainability by closely examining ten different music cultures: how musicians interact with communities,how the music industry and governments affect musical life, as well as underlying values and attitudes. It will deliver an online resource, freely accessible to everyone in the world, to assist in improving the chances of survival and success for music cultures.

Here's a couple of videos, shot on the Sunday:

Asia-pacific musical performances, including Gamelan, Kathak dance, Indian ragas, Korean, Vietnamese and Fusion musics

Prof Huib Schippers (Director, QCRC) and Dr Richard Letts (President, International Music Council)

For more about the Musical Futures Foundation, contact l.flenady@griffith.edu.au

Barack Obama on reforming arts education

Nice piece from Barack Obama, speaking in Wallingford, PA about about reforming the education system and the importance of the arts. While he uses some of the usual rhetoric about the benefits of music and art tied to other positive outcomes in thinking, productivity and well-being – he also talks about the unintentional misuse of the US law around 'No job Left Behind' - school teaching measured by tests (reminiscent of Australia with Rudd's 'Education Revolution' - ie, no cultural curriculum? Why no painting in primary schools? ).

Obama not only articulates the need to fund arts through endowments and direct government funding, but also the bigger picture – the value of being creative, and learning “to see each other through each other's eyes". 

Frank Millward on Interdisciplinarity

Dr Frank Millward is an Australian composer and new media artist based in the UK. His work includes compositions and performances for film, TV, recordings, theatre, site specific performance and multimedia productions. His musical style combines audio art, sound design, jazz, experimental, orchestral and electro-acoustic forms. His collaborators and/or clients include: international producers, TV production companies, festivals, theatre companies, established & emerging film-makers, performance artists, directors, choreographers and designers.

Dr Millward is also the Course Director of Art, Performance & Digital Media at Kingston University, London and has wide experience in research and teaching in Australia, the UK and South East Asia. He has been visiting Brisbane's Queensland Conservatorium over the last week or so and during this time, has presented to students and staff on a range of related subjects, including the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre-hosted seminar entitled Music, Sound & Interdisciplinary Collaboration in the Digital Arts with invited staff from the Queensland Conservatorium, the Queensland College of Art and the Griffith Film School. 

This seminar works through a range of contemporary issues including creative, technical, theoretical and professional aspects of creative & performing arts practice. A video of the seminar is posted here and as a podcast at the QCRC's RadioIMERSD.

For more about Frank Millward's work, see his website at www.frankmillward.com

Melbourne - NMIT

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of visiting and presenting a masterclass at the North Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT). A terrific heritage set of building located in the north of Melbourne, in Fairfield.


NMIT have a range of music courses there : from music industry, to sound production, to a Bachelor of Australian Popular Music. They also have a range of other programs in media broadcast, theatre and television. I had the chance to tour around and see their recording studios and labs, and also had a chance to present to many students and staff from these programs in their concert hall.

I presented a piece entitled 'Music, Technology and the Future' as part of one of their courses, Online Music Distribution. In this, I talked about the history of music technology, as a way of 'looking back', perhaps 'to see forward', based on a recent paper, Audio files, audiophiles and the reflective musician.

Looking forward to seeing some NMIT graduates here at he Con in the near future. And, many thanks to Glenn & Fiona Blair for their wonderful hospitality at NMIT. 

ISME @ Bologna - Part 2

More posts and notes from Bologna. All of the photos from the ISME conference and around Bologna can be viewed at my MobileMe Photo Gallery or via RSS feed. Here, there's a small selection: 

Don Lebler caught up with Prof Göran Folkestad (Malmö University, Sweden) at the courtyard of one of the conference venues, the Accademia Belle Arti:

Followed by a presentation by Don Lebler (Qld Con) and Rosie Burt-Perkins (RCM) entitled 'What the students bring: Examining the attributes of commencing conservatoire students' (check out the venue):

Another beautiful location was the Palazzo-Malverzzi:


Here, the Qld Con's Stephen Emmerson presented some of his multmedia-based research on 'Around a Rondo' to a fascinated audience:


Don Lebler and myself presented on a Symposia panel with Bo Nilsson and Anna-Rita Addessi, chaired by Göran Folkestad & entitled 'Music Education 2.0: How refelctive practice, peer-review and a participatory culture is enabled in the new curricula'. 


This symposium examined the idea of Music Education 2.0 in response to transformed notions of music-making enabled by 21st century culture and associated web 2.0 practices. Through the lens of new formations in university music curricula from around the world, the symposium examined i) the nature of both personal and distributed technologies and their effects on innovation in teaching, learning and music-making; ii) the advent and impact of the Internet on cultural value systems; and iii) a higher education imperative to embed judgement, negotiation, reflective practice and peer review into learning practices which enable the kinds of literacies required for new careers in global knowledge economies.

Don and myself presented work from the Qld Con Popular Music and Music Technology programs, while Bo and Anna-Rita showed us some wonderful work in early childhood education, in particular, the amazing interactive software called 'The Continuator' from the Sony Computed Science Laboratory in Paris.

We also caught up with Frank Millward (Kingston University, UK), Heather Keens (Surrey University, UK) and Miikka Salavuo (Sibelius Academy, Finland) who is doing some wonderful work in music technology and web 2.0. Hope to see Miikka in Australia in the near future!

I also presented a paper, co-authored with Qld Con Matt Hitchcock, entitled 'The hidden music curriculum: Utilising blended learning to enable a participatory culture'.

Meanwhile, Qld Con's Huib Schippers chaired an engaging panel in the symposium 'Embracing diversity: A new ISME policy on world music in education':


And finally, many thanks for Qld Con's Scott Harrison for hosting a terrific get-together and final drinks in his spectacular apartment at the top of the old city:


Thanks to everyone for making this a memorable conference.

ISME @ Bologna - Part 1

Very pleased to arrive in Bologna, Italy for the International Society of Music Education (ISME) World Conference. Will be here for the week, presenting and listening to papers and concerts from around the world. 

Sunday 20 July, Day 1 was a bit of a blur, recovering from jet-lag (around 27 hrs travel time from Australia), but meeting up with lots of friends and whirling around the beautiful city, its fantastic food (Italian slow cooking), wine and architecture.

We eventually made our way up to the Bologna University (the oldest in the world, pre 1500) and the Conservatorium (200 years old) for conference registration - some 1200 delegates here!


Day 2 was a little more sane and we attended some of the opening sessions (including a great paper by Prof Michael Hannan, SCU on music PhDs in Australia). The ISME opening ceremony was held in Bologna’s beautiful Teatro Manzoni theatre - about the same size as the Qld Conservatorium’s main theatre - with just sensational acoustics.

Perhaps way too many speeches and not enough music, but still very eloquent words throughout and wonderful thoughts about the meaning of music across the world, in so many cultures, in so many settings - united as a vehicle for peace, intellectual and spiritual development.

Again, I can’t get over just how many people are here for this conference - such a powerful representation of music-making and education, from early childhood to university, from Africa, to Brazil, to Australia to Norway.

And some very good corporate sponsorship, for example, the Gibson Foundation have being doing great work with ISME, here presenting them with a check for US$50,000,

And of course, a couple of Gibson Les Pauls as prizes for two of the leading Italian music educators here:

So for now, catching up with old friends and making lots of new ones - and likely far too much drinking, eating. We ended up in the wee hours drinking and making lots of noise around the piano in a little restaurant somewhere: Frank Millward and Heather Keeens (UK), Don Lebler (QCGU) and Michael Hannan (SCU):


And so, now about time we got to work(!). Looking forward to more from Bologna . .

Greetings from Queenstown

Post CCi Conference, now visiting New Zealand's Queenstown Winter Festival, where music is everywhere, of outstanding quality and indeed - musicians are highly respected and well paid (and actually, the FOH and technical people put on as much a show as the stage musicians - more like DJs, totally into the music; cool to hang out by the desk).

In fact, New Zealand rates music and cultural policy at the top of government policy, yet with a population so much smaller than Australia's. Something the Australian Rudd government might want to think about, given the country's first and only cultural policy hasn't been progressed much since the Keating Government's work in 1994. Creative Nation II, anyone? Hon. Garrett MP?

Some great jazz and original music in one of the Skyline Gondola restaurant venues, from Anna Whitaker and the Company Band:

Meanwhile, in another room, an incredible cross of Bob Marley-meets-James Brown – funky, loud and just amazing music from NZ's Tahuna Breaks:

Post CCi Conference: Brisbane, June 2008

Had a great time at the CCi 'Creating Value: Between Values & Commons', the international conference of the ARC Centre for Excellence for Creative Industries & Innovation, with several papers presented and published from staff of the Queensland Conservatorium (links to abstracts and papers, below). 

Mine was a piece oriented around the issues that come in music licensing and its implications for education in Australian universities, Who’s really doing the stealing? How the music industry’s pathological pursuit of profit and power robs us of innovation (perhaps of interest, in the light of the recent Fête de la Musique discussion).

Matt Hitchcock, leader of the Bachelor of Music Technology program presented his work on web 2.0 and collaborative on-line learning in his paper, Making music together: The blending of an on-line learning environment for music artistic practice. 

And Don Lebler, leader of the Bachelor of Popular Music program co-authored a piece in collaboration with international education guru Prof Eric McWilliam, entitled Aligning curriculum, pedagogy and assessment for building creative capacity in undergraduate students: a case study from the con.