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.

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.

The long drive to Melbourne & back

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.

Top Digital Music Stories of 2007 - from WNYC's Soundcheck

On WNYC's  Soundcheck, WIRED magazine columnist Eliot Van Buskirk talks to John Schaefer & shares the business and technology developments that drove the music industry in 2007:

  or MP3 here

Van Buskirk's top stories of 2007, with the help from readers of his blog, Listening Post were:

• Radiohead's "In Rainbows" release
  
• Two major labels moved away from digital-rights management
  
• New royalty rates for Internet radio stir controversy
  
• The rise of ad-supported and sponsored music
  
• The dawn of the age of the connected music player
  
• The so-called "360 degree" record deal
  
• Album sales really drop off
  
• RIAA steps up campaign against file sharers, wins court victory
  
• Universal Music Group CEO reveals perplexing digital strategy [from Wired profile by Seth Mnookin]
  
• The return and re-imagining of the music video

Createworld 2007 keynote

This is an excerpt of the Music 2.0 keynote address on 26 November, to the Apple University Consortium (AUC) CreateWorld 2007 conference. The presentation features a recent case study in the Fullbright-supported iOrpheus: Art Among Us project (aka, the iPod Opera), held on the South Bank Parklands in August 2007. This involved the work of US Internet music pioneers William Duckworth and Nora Farrell, as well as students and staff from the Queensland Conservatorium and the Griffith Film School.  

A 10 minute documentary film made about the iOrpheus events was screened on state-of-the-art projection and 5.1 surround sound systems, followed by a live cross to New York to iChat with William and Nora. A transcript of the lecture and interviews is available at the Radio IMERSD site.

iOrpheus – The Movie

iOrpheus – the Movie was produced and directed by Masters (Honours) student Paul Davidson who led Griffith Film School student crews as part of a Community Engagement project. 5.1 sound production for DVD was completed in IMERSD by myself as part of a Music Technology (Honours) research training project. The film documents iOrpheus: Art Among Us (the iPod Opera), a concept developed by New York-based composer and internet music pioneer William Duckworth together with co-artistic director and technology developer Nora Farrell. Bill was a visiting scholar with Griffith University from June–August 2007 on a Fulbright Senior Specialist grant awarded for iOrpheus.

The project gratefully acknowledges the support of Griffith University’s DVC-Academic, Prof John Dewar, MacBook Pros from Apple Computer Australia, wearable sound systems from MusicLab, a state-of-the-art 5.1 surround sound PA system from Acoustic Technologies Electronics, and wireless network systems from Griffith Research Computing Services. Full production credits are listed over at the iOrpheus site.

The DVD can be ordered from the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre and also is part of the collection at the Australian Government's National Film & Sound Archive.

Music Two-point-zero

I presented a one hour public lecture for the Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, entitled . The "idea of a music two-point-zero" represents some more thinking about the independent musician vs.big media conundrum, and gratefully draws on the work of Lawrence Lessig and Henry Jenkins

"Music two-point-zero:

How participatory culture is reclaiming knowledge,

power and value systems from the inside out"

The abstract goes like this:
In the last decade, the Internet has served to enable the explosion of social networking. From MySpace, to YouTube and Wikipedia, participatory culture has transformed value systems, undermined notions of authority and power, while simultaneously creating new pathways for autonomous creativity and innovation. In this lecture, Paul Draper discusses these phenomena and suggests a higher learning imperative for what might be considered ‘music 2.0’, that is, for independent musical craft set in authentic contexts which continue to redefine 21st century artistry.

The lecture is available as a PDF transcription, a streaming Quicktime movie and vodcast at Radio IMERSD, or from the Apple iTunes Store.