Reading Music in the Digital Realm

As an adjunct to the recent QCRC Twilight Lecture, I wrote a short piece called Reading Music in the Digital Realm for The Australian newspaper, published in the Higher Education feature on 28 November.

This also profiled the upcoming CreateWorld 2007 'Music 2.0' keynote as well as taking about the work we're doing at the Queensland Conseravtoirum in online publishing at Radio IMERSD. The full article can be read here on The Australian Higher Education website.

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.

Contribute, Communicate, Collaborate

I wrote a new paper about net-based knowledge economies for music-making entitled, "Contribute, communicate, collaborate: the Internet as Workplace in the Digital Arts" as part of the AUC Academic Developer's Conference "Contribute, Communicate, Collaborate".

This was held at the Royal Pines resort on the Gold Coast, Queensland from 23– 26 September, 2007 and was nice to catch up again for colleagues from 38 member universities in Australia and New Zealand. I also worked on the on the peer review panel and it was engaging to see the range of material and different kinds of thinking coming from creative institutions, academics and technologists. The full set of published papers can be accessed from the AUC Conference proceedings here.