Turning Gigabytes into Gigs: “Songification” and Live Music Data

Complex data is challenging to understand when it is represented as written communication even when it is structured in a table. How- ever, choosing to represent data in creative ways can aid our under- standing of complex ideas and patterns. In this regard, the creative industries have a great deal to offer data-intensive scholarly disci- plines. Music, for example, is not often used to interpret data, yet the rhythmic nature of music lends itself to the representation and anal- ysis of temporal data.Taking the music industry as a case study, this paper explores how data about historical live music gigs can be analysed, extend- ed and re-presented to create new insights. Using a unique process called ‘songification’ we demonstrate how enhanced auditory data design can provide a medium for aural intuition. The case study also illustrates the benefits of an expanded and inclusive view of research; in which computation and communication, method and media, in combination enable us to explore the larger question of how we can employ technologies to produce, represent, analyse, deliver and exchange knowledge.

In the heat of the moment: audience real time response to live music and dance performance

Coughing and Clapping: Investigating Audience Experience explores the processes and experiences of attending live music events from the initial decision to attend through to audience responses and memories of a performance after it has happened. The book brings together international researchers who consider the experience of being an audience member from a range of theoretical and empirical perspectives. Whether enjoying a drink at a jazz gig, tweeting at a pop concert or suppressing a cough at a classical recital, audience experience is affected by motivation, performance quality, social atmosphere and group and personal identity. Drawing on the implications of these experiences and attitudes, the authors consider the question of what makes an audience, and argue convincingly for the practical and academic value of that question.

Con-sequence

Con-sequence considers connections and disconnections within personal, technological and spiritual realms. Your own perceptions of trust, power and vulnerability may be reflected as forms of deceit or windows of great strength. Con-sequence uses energy and sensations to illuminate what is untouchable.

Cultural policy in Australia

 In early 2010, more than 15,000 people gathered on Bourke Street in front of Victoria’s Parliament building to register their protest against an unpopular government decision.1 The colourful crowd chanted and marched, sported placards and banners, and listened to speeches by local identities.

What were they protesting about? Climate change? Refugees? The war in Afghanistan?

No, they were protesting about a decision by Liquor Licensing Victoria to enforce onerous security requirements on live music venues in Melbourne. The new regulations had led to the closure of one of Melbourne’s best-loved rock venues, a Collingwood pub named The Tote. Many other venues were threatened with the same fate.

This was a protest about cultural policy.

The end of the rainbow

The End of the Rainbow is a documentary film about music, about community and a very special place. When the live music venue “The Rainbow Hotel” in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy is forced to close down publican Chickk sets out to accommodate the many musicians and customers grieving its closure with a final week of musical activity in which there is organisational chaos, dancing, laughs, beer (lots of), and great music. It is a week of celebration as musicians pay homage to mark “the End of an Era”, but it is also a statement about community places and a protest against property development at the expense of cultural heritage, specifically Australian live music. It’s also a love story with a dramatic twist...

Screening Sarah Bernhardt: reinterpreting acting in silent film

Sarah Bernhardt, the great nineteenth-century theatrical actress, was also the first major international film star. Appearing cross-dressed in a short Hamlet film before international audiences at the Paris Exposition of 1900, this 56-year-old French actress most famously went on to make Camille (La Dame aux Camélias, 1911) and Queen Elizabeth (Les Amours de la Reine Elisabeth, 1912). Later appearing in one of the first celebrity home movies (Sarah Bernhardt at Home, 1915), she also made a WWI propaganda film, Mothers of France (Mères Françaises, 1917). This presentation explores these films as evidence of a productive exchange between the stage and the nascent film industry. Rather than see Bernhardt’s acting as evidence of the theatre’s incommensurability with film, it will demonstrate the legacy of her stage acting as she adapted it to early film. The talk will include screenings of the films accompanied by live music.

Gustav Holst and British Music Society of Victoria collections at the State Library of Victoria

The paper presents a content-based evaluation, tracing the historical background of two heritage music collections at the State Library of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia).  In the case of the Gustav Holst and the British Music Society of Victoria Collections, history and content intertwine for the reason that both collections were initiated at the same time and by the same visionary power. During the early 1930s Louise Hanson-Dyer, a patron of Gustav Holst, issued a complete catalogue of the composer’s works and donated to the State Library of Victoria the first batch of Holst scores. This was to be the initial installment of a complete collection of published British music, which, however, was stopped due to duty tax complications. At the same time, the British Music Society of Victoria, founded by Louise Hanson-Dyer in 1921, maintained the first open library of chamber music in Australia. The BMS of Victoria Collection came to the State Library of Victoria in the 1980s. The most valuable materials in the collection are manuscripts of Australian twentieth century works, concert programs and first publications of British music from the 1920s and 1930s, which also supplement the Gustav Holst Collection. The collections are valuable reference and research collections, which document musical taste and music-making in Melbourne from 1920s well into the 1970s. The collections are also sources for studies into Louise Hanson-Dyer’s gift in collection development and her efforts to raise the professional standards of music performance in Melbourne and Australia.

How to live : being happy and dealing with moral dilemmas

"This work provides clear answers to difficult moral and social issues that we face in our personal lives - that governments need to address when balancing the interests of the community. By demystifying moral discourse, How to Live provides a clear moral pathway for students of philosophy, medicine, and law, as well as the general reader. The moral framework of How to Live is developed from an interdisciplinary perspective. The culmination presents a forward-thinking theory that will maximize the success and happiness of the individual and the community within a society."--BOOK JACKET

Inspired by the past, driven by the passion: music in state-supported education in New South Wales and Victoria 1848-1920

This investigation considers the development of class music teaching in New South Wales and Victoria during the first seventy-two years of state-supported primary education. The first chapter describes the English background including music teaching methods (resulting from the mid-nineteenth century English choral singing movement) and the subsequent development of music teaching in English elementary schools. The promotion of school music is then considered on a broadly chronological basis in the two states and several themes are identified in relation to school music policy and practice. These include the status of music (core curriculum or extra-curricular subject), who should teach music (generalist or specialist teachers), what teaching methods and music notation should be used (staff or Tonic Sol-fa), musical training for generalist teachers, and curriculum content in relation to the aims and objectives of school music. Comparisons are made between developments in both states and between both states and English school music. The final chapter demonstrates the relevance of many of the historical themes identified for music education today. The thesis concludes by identifying a recurring problem from the past. namely the lack of co-ordination between various aspects of school music policy, as the most serious problem to be overcome in the future.

Learning, linking and participating : transmitting African music in Australian schools

Considered in this paper is the concept of "change"for practising teachers who are teaching and learning African music in Melbourne, Australia. African music and culture is seen as an effective way for these teachers to experience a cross-cultural odyssey through both social and situated learning. This chapter reports on a music project where teachers perceived African music to be an effective way to leam link and participate with a new music and culture. The chapter summarises pertinent findings relating to why and how teachers are engaging with African music.