In C: Creation, Connectivity, Collaboration, and Controllers
Berklee College of Music, Boston, U.S., May 17–19, 2019
Deadline: October 12, 2018
Submission results will be sent by Tuesday, November 20 at midnight EST.
Conference Themes
Our title for the 14th Art of Record Production Conference is inspired by Terry Riley’s seminal, minimalist work "In C" (1964). When asked how he would describe the relationship between his drive to push technology to its limits in the 1960s and the musical possibilities that resulted, Riley replied that it was all driven by "the 'What if?' principles." This conference seeks to bring together scholars, artists, and innovators applying "What if?" principles to practice and research. Our "C" themes—creation, connectivity, collaboration, and controllers—all represent areas of movement in contemporary record production, and we invite participants to interpret them broadly as they relate to active research projects and creative work. Consider the following questions about each thematic component.
Creation
How do we define creativity in record production? What is the object that we create, and who contributes to it? How has music technology affected what it means to be a creative producer? Who are the creators that have influenced our field and how can we understand and interpret their contributions?
Connectivity
Nielsen's Law states that users' internet bandwidth grows by 50 percent per year. How has this phenomenon affected the art of record production? What musical and sonic innovations are afforded by ever-increasing connectivity? How has the rise of the project/DIY studio afforded connections between creators? What creative or academic projects are ARP participants working on that investigate music and connectivity?
Collaboration
Record production began as a collaborative art, and for many producers, collaboration remains a vital part of the creative toolbox. Technologies have changed over time, but creative collaboration in music production is fundamentally a human negotiation—a synthesis of ideas and processes to arrive at a single outcome. We invite papers from colleagues who are engaged in musical or academic collaboration.
Controllers
The MIDI protocol was developed in 1983 and almost immediately spawned a plethora of hardware controllers. Since that time, controllers and control surfaces have evolved in design, precision, and responsiveness, allowing for production environment where almost anything can be a controller. In 2009, Thor Magnusson described all musical instruments as "cognitive extensions"—and digital instruments as carriers of “symbolic instructions written for the meta-machine, the computer.” In a sense, perhaps all musical tools—instruments, hardware, and software—are controllers. We invite papers relating to the broad theme of control in music production.
