KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Echoes and Reflections: Presenting Archaeoacoustics Results Using Multimedia and VR Technologies

This presentation will explore research into the interactions of music and acoustics in ancient contexts, often described as archaeoacoustics, and into how such research can be framed using interactive multimedia and VR technologies. It will begin by exploring the nature of echo, examining how delays in sound have been interpreted in human cultures, how echoes and reflections fit into the audible frequency spectrum, and how they relate to music and rhythm in particular. This will begin by discussing sound in caves, the most ancient selected acoustic context we know of associated with music, and the site of the first archaeoacoustic research. It continues with comparing this acoustic ecology with acoustic effects such as echo in landscapes. Further discussion of the developing cultural significance of acoustics will begin with exploring large early human buildings that were used for ritual purposes, followed by exploration of the beginning of intentionally designed acoustics and their impact on musical cultures. It will examine archaeoacoustics methods and the various metrics that can provide quantitative evaluation of musical contexts. It will then explore how these metrical results can be presented in interactive computer game engines to provide qualitative responses and evaluation, including discussion of the use of Virtual Reality technologies. Two case studies will be explored, an audio rich multimedia model of the Finnish rock art site of Astuvansalmi and the EMAP Soundgate, which explores caves, Stonehenge, and a Roman theatre. The presentation concludes by discussing the value of such multimedia phenomenology in exploring the value of intersubjective responses to modelled sound and music at these archaeological sites.

Music Activism in a Devastating World: Sounds of political survival or survival of the political sounds?

In this talk, I explore various practices of music- and sound-related activism in the current moment defined as the time of political depression (Berlant 2011) and overall (natural, social, political) exhaustion (Chaudhary 2019). In the last two decades, we have witnessed how people have used music and sound to gather against ongoing economic, social, and ecological decline and demand a radically new vision of the future, diverging from the capitalist one. For example, various collective or ad-hock singing groups or orchestras have been emerging in several big cities across Europe – in Italy, Austria, Germany, UK, Poland, post-Yugoslav countries. These collectives participate in protests for various local, regional and global causes addressing systemic fascism and racism, corruption of the political elites, erosion of free public education and healthcare system, and violation of workers and social rights by evoking a collective and amateur spirit of sound-making in channelizing rebellious and emancipatory potentials.

Situating my theoretical framework within the field of affective politics of sound, I aim to addresses the global arise of activist music activities based on mass-performing and listening, which can contribute to new understanding of political agency in 21st century. In doing that, I address the question: How we can reimagine new structures for political acting through music and sound? I analyse selected aspects of activism that includes collective sound-making in order to examine both potentials and limits of theorizing political capacity of music and sound in the current moment of exhaustion by focusing on two main concepts: amateurism and spontaneity. I do that in order to further reflect on potentials to envision, theorize and act toward new political future in the current crisis of neoliberalism.