21st Century Music Practice Research Network

Seven Practice-Research Online Symposia – Summer 2020

Session 1: Deductive and Inductive Working Methods

This is a call for audio or audio-visual work which explores this practice-research theme in some way. The work will be presented online through YouTube and the C21MP.org website and additionally promoted through the IASPM UK & Ireland online conference hosted by the University of West London this summer. Discussion of the pieces (and/or practice-based responses) will also be presented through the C21MP.org website. The work can be in any style (from the highly commercial to the highly experimental) and be any combination of vocal, acoustic, electrical and electronic. It has, of course, to illuminate the theme and can include:

• Performance
• Composition
• Studio Recording
• Sound to Picture work
• Pieces for Radio
• Sound Art

The only format limitation is that the submission needs to capture or represent the work in the form of a video – although that can include a static image with an audio soundtrack – which must be under 20 minutes in length.

Works can take any form, from being a purely musical or sound art piece to fragments interspersed with explanations – or anywhere else your imagination takes you. They may be completed pieces or incomplete ideas / works in progress. As long as you are the copyright owner and/or can give permission for them to be presented online, they may be pieces created since the start of the 21^st century or pieces specially created for these ‘events’. You will maintain full rights and ownership over any submissions. The idea is to explore and stimulate ideas about how music and sound art is created and communicated. There is no fee and no limit to the number of submissions per person. Submissions will be subject to peer review.

1. Deductive and Inductive Working Methods

One of the key distinctions in scientific research methods is between deduction and induction: between the ‘top-down’ process of starting with an hypothesis and designing experiments to prove or disprove it and the ‘bottom-up’ process of looking at some data and trying to extrapolate some meaning or hypothesis from it. What are the processes that are parallel to this in musical/sonic creativity? If conceptual systems like serialism or sonification can be seen as kinds of aesthetic hypotheses with pieces being either ‘proof’ or ‘disproof’ of their aesthetic worth, isn’t all musical activity based on a conceptual system? But isn’t the process of listening always an inductive process of extrapolating ‘meaning’ from someone else’s musical or sonic ‘data’? How do these ‘top-down’ deductive and ‘bottom-up’ inductive ways of thinking affect our approaches to making and listening to music?

The deadline for submissions to this session is 24^th April 2020. Please upload your video to YouTube, Vimeo or a similar media hosting site and send the URL link or HTML embed code to [email protected] along with your name, institutional affiliation (if any) and a short description of the work and how it relates to the theme (under 50 words).

There will be six other calls with different themes every two weeks during the summer.