Digitalisation not Dematerialisation: The Musical Artefact in the Digital Age
by Graeme Earl
Nicola Dibben (University of Sheffield) will be talking on Tuesday, 6 March 2012, 3.15 pm in Building 2 / Room 1083 about “Digitalisation not Dematerialisation: The Musical Artefact in the Digital Age”
“Digitalisation has brought profound changes to the way people make, use, and acquire music. Inthis paper I examine the future of the musical artefact through a case study of Björk’s 2011 album and app suite “Biophilia”—the first music album by a major pop icon to be released as a set of interactive iPad/iPhone apps, and a project I contributed to. Björk exploits audiovisual material and the high production values of material artefacts, yet she is also one of the first to adopt the new technologies here the app suite as alternative to the album. Biophilia represents a good case study to examine the consequences and opportunities of digitalisation for music: the creation of new formats and their implications for modes of listening, stratification of the market for physical artefacts, the role of extramusical materials, implications for the expression of a unified artistic vision, unification of digital and material copy, and new opportunities for musical learning.”
Categories: Other Events. Tags: digital artefacts and music.