EthNoise!

The Music, Language, and Culture Workshop

October 13- Dr. Mark Butler

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Please join us for Ethnoise! the Ethnomusicology Workshop on Thursday, October 13th, at 4:30 in Goodspeed 205 for a presentation by Dr. Mark Butler, a music theorist whose research addresses popular music, rhythm, and technologically mediated performance. He is an Associate Professor and Coordinator of the program in Music Theory and Cognition in the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University.

His paper is:  “Performing Performance: Communicative Strategies, Ideologies of Liveness, and Listener Orientation among Electronic Dance Musicians.”

Abstract:  In DJ sets and laptop performances, an unprecedented level of technological mediation comes into conflict with the expected “liveness” of performance. As a result, musicians frequently express various techno-performative anxieties in explanations of their approaches. In particular, they are concerned that the audience experiences a performance, one that is imbued with a sense of live presence, rather than simply the playback of a recording or the clicking of a mouse. They work to convey this “presence” in a number of ways, which include dancing, other significant physical gestures, and the use of carefully selected electronic hardware. The audience responds in kind, thereby completing the liveness of the event.  My talk will address these issues in both theoretical and analytical terms, drawing material for discussion from interviews and field recordings made in Berlin in 2005–2007.


Persons with a disability who believe they may need assistance, please call Will Faber in advance at 773-987-5299.

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