Monday 19 November 2012

MMP Grad Prog this Weds: KATE and WILLIAM... URBAN SPACE in ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC


Wednesday 21 November:
3.10 – 4pm: MediaCityUK (University of Salford campus), Room 3.02
Internal session: Dr Benjamin Halligan (University of Salford; CASS)
Establishing Establishment Art: Mario Testino presents William and Kate
How is the history and ontology of the “English establishment” preserved and maintained in postmodern times? This presentation of current research examines Mario Testino’s official wedding photograph of Kate Middleton and William Wales from 2011. Using semiotic and poststructuralist analysis, this talk will seek to identify in what ways is the establishment is both called into creation, and called to account, in this image.




4.10 – 5pm: MediaCityUK (University of Salford campus), Room 3.02
Guest Speaker: Hillegonda Rietveld (London South Bank University)
Listening to Urban Space in Electronic Dance Music

With reference to ideas in sonic, film and cultural studies (such as LaBelle, Brophy, Donald and de Certeau) this paper argues that the sound of EDM enacts a sense of urban alienation, austerity and acceleration. For example, A Guy Called Gerald's Voodoo Ray (1988) seems to echo Manchester's 1980s post-industrial landscape, while the dubstep work of Burial, like Distant Lights (2006) crackles with digital malfunction, wrapped in deep growling sub-bass and placed in a hollow acoustic space that seems to resemble a deserted South London council estate at 3am.  The paper hereby suggest that we must listen to recorded popular music as an “architecsonic” object that is part of a sonic ecology and analyse the full soundscape of a recording, rather than merely focus on a memorable melody line or on a set of significant lyrics. In this context, EDM seems to act as a subconscious “cinematic” underscore that articulates issues of affect in urban experience.

Dr Hillegonda Rietveld is Reader at London South Bank University, where she established BA Music and Sonic Media, and she is Editor of IASPM@Journal. Her publications address the development and experience of electronic dance music cultures and she is the author of This Is Our House: House Music, Cultural Spaces and Technologies. She has been involved professionally in club and DJ culture since 1982, when she released her first electronic recording for Factory Records, as part of Quando Quango.

(Anyone who needs to sign in: you’ll be met at reception at 3 and 4, prior to each talk).

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