• Contact
  • Helpdesk
DARIAHDARIAHDARIAHDARIAH
  • About
    • DARIAH in a Nutshell
    • Mission & Vision
    • Organisation and Governance
    • Join DARIAH
    • History of DARIAH
    • Documents
    • Publications
  • Network
    • Members and Partners
    • Regional Hubs
    • People
  • Activities
    • Working Groups
    • Training and Education
    • Open Science
      • DARIAH Open
      • OpenMethods
      • Heritage Data Reuse Charter
    • Projects
    • DARIAH Theme
    • Impact Case Studies
  • Tools & Services
    • Tools and Services
    • Contributions
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events Calendar
    • Annual Events
    • Newsletters

Fitting inside COVID-19. Aesthetic Resilience of Contemporary Music facing a Pandemic Crisis – A DARIAH Theme funded project

Home Home Page News
NextPrevious

Fitting inside COVID-19. Aesthetic Resilience of Contemporary Music facing a Pandemic Crisis – A DARIAH Theme funded project

By Eliza Papaki | Home Page News, News | December 2, 2021

In 2020, DARIAH selected two streams of funding as part of the Theme funding call, ‘Arts Exchanges’ and ‘Arts, Humanities and COVID-19’. The call attracted a high number of well articulated and competitive applications, mainly addressing, perhaps not surprisingly, the topic of ‘Arts, Humanities and COVID-19’. 

With an overall budget of 87.920 €, DARIAH funded nine projects for a year (December 2020 – December 2021). This series presents their results with a special focus on each of these projects.


Fitting inside COVID-19. Aesthetic Resilience of Contemporary Music facing a Pandemic Crisis

Coordinator: Marlies De Munck

Having as central questions: (1) how to improve the aesthetic resilience of music productions in the face of the coronavirus pandemic restrictions? and (2) how to improve the relationship with the public of contemporary music concerts in this new reality?, an interdisciplinary research team aimed to study the impact of COVID-19 on the aesthetic resilience of artistic production within the contemporary music sector. The team consisted of philosopher of music Marlies De Munck, sociologist of art Pascal Gielen, two musicians Pieter Matthynssens and Thomas Moore, supplemented with music critic Annemarie Peeters, studied the aesthetic resilience of artistic production in contemporary music.

In particular, the team examined the ability of musicians to successfully transform their performance practice to be in accordance with the COVID-19 restrictions, and still generate artistic meanings that fully resonate with their audiences. This research resulted in a sound comparison of off-line and on-line performances and in analyses of
the impact of digital formats on music performances. The research results where disseminated in academic journals and an academic book chapter, in popular journals, keynote lectures, a video, radio and journal interviews and in seminars.

Methodology

Phase 1: Comparative case studies 

Adjusting the original plan for attending scheduled concerts and conducting interviews at the Philharmonie Luxembourg, due to the ongoing travel ban, the team sought alternatives and followed live concerts and rehearsals by members of the Nadar Ensemble in their own country, Belgium. The team attended and analysed live performances  and rehearsals of:

  • ‘The Wilderness of Mirrors’ by Eva Reiter and ‘Cascade – Arcade’ by Maarten Buyl at Transit Festival (Leuven) 
  • ‘Game Over’ by Christof Ressi and ‘New Notations’ by Remy Siu for the online festival Time Canvas: Alter Ego in deSingel (Antwerp) 

These cases were then compared to the live streamed online concerts of the latter two works, as well as with the live streamed solo concert ‘Double Speak Double Think’ by Thomas Moore in the Unerhörte Musik-series in Berlin. 

Following these concerts, the team organized reflection meetings with performer Thomas Moore, composer Stefan Prins, artistic director of Nadar Ensemble Pieter Matthyssens and music critic Annemarie Peeters (the latter to include the listener’s perspective in the comparative analysis). During these first sessions, the differences between digital/virtual and live performances were discussed and, among other things, a significant discrepancy in experience between the performing musicians and the composer was established. The latter mainly saw advantages and (technical) possibilities in (composing for) digitally mediated performances while the former also reported the drawbacks in addition to certain new possibilities. 

In particular, the inability to interact with an audience, during as well as after the performance, was highlighted as problematic. For the performer, for example, it was noted that it was extremely difficult to build up an arch of tension that spans the whole performance and musicians find they need live interaction to adjust their playing style and movement idiom. The team suggested that these perceived disadvantages were primarily related to digitised performances of works originally written for live settings. 

Phase 2: Dissemination of research results

The second phase of the research included a rich programme of public engagement, with workshops and in-depth interviews on the experimental ‘test performances’ (varying digital re-enactments) of FITTINGinSIDE by Stefan Prins. 

On the basis of the first analyses and discussions, the team presented research in two scientific articles: (1) ‘The Politics of the Conductor’ by Pascal Gielen and Thomas Moore at the journal Music & Practice; and (2) ‘The auratic city’ by Marlies De Munck and Pascal Gielen, to be published by ASP / VUB Press in the book ‘The city better after corona’. Furthermore, the team has already given several interviews about the effects of the corona measures on the digitisation of live concerts for, among others, the Ukrainian cultural online platform ‘Suspilne media’, and the radio program ‘Lessons of a Virus’ (Kanal Centre Pompidou, Brussels). 


* DARIAH Theme is an annual thematic priority set by the Board of Directors of DARIAH-EU. The aim is to stimulate activities and events related to an important topic of research in the digitally enabled arts and humanities by issuing a call for funding.

DARIAH Theme

Related Post

  • New Head for VCC “Research And Education”: Tanja Wissik Follows Marianne Ping Huang

    By Eliza Papaki

    Tanja Wissik is a Senior Scientist at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage (ACDH-CH) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and teaches Digital Methods at the University of Vienna. Relationship with DARIAHRead more

  • LINHD joins DARIAH as Cooperating Partner

    By Eliza Papaki

    The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU) is proud to announce it has signed a Cooperating Partnership agreement with the Laboratorio Digital de Humanidades Digitales (LINHD) at the Universidad Nacional de EducaciónRead more

  • DH in Transition: A mixed approach and a hybrid publication on the effects of COVID-19 in DH research and practice – A DARIAH Theme funded project

    By Eliza Papaki

    In 2020, DARIAH selected two streams of funding as part of the Theme funding call, ‘Arts Exchanges’ and ‘Arts, Humanities and COVID-19’. The call attracted a high number of well articulated and competitive applications, mainly addressing, perhaps not surprisingly,Read more

  • DARIAH Friday Frontiers: Autumn/Winter 2022 Series

    By Eliza Papaki

    DARIAH is pleased to announce that it is opening its popular in-house webinar series ‘Friday Frontiers’ to the wider public for the first time in the upcoming Autumn/Winter 2022 series.  The Friday Frontiers webinars allowRead more

  • Contemporary collecting and COVID-19: Barriers, bottlenecks, and perspectives in digital curation – A DARIAH Theme funded project

    By Eliza Papaki

    In 2020, DARIAH selected two streams of funding as part of the Theme funding call, ‘Arts Exchanges’ and ‘Arts, Humanities and COVID-19’. The call attracted a high number of well articulated and competitive applications, mainlyRead more

NextPrevious

RECENT POSTS

  • New Head for VCC “Research And Education”: Tanja Wissik Follows Marianne Ping Huang

    Tanja Wissik is a Senior Scientist at the Austrian Centre for Digital

    8 August, 2022
  • LINHD joins DARIAH as Cooperating Partner

    The Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU) is proud

    4 August, 2022
  • DARIAH Annual Report 2021 is now published

    We are pleased to present to you the 2021 Annual Report. 2021 was a year in

    2 August, 2022
  • DH in Transition: A mixed approach and a hybrid publication on the effects of COVID-19 in DH research and practice – A DARIAH Theme funded project

    In 2020, DARIAH selected two streams of funding as part of the Theme

    28 July, 2022
  • DARIAH Friday Frontiers: Autumn/Winter 2022 Series

    DARIAH is pleased to announce that it is opening its popular in-house

    27 July, 2022

TWITTER UPDATES

  • We are pleased to share that @linhduned has joined @DARIAHeu as a Cooperating Partner! This marks an important st… https://t.co/KzxBHxtjTh3 days ago
  • RT @BarbaraDist: For the second year in a row I am given the precious opportunity to participate in the @ESUDH. This time I feel even lucki…4 days ago
  • RT @ESUDH: Day 2 #ESUDH2022   Who doesn’t love a great coffee break? Time to “recharge” and connect with everyone   @DAAD_Germany @UniLei…4 days ago

Tags

ADHO DARIAH Annual Event DARIAH Annual Event 2017 DARIAH Theme DESIR DH H2020 project SSH Open Marketplace Training
Logo of DARIAH
Follow us on:  twitter   youtube   flickr

Contact DARIAH

Email DARIAHinfo@dariah.eu

Privacy and Legal

  • Legal Notice
  • Privacy Notice

Quick Menu

  • DARIAH in a Nutshell
  • Members and Cooperating Partners
  • Projects
  • Events Calendar
  • Helpdesk

Subscribe to our mailing list and newsletter

* = required field
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence
  • About
    • DARIAH in a Nutshell
    • Mission & Vision
    • Organisation and Governance
    • Join DARIAH
    • History of DARIAH
    • Documents
    • Publications
  • Network
    • Members and Partners
    • Regional Hubs
    • People
  • Activities
    • Working Groups
    • Training and Education
    • Open Science
      • DARIAH Open
      • OpenMethods
      • Heritage Data Reuse Charter
    • Projects
    • DARIAH Theme
    • Impact Case Studies
  • Tools & Services
    • Tools and Services
    • Contributions
  • News & Events
    • News
    • Events Calendar
    • Annual Events
    • Newsletters
DARIAH