CHIME Seminar: Michael Terren and Catherine Provenzano

The CHIME network (Computer Human Interaction and Music nEtwork) is an EPSRC-funded research network in Music and Human Computer Interaction. The network aims to connect and assist researchers from diverse disciplines, whether just starting or established, whose interests span any combination of Music and Human Computer Interaction (also known as Music Interaction - MI)

CHIME EPSRC Network

Online seminar exploring the musical side of the recent Springer collection: Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production

Please note the slightly later-than-usual start time of 5pm GMT! <h3>Michael Terren</h3>Creative Tools, the Softwarisation of Cultural Production, and Expressive SubjectsThis talk introduces the 2024 volume <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-45693-0" title="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-45693-0" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Creative Tools and the Softwarization of Cultural Production</a>, edited by Frédérik Lesage and I. The volume argues that a more interdisciplinary understanding of the tools used to produce cultural artefacts can help us better understand what ‘being creative’ means today. From image editors to DAWs, video editors to game engines, these tools are used by creatives everyday, but few have sought to theorise them in aggregate and with interdisciplinary breadth. In the talk I will argue that musicians have a lot to learn from analyses of, for example, Adobe or Unreal Engine. The talk then explores my chapter on the “expressive subject,” a framework for understanding musical expression as an index of power driven by the dynamics of the MIDI controller market. I apply this framework to two products made by the company ROLI: the Blocks series, and the Seaboard. The former produces an expressive subject of ‘prosumption-by-accumulation,’ where the expressive capacity of the instrument is determined by how much you ‘buy in’ to its ecosystem; while the latter produces virtuosi, an expressive subject performing the precarious labour of aesthetically legitimising the instrument as capable of expressive performance. I conclude by considering musical expression as a sociohistorical infrastructure, via the examples of the Roland TR-808 and TB-303 instruments. <h3>Catherine Provenzano</h3>Emotion as Software's SubstrateIn this talk, I posit emotion at the center of music technologies, and argue that emotion is a foundational layer of software design. I entertain the possibility that software is not developed to help us do things, but instead to help us feel and not feel things. As such, sound software tools much more greatly reorganize sonic-social relations than they innovate outcomes. Using the examples of the pitch correction software Auto-Tune and Melodyne, MIDI chord packs marketed to amateur producers, and Resemble AI’s voice generation tool, I show how emotion is explicitly encoded by programmers and promised through marketing, and look for its implied outline in user practice, expectation, and aspiration. By positioning emotion as software’s substrate, I examine how software not only facilitates musical creation but also interpellates and relies upon emotional landscapes of both creators and listeners. Software flourishes on both the hyper-specific, historically and culturally contingent emotional politics inhabited by their inventors and user communities, and transmutes those politics for sonic circulation. This work stems from a desire to take seriously that which so often passes by unnoticed— the investment in and desire for sound as “emotional,” or, at the opposite polarity, “unemotional,” with often very firm but at the same time unconsidered understandings of what those words might mean, and the ways they are entrenched in class, race, and gender politics. By exposing the revivified but so often covert essentialisms deployments of emotion permit, I suggest a reorientation of the questions we ask to determine what it takes for software to thrive. <h3>The CHIME Network</h3>The CHIME network (Computer Human Interaction and Music nEtwork) is an EPSRC-funded research network in Music and Human Computer Interaction which launched in April 2022. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&amp;redir_token=QUFFLUhqbjhIQjJOYldBM0wzV21DcFBndjFnUEF1VmRWQXxBQ3Jtc0tubGtlZjFqa3hlX1FiMkRfcnFsT0kwTzVkcE1JdXZ0dHJDREhKVW5yZEhnNTAyLVQ4TjVPOW55Z2F0ekE5dVVJYnhscVlRMXkwWTFLdUlXS2duUS1ySzBfeElEbG4yOERDR3JEQ05yQlZBVUk5ZHZ3RQ&amp;q=http%3A%2F%2Fchime.ac.uk%2F&amp;v=ClgOgqdS7eM" title="https://www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&amp;redir_token=QUFFLUhqbjhIQjJOYldBM0wzV21DcFBndjFnUEF1VmRWQXxBQ3Jtc0tubGtlZjFqa3hlX1FiMkRfcnFsT0kwTzVkcE1JdXZ0dHJDREhKVW5yZEhnNTAyLVQ4TjVPOW55Z2F0ekE5dVVJYnhscVlRMXkwWTFLdUlXS2duUS1ySzBfeElEbG4yOERDR3JEQ05yQlZBVUk5ZHZ3RQ&amp;q=http%3A%2F%2Fchime.ac.uk%2F&amp;v=ClgOgqdS7eM" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">http://chime.ac.uk</a>

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CHIME Seminar: Michael Terren and Catherine Provenzano

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