AREM stands for “Archiving and Re-Performing Electroacoustic Music.” The first AREM symposium took place on December 14, 2018, in Bayreuth and has been organized by Miriam Akkermann every two years since then. The symposia thus regularly bring together researchers from various disciplines and with diverse backgrounds to discuss issues related to the archiving and re-performance of electroacoustic music, computer music, and digitized music.

This is because work in the field of electroacoustic music and early computer music is directly linked to the challenges posed by rapidly evolving (digital) technologies. These challenges range from the short lifecycles of technical devices and compatibility issues between different generations of technology to the question of how the long-term archiving of this data can be ensured.

Furthermore, in electroacoustic music, technical (digital) advancements and artistic ideas have developed in close interrelation with one another. How can and should compositions and performances of electroacoustic music be documented, preserved, and/or archived? Who decides what is archived, and who is responsible for maintaining the data (and the hardware), ensuring accessibility, and ensuring compatibility? What strategies and approaches have already been pursued, including with regard to interdisciplinary and methodological collaboration with musicologists, music practitioners, sound engineers, and computer scientists?

Archiving music that involves digital technologies causes new challenges for institutions, libraries and archives, ranging from providing server facilities and maintaining hard- and software to questions of systematizing the now divers, partly digital sources. How can and should these new sources be preserved and archived? Who selects the sources that are maintained? Who takes care about maintaining the accessibility of the archived sources? How is archiving digital media influenced by legal issues? How do other research fields such as media studies, film studies or game studies deal with those questions? And how is archiving music related to the new developments in digital music editions?

Attached to the Symposium, the workshop „What do we need to do to archive music?“ took place.

Sustainable archiving in this very special field of electroacoustic music, dealing with objects that may include several different media formats as original sources, requires the interdisciplinary exchange. The workshop will provide a first platform for exchange among the main positions involved in order to exchange on their subject-specific ideas and goals, and may serve as a starting point for further research as well as ultimately motivate new activities in this interdisciplinary field.

Friday, October 23, 2020

10.00 – 10.15: Virtual doors open 

10.15 – 10.30: Welcome

• Miriam Akkermann, TU Dresden (GER) 

10.30 – 12.00: Libraries and Archives (Session 1)

• Serge Lemouton, IRCAM (F): The Electroacoustic Repertoire: Is there a Librarian?
• Barbara Wiermann, SLUB (GER): Gaps in memory? How do we archive electro-acoustic music in Germany?
• Anne Lauber-Rönsberg, TU Dresden (GER): Copyright Law Issues of Archiving and Re-performing Electro-Acoustic Music

12.00 – 14.00: Coffee Break

14.00 – 16.00: Preservation strategies (Session 2)

• Kevin Dahan, DeMontfort University (GB): Towards Effective Preservation of Electroacoustic Music
• Tae Hong Park, NYU (USA): Towards Crowd-Sourced Curating, Archiving, and Preserving Electro-Acoustic Music
• Guillaume Boutard, University of Montreal (CAN): Prospecting for Digital Preservation of Electroacoustic and Mixed Music

16.00 – 16.30: Coffee Break

16.30 – 18.00: Preserving and Re-Performing (Session 3)

• Seth Cluett, Colombia University (USA): Preserving In Place: Reconstructing the RCA Mark II
• Lucas Bennett, Basel University (CH): (Re-)Performing and Documenting Live Electronic Musik from the last 30 Years
   

Saturday, October 24, 2020

10.00 – 10.30: Welcome

10.30 – 12.30: Projects and best practice (Session 4)

• Franziska Heller, Zürich University/Film University Babelsberg KONRAD WOLF (CH/GER): Film and archiving within digital cultures
• Bernhard Lutz, Bavarian State Library (GER): Long-term Archiving in the Specialised Information Service for Musicology (musiconn)
• Folkmar Hein, emerit. TU Berlin (GER): Statistics on Electroacustic Music

12.30 – 14.00: Coffee Break

14.00 – 16.00: Workshop „What do we need to do to archive music?“

• Impulse statements by Frédéric Dufeu, University of Huddersfield (GB), Andreas Münzmay, Paderborn University (GER), and Benjamin Bohl, Frankfurt University (GER), and co-workshop organizer Axel Berndt, CEMFI (GER).
• The workshop consisted of initial impulse statements followed by a structured discussion and an open panel round with all workshop participants.

More: https://arem2020.wordpress.com