The AREM symposia
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?
Save the Date: AREM 2026 on 27th & 28th November 2026!
The “Symposium on Archiving and Re-Performing Electroacoustic Music” (AREM) will take place on November 27 and 28, 2026, at TU Dortmund University. Under this year’s theme, “Transformations,” researchers from various disciplines will once again come together to discuss electroacoustic music, computer music, and digitized music.
More information about the program will follow shortly!
Everything we know about music derives from a very heterogeneous set of sources including the live experience, related objects, paper-based sources, and nowadays also more and more digital content. With the transfer of digital or digitized content and connected technologies into archives, it is necessary to change both native digital and digitized content into archivable formats and selections. This requires creative solutions for the challenge of transferring these sources to archiving institutions and being able to store them there. How to structure and classify this content related to the non-digital sources? What is archived and what is not – and how may this influence future performances? Or are completely different approaches needed to preserve pieces of music for analysis, listening and performance? Participants from various fields such as music research, archival science, media studies, archiving institutions and performance will present their projects and ideas, and discuss the various approaches and challenges.
The fourth edition of the biannual Symposium on Archiving and Re-Performing Electroacoustic Music AREM takes place on Friday, November 29th in the afternoon and November 30th in the morning. The interdisciplinary and international symposium will follow the topic “Technologies”.
The symposium is organized by Prof. Dr. Miriam Akkermann, Ernst-von-Siemens Endowed Professorship, Freie Universität Berlin.
Friday, 29th November 2024
14.00: Virtual and real doors open
14.15 - 14.30: Welcome!
- Miriam Akkermann
14.30 - 16.00: Institutional approaches (Session 1)
- Matthias Kassel (Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel): “Digital Shelving: Examples from the Paul Sacher Foundation's Hybrid Archive“
- Lara Le Drian (Philharmonie Luxembourg): “Preserving and promoting audiovisual collections in an active cultural institution: the forgotten and changing collections at the Philharmonie of Luxembourg”
- Thomas Neuhaus (Folkwang University of the Arts), Sarah Youssef (Managing Director, Digi-Kunst.nrw): "Challenges in Archiving Non-Text-Based Media at Art and Music Academies: ICEM as a Case Study and the Digi-Kunst.nrw Project as a Potential Solution"
16.00 - 16.30: Coffee Break
16.30 - 17.30: Needs and demands (Session 2)
- Mara Helmuth (University of Cincinnati): Impulse: “A Composer's View on Sustaining Interactive Music Performance“
- Anna Schäffler: Impulse: “Adapting Archival Practice: Paradigm Shifts due to Contemporary Challenges”
17.30 - 18.30: Networks and data bases (Session 3)
- Anita Jóri (Leuphana Universität Lüneburg): Impulse: “‘Morgen ist die Frage‘: On the Necessity of Archiving Berlin's Techno Histories”
- Marc Battier: “Framework for documenting East Asia Electroacoustic Musical Works: The EMSAN database”
Saturday, 30th November 2024
10.00: Virtual and real doors open
10.15 - 11.45: Re/Presentation (Session 4)
- Melissa Portaels (Artes KU Leuven Libraries): Impulse: “Luc Brewaeys’ Symphonic Legacy”
- Nadja Wallaszkovits (ABK Stuttgart): “The restoration of the video installation Joseph Beuys CELTIC + ~~~. Reflections on the technical realisation and re-assembling in the context of the exhibition 'On Air: The Sound of the Material in Art from the 1950s to the 1970s', Kaiser Wilhelm Museum Krefeld”
- Felix Mittelberger (ZKM Karlsruhe): “Reconstructing Harald Bode. From Archive to Ear”
11.45 - 12.15: Coffee Break
12.15 - 13.45: Maintenance, restoration, and beyond (Session 5)
- Pierre Couprie (Paris-Saclay University, RASM-CHCSC) and Nathanaëlle Raboisson (Motus Musical Ensemble, IReMus): “Documentation, Analyses and Models of Loudspeaker Orchestras: The Acousmonium as a Case Study”
- Miller Puckette and Serge Lemouton (IRCAM, Paris): “Jupiter: a Case Study in Live Electronic Music Preservation”
- Victor Zappi (Northeastern University): “LDSP: Hacking Mobile Phones to Preserve Technology and Music Beyond Obsolescence”
13.45: Farewell!
Archiving music involving digital technologies becomes a more and more urgent task. This comprises born digital sources as well as digitized content and also applies to information held in digital repositories. Besides challenges such as providing and maintaining adequate facilities, a major question is also how to deal with these digital sources. How can they be structured and classified to grant accessibility? What role does it play to ‘be online‘? And how can performative aspects be integrated in digital sources?
Friday, 09.10.2022; 14.00 - 17.30 p.m.
14.00 – 14.15: Virtual doors open
14.15 – 14.30: Welcome
- Miriam Akkermann
14.30 – 16.00: Strategies and Approaches (Session 1)
- Giulia Sarno: Connecting the dots: activation strategies for an archive of electronic music
- Hannah Bosma: Archiving STEIM
- Nausikaä El Mecky: The Danger of Uploading an Image - Some thoughts on the ephemeral eternity of digital archives
16.00 – 16.30: Coffee Break
16.30 – 18.00: Data and Access (Session 2)
- David Lewis: Music Encoding and Linked Data: A flexible approach to sharing musical information online
- Sarah-Mai Dang: Situation Sources. On Research Data Management and Film History
Saturday, 10.12.2022; 9.15 - 12.45 p.m.
9.15 – 9.30: Virtual doors open
9.30 – 11.00: Sources (Session 3)
- Serge Lemouton, Miller Puckette: Preventive restoration of early real-time repertoire pieces
- Mikako Mizuno: Archiving on text documentation and/or events information; multiple sources of Japanese electroacoustic pieces
- Andreas Münzmay: Data - algorithms - new insights? Digital heuristics in musicology
11.00 – 11.30: Coffee Break
11.30 – 12.30: Dynamics (Session 4)
- Karin Lingnau: Aspects of collecting the immaterial and the speculative
- Annet Dekker: The tension between static documentation and dynamic art
12.30: Farewell
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.
Program
13.00: Welcome and Opening
- Miriam Akkermann, Universität Bayreuth (GER)
13.30 – 14.30: Re-performance / Re-construction (Panel 1)
- João Romão, MPI/HU Berlin (GER):
Music-technical labour: Kontakte’s realisation score as a cultural artefact. - Kevin Dahan, DeMontfort Universtiy Leicester (GB)
Reconstruction as preservation strategy
14.30 – 15.00: Coffee Break
15.00 – 16.30: Preservation / Archiving (Panel 2)
- Hannah Bosma, (NL):
Preservation as performance: liveness, loss and viability in electroacoustic music - Laura Zattra, Konservatorium A. Boito, Parma/Konservatorium F. Venezze, Rovigo (I):
The Preservation of Electroacoustic Music Heritage throughout Italy - Serge Lemouton, IRCAM Paris (F):
Preservation strategies for the electroacoustic works from Ircam and other french national centers for musical creation
16.30 – 17.00: Coffee Break
17.00 – 18.30: Archiving projects in progress (Panel 3)
- Julia Heimerdinger, Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst, Wien (AUT):
Digital collections in music research. An experience report - Martin Roth, Universität Leipzig (GER):
Play as Research: Establishing a (multilayered) research infrastructure for Japanese video games - Henrik von Coler, Technische Universität Berlin (GER):
The TU-Berlin Archive and the EMDoku – Use, Maintanance and Future
More: https://web.archive.org/web/20201022202528/https://arem2018.medienwissenschaft.uni-bayreuth.de/