International Conference

8-10 November, 2017

Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac

Ircam – Centre Pompidou

The “Music & Hacking: Instruments, Communities, Values” conference intends to look at musicians and technicians’ practices which – explicitly or implicitly – could be seen as musical hacking activities. Since the turn of the last century, computer coding and digital instruments continue to transform the aesthetic, ergonomic, communicational, and ethical dimensions of musical practices. These shifts are taking place in part under the banner of hacking, a notion which is primarily associated with the IT world. However, it has progressively infiltrated and structured a number of other fields, such as that of artistic creation. Hacker values include re-appropriation of mass-produced technical products and a focus on freely accessible communal know-how, as well as the pleasure of serendipity, subversion, and manipulation. In sum, hacking is the foundation of a disparate, discreet form of social protest: a reaction to a normalized, globalized commercial and industrial culture.

The conference will focus on three general themes: organological hacking, creation and federation of musical communities through hacking, and the influence of hacker ethics on musical practices. At the end of the conference, a Music Hack Day will be organized on the premises of IRCAM, which will give us a chance to extend and test our reflections on musical hacking.

Music and Hacking 2017

Topics

Invention and subversion of instruments
Non-conformist instrumental practices
Hacking, organology, museology
DIY, circuit bending, and making
Squats, fab labs, and makerspaces
Hacking and socializations
Opportunity, serendipity, and innovation
Music and open source
Musical hacking and intellectual property
Hacker ethics and axiology
Coding and transcoding music
Musical hacking and the emergence of digital culture
Musical hacking and the history of information technologies
Musical hacking and digital art forms
Cultural industries and counter-cultures
Music Hack Days, tech providers, and web audio
Demoscene and derivations of hacking

Proposals for demos, workshops or performances will be taken into consideration for inclusion in the concluding Music Hack Day.

Program

Program PDF version

Calendar

Proposals (either in English or French) are due on May 15th, 2017, and should be sent to musiquehacking2017@gmail.com. Authors will be notified of their participation on July 1st, 2017 at the latest. Proposals, in .doc format, should include a title and an abstract of approximately 500 words, the author’s name and institutional affiliation, as well as a brief biography.