INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE - FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE CREATIVE PROCESS - Reflections on the digitization of contemporary music collections

Scientific presentation

On an international level, current research and the creation of numerous new archival collections related to contemporary music demonstrate the difficulties involved in collecting, cataloguing and promoting documents relevant to musicological research in a constantly evolving field. These questions and challenges are reflected in a number of issues, including:

• the durability of digitized collections of contemporary music
• the technologies used to present digital collections
• tools for annotating digital documents in databases
• legal issues relating to the preservation and use of collections
• issues raised by international archiving collaboration and national differences inpreservation policies
• access to sources and their impact on musicological research possibilities
• preservation of archival holdings during geopolitical and ecological crises
• inaccessible archive holdings and impeded research
• the impact of the choice of documents to be archived on the writing of the history of 20th and 21st century music.

The aim of this symposium is to question the way in which the history of contemporary music is written through the study of archive collections. The aim is to encourage exchanges on both the difficulties encountered and concrete proposals. Contributions may focus on the following theoretical and analytical axes:

Axis 1: How to organize digital data in contemporary music (programs, archiving, platforms)?
Axis 2: Specific case studies in the digitization of contemporary music collections
Axis 3: Different international archiving and digitization policies and institutional logics
Axis 4: Exploiting data: reflections on intellectual property, copyright and archive policy
Axis 5: Accessing sources: historiographical reflections on music archives
Axis 6: How can we consider the obsolescence of technologies for music using electronic and digital devices?

It will be possible to cross the approaches of the different axes within the communications. This conference is part of the From the commission to the creative process project, organized in partnership between the ECLLA laboratories, IReMus and the University of Fribourg, and aims to explore and exploit the archives of the Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain (EOC), which has settled permanently in Saint‐Etienne since its arrival at the Opéra de Saint‐Étienne in 2021. The EOC will be offering an artistic event in conjunction with the conference.
The conference will close with a round‐table discussion led by cultural players, research engineers, legal experts and copyright specialists. This conference will take place on November 15 and 16, 2023 at the Université Jean Monnet. Please send abstract (max. 3.000 characters including spaces) as well as a short biography, by 01/09/2023 to:
louisa.martin‐chevalier@sorbonne‐universite.fr ; laurent.pottier@univ‐st‐etienne.fr ; delphine.vincent@unifr.ch ; viviane.waschbusch@univ‐st‐etienne.fr.

Papers will last 45 minutes (30 minutes for presentation and 15 minutes for questions). The conference languages are French and English. A publication, which will be the subject of a call for papers, is planned at the end of the conference. Publication decisions will be subject to evaluation by an enlarged scientific committee.

Organizing committee:
Elisa Constable (Sorbonne Université)
Louisa Martin‐Chevalier (Sorbonne Université)
Laurent Pottier (Université Jean Monnet Saint‐Étienne)
Delphine Vincent (Université de Fribourg)
Viviane Waschbüsch (Université Jean Monnet Saint‐Étienne)

With the support of :
ECLLA (Etudes du Contemporain en Littératures, Langues, Arts)
Université Jean Monnet Saint‐Étienne
Fondation UJM
Sorbonne Université
IReMus (Institut de recherche en Musicologie UMR 8223)
Université de Fribourg
Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain