Colloquium: Mediated Musical Communities :: April 15, 2008; 4:00 pm :: Rm. 315 – Orwig Music Bldg. (corner of Hope Street and Young Orchard Avenue), Brown University.

Performativity, Ideologies of Liveness, and Listener-Consciousness in Electronic-Music Performance featuring Mark Butler: In DJ sets and laptop performances, an unprecedented level of technological mediation comes into conflict with the expected “liveness” of performance. As a result, musicians frequently express various techno-performative anxieties in explanations of their performance approaches. In particular, they are concerned that the audience experiences a performance, one that is imbued with a sense of live presence, rather than simply the playback of a recording or the clicking of a mouse. They work to convey this “presence” in a number of ways, which include dancing, other significant physical gestures, and the use of carefully selected electronic hardware. The audience responds in kind, thereby completing the liveness of the event. This talk will address these issues in both theoretical and analytical terms, drawing material for discussion from interviews and field recordings made in Berlin in 2005–2007.

Mark Butler is a music theorist with interests in popular music, rhythm and meter, music and sexuality, musical meaning and aesthetics, and the history of music theory. Butler’s research integrates theoretical, historical, and anthropological approaches to music, with particular emphasis on the use of ethnographic methodology to address music-theoretical questions. His book Unlocking the Groove: Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in Electronic Dance Music (Indiana University Press, 2006) explores the rhythmic and metrical organization of electronic dance music from the measure to the complete DJ set, drawing upon field research with audiences and creators of electronic dance music as well as musical analysis. His current research includes a book focusing on relationships between technology, improvisation, and composition in electronic–music performance.