HMVB00716U Musikvidenskab: Musikvidenskabeligt emne med performance og produktion: WEIRD PLATFORM MUSIC
Musicological Topic with Performance and Production: WEIRD PLATFORM MUSIC
Musikvidenskab
Is music on the internet degenerate, or simply not music at all? Is it inhuman? Is it merely content? Have our brains been fried by the endless scroll and expanse of music on platforms like TikTok, Spotify, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp?
As of yet brain-fried or not, in this course we will attempt to approach the heated pan: the platform, and its musical aesthetics. As platform capitalists continuously seek to control and define the value of music (or even define music itself!), where does that leave the music-maker creatively, communally, and politically?
In this course we will explore the production, consumption, and governance of weird platform music, the ambiguous “weird” humbly designating the fringe, the cute, the emo, the unsettling, the degenerate, the posing-as-inhuman. We will investigate the aesthetics, production techniques and cultural implications surrounding platform music genres like vaporwave, hyperpop and sigilkore, their aftershocks in popular music, and discuss the questionable division between music and content in this age of big tech and AI.
This is a two-part course where theory and practice are equally measured. In the theory section we will explore an interlocking of cultural studies and musicology, situating music performance and production in the present conjuncture. We will analyze critical texts anchored to the music itself and discuss labor, cultural hegemony, and the romance of community within the sphere of increasingly enshittified platforms.
In the practice section we will look at production and improvisation techniques in DAWs and in the performance space. We will venture through areas between short- and long-form music both epic and chill, zany and cute and fucked up, all in all weird, the whole of which serves to inform the students’ own creative projects. Weaving abstraction with hands-on practical work, we will navigate the continuously blurred divisions between the processes of writing, performing, improvising, producing, mixing, or even mastering and distributing.
By the conclusion of this course students will be able to navigate a plethora of musical expressions and methods, identify platform capitalist governance of music, and applicate an exploratory fusion of theory and practice in their own work as conscious and experimental music-makers.
Literature for inspiration:
Bach Pedersen, A. (2020). The Bloomsbury Handbook of the Anthropology of Sound (H. Schulze, Red.; 1. udg.). Bloomsbury Publishing Inc. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781501335402
Born, G., & Haworth, C. (2017). From Microsound to Vaporwave: Internet-Mediated Musics, Online Methods, and Genre. Music and Letters, 98(4), 601–647. https://doi.org/10.1093/ml/gcx095
Breihan, T. (2023, oktober 25). Spotify Reportedly Plans To Pay Even Less In Royalties To Less-Popular Artists. Stereogum. https://www.stereogum.com/2240332/spotify-reportedly-plans-to-pay-even-less-in-royalties-to-less-popular-artists/news/
Doctorow, C. (2023, januar 23). The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/
Du Gay, P., Hall, S., Janes, L., Koed Madsen, A., Mackay, H., & Negus, K. (2013). Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman (Second edition). Sage Publications. (Original work published 1997)
Farah, H. (2023, september 6). Deezer and Universal Music sign deal to focus royalties on big artists. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/06/deezer-and-universal-music-sign-deal-to-focus-royalties-on-big-artists
Hall, S. (2018). Essential Essays Vol. 1 (D. Morley, Red.). Duke University Press.
Harper, A. (2011). Infinite Music: Imagining the Next Millennium of Human Music-Making. Zero Books.
Harper, A. (2017). How Internet music is frying your brain. Popular Music, 36(1), 86–97. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143016000696
Joseph, M. (2002). Against The Romance Of Community. University of Minnesota Press.
Lena, J. C. (2012). Banding Together: How Communities Create Genres in Popular Music. Princeton University Press.
Nagle, A. (2018). Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right. John Hunt Pub.
Ngai, S. (2015). Our Aesthetic Categories: Zany, Cute, Interesting. Harvard University Press.
Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Polity.
Tanner, G. (2016). Babbling Corpse: Vaporwave and the Commodification of Ghosts. Zero Books.
Podcasts for inspiration:
#ACFM
Hanging Out With Audiophiles
Interdependence
Music artists for inspiration:
Caroline Polachek
David Arkenstone
Fire Toolz
GNOM
Harumi Hosono
Hausu Mountain Records
hYd
James Ferraro
KENTENSHI
Luci4
Macintosh Plus
Orange Milk Records
Oneohtrix Point Never
Rachyl
Rihanna
PC Music
PinkPantheress
Sophie
Trashiii
Yakushimaru Etsuko
Vektroid
- Kategori
- Timer
- Holdundervisning
- 42
- Forberedelse (anslået)
- 294
- Eksamen
- 84
- I alt
- 420
- Point
- 15 ECTS
- Prøveform
- Mundtlig prøve
- Prøveformsdetaljer
- Se studieordningen: BA 2020-ordningen: https://hum.ku.dk/uddannelser/aktuelle_studieordninger/musikvidenskab/musikvidenskab_ba.pdf
- Hjælpemidler
- Alle hjælpemidler tilladt
- Bedømmelsesform
- 7-trins skala
- Censurform
- Ingen ekstern censur
Kursusinformation
- Sprog
- Dansk
- Kursuskode
- HMVB00716U
- Point
- 15 ECTS
- Niveau
- BachelorKandidatsidefag
- Varighed
- 1 semester
- Placering
- Forår
- Skemagruppe
- Se skemalink...
- Kursuskapacitet
- max 40 studerende
Studienævn
- Studienævnet for Kunst- og Kulturvidenskab
Udbydende institut
- Institut for Kunst og Kulturvidenskab
Udbydende fakultet
- Det Humanistiske Fakultet
Kursusansvarlige
- Anders Bach Pedersen (3-696a7848707d7536737d366c73)
- Holger Schulze (7-78686d7a717f6a456d7a7233707a336970)
Undervisere
Anders Bach Pedersen og Holger Schulze