The #MTFResearch Network

Music Tech Fest is a platform that not only brings together artists and developers, but also some of the greatest academic minds working at the intersection of music and technology from across a wide range of disciplines.

The symposium that accompanies each MTF event has given rise to an international, interdisciplinary research network that meets at each Music Tech Fest for discussion and the formation of new research projects at the intersection of music and technology.

Researchers working at the intersection of music and technology - whether in computer science or cultural studies, neurobiology or musicology, in industry or academia - are welcome to become part of the #MTFResearch Network, providing access to ongoing online collegial discussions and debates as well as opportunities to collaborate in transnational research initiatives.

Wetlands

MTF Labs director Andrew Dubber discovers the culture of Aveiro, a city under imminent threat of ocean rise due to climate change and undergoing the loss of cultural heritage and traditional industries.

Occupy Music

One of the key research initiatives at the heart of the MTF research community centres on the social technologies of the networks of Brazilian independent music collectives known as Fora do Eixo. The research into the solidarity economy framework, digital tools, social infrastructure, and political and cultural context of independent music in Brazil is now being developed into a documentary film, Occupy Music. Watch the teaser trailer above.

The #MTFResearch Manifesto

At the first #MTFResearch Symposium in Cambridge, MA in March 2014, a group of scholars gathered together to articulate and agree upon a series of principles that underscore their research into music and technology. The academics came from a range of disciplines including social media theory, cultural studies, musicology, computer science, media history, psychology and neuroscience.

Led by Nancy Baym and Jonathan Sterne and facilitated by Annette Markham, the principles were assembled into a Manifesto for the Future of Music Technology Research, which has since been undersigned by over 450 scholars and policymakers around the world.

“Let music technology do good, serve public interest, foster belonging, justice, collaboration and sharing, enable greater access to positive musical experiences and personal connections, and create durable objects and practices…”

We are all music technologists - and this is what we hold to be important.

The #MTFResearch Symposium

Registrations for the 2018 #MTFResearch Symposium are now open! The event takes place in the beautiful new library building at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, 6 - 7 September, hosted and keynoted by the brilliant Nancy Baym.

The purpose of the symposium is to bring together the international #MTFResearch network to reflect on the ideas that come out of the festival, to share cutting edge research across disciplines, to further the study of music technologies and to initiate collaborative research projects.

There are no presentations of papers or panel sessions - this is not a conference. We invite researchers to present and discuss their work as part of a collegial symposium conversation. All participants take part in a moderated discussion on each of the topics, and a round table discussion seeks to connect the dots between different disciplines. Participants explore ideas through a wide-ranging discussion.

You can read more about the 2018 Symposium here.

HMI: Human Music Interaction

At the London Music Tech Fest symposium we launched the field of academic enquiry of Human Music Interaction (HMI). HMI situates the human, social and cultural activity of music-making centrally within the study of music technology as an interaction with tools and systems that facilitate that interaction. HMI unites the processes of scientific scholarship and cultural research to consider music as a piece of human communication - one that relies upon and develops technological intervention for that transaction, but which is also situated within a social and cultural construct. HMI equally prioritises all aspects of that communicative process and provides the framework for truly interdisciplinary research projects that integrate art and science rather than pay lip service to this junction.