Call for proposals

The Nature of Electroacoustic Music

Peking University, Beijing, China

24 - 27 JUNE 2027

Deadline for paper submission: FEBRUARY 1, 2027

 

EMS2027 seeks to present, alongside up-to-date research results, a number of papers investigating how today’s and tomorrow’s specialists expect this important field to evolve. Will it settle in as a contemporary sub-area of musicology? Or will it find its own foci of scholarly endeavour thanks to the fact that it incorporates all sounds as well as many forms of technology?

EMS27 Conference Theme: THE NATURE OF ELECTROACOUSTIC MUSIC

If nature is a labyrinthine concept, famously characterized by Raymond Williams in his Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society as “perhaps the most complex word” in the English language, attempts to clarify its relationship with other phenomena and fields of cultural production will likely become only more complex. In place of primary terms, we often seem to be engaged in secondary levels of analysis: for instance, pivoting from “first” to “second nature” (Adorno) or from the “natural attitude” to various forms of the “phenomenological attitude” (Pierre Schaeffer and his successors in phenomenologically-oriented inquiry). Aesthetic ideas emerging from experimental electronic practices have likewise decentered “music” and positioned it within the broader domain of “sound,” with corresponding transformations in the disciplinary facets that embrace acoustic ecology and sound studies as well as compositional domains that include soundscape composition, field recording, and data sonification. The exceptional semantic fluidity of the concept of nature is matched by its productive energies and varieties. We invite contributions that explore new and challenging configurations of the relationship(s) between electroacoustic music(s) and nature(s). These may include historiographical and critical engagements within the broad ‘Western’ tradition we have sketched above as well as conceptualizations of “nature” and creative work with “natural” elements in electroacoustic media outside of this tradition.

• ADDITIONAL EMS 2027 THEMES

The conference is also open to other topics relevant to the history and/or contemporary practice of electroacoustic music. We encourage the submission of papers relating to any aspect of the field, including but not limited to analysis, perception, listening, terminology, composition, performance, cultural issues and education.

Analysis:

- What types of discourse are relevant to electroacoustic works?
- Analysis of pieces from the repertoire (self analyses will not be accepted)
- Analytical methods currently being developed?
- Can one adapt existent analytical methods of music to electroacoustic works, many of which involve no prescriptive notation?
- How can we further develop the field of study of electroacoustic musics?

AI and musicology of electroacoustic music:

- Generative AI and questions of agency, intentionality and human expression

Transcription and representation of sound, new audio-visual tools:

- How are analytical tools being produced and disseminated in the community?
- Which means are available for communicating this sonic art form through symbolic and graphic representations?
- Does the study of electroacoustic musics require specifically designed tools or can it take advantage of methods conceived for other musics?

Taxonomy, terminology - 'meaningful' units of music description:

- Which systems of classification are in use or should be developed?
- How can we become more consistent in our use of terminology in a field as dynamic as electroacoustic music?

Real-time music making:

- How can live performance/composition strategies be analysed
- What is 'live' electronic music?

Performance, presentation, dissemination:

- What is the 'work'?
- New presentation spaces, technologies.
- Aesthetical and musical issues raised by Internet communities, group compositions, telematics and performances.

Listening, Intention-Reception

- Issues of perception and interpretation.
- How do the composer's intentions relate to what is perceived?

Semiotics/semiology, 'meaning':

- What (and how) do different electroacoustic music genres express?

Soundscape, sound ecology:

- Analytical tools for the understanding of soundscapes.
- New approaches to sound ecology, sonification, sound environment.

Genres/styles, 'languages':

- Questions of unity, diversity, plurality, multicultural resources, polystyle, hybridisation, 'local music'.

Gender issues:

- Have gender balances shifted since the early days?
- The relationship between technology/electroacoustic music and gender.
- Unrecognised contributions: revising history.

Research on history of electroacoustic music:

- Research on historical documentation.
- Studies on the genesis, development and activities of private and public studios.
- How can and should we revise history?

Socio-cultural issues:

- What are the socio-cultural ramifications of electroacoustic music?

Pedagogy:

- Curriculum design.
- Balance between theory and practice, general and specific approaches.
- Real-time and interaction versus fixed medium and studio techniques.
- Teaching material: how to select it, and language issues.

Caution: Participants are discouraged from submitting proposals focusing on their own compositions as well as those discussing the development of new technological resources for musical application that have a better home at events such as ICMC.

PAPER SUBMISSION

Please see Submission Guidelines.

Deadline for submissions: FEBRUARY 1,  2027

NOTE ON ONLINE PRESENTATIONS

There will be two remote sessions, with very limited slots available. Please indicate in your submission if you are proposing an online presentation and the time zone in which you will be located when presenting.
The few online presentations we'll accept will have to given live and not in an off-line, recorded manner.

PAPER PUBLICATION

Accepted full papers will be included in the EMS27 Proceedings booklet (PDF), while the abstracts and bios will appear in the printed EMS27 guidebook

All approved/presented papers will be published on the EMS site and the Zenodo research Web site and will receive their own DOI   

Acceptance Announcement: MARCH 15, 2027

Deadline for receiving the full papers, fornatted with EMS27 template : MAY 1, 2027