De Montfort University is offering 13 full-time research student scholarships in 2011/12 covering course fees and stipend for 3 years. This initiative will build on our excellent research achievements and develop the university’s capacity into new and evolving areas of study, enhancing DMU’s national and international research profile. Applications are invited from UK or EU students with a good first degree in a relevant subject area and must be submitted by 11th April 2011.
This full studentship is offered by the Institute Of Creative Technologies (IOCT) and will be supervised by Professor Andrew Hugill and Professor Simon Emmerson of the Music, Technology and Innovation Research Centre.
Ever since the appearance of the internet, music has been made online. Internet, or networked, music has developed its own set of practices and culture. More recent developments in music sharing and download culture, interactivity and gaming, has resulted in the emergence of an asynchronous, mediated musical experience that increasingly challenges the traditional models, an attendant economic model and a young audience for new work delivered through the new media.
Classical forms, particularly orchestral music and opera, are struggling to adapt to this new culture. Their reliance on a synchronous, located, concert-going, experience, and the unmediated nature of that experience, seems to confirm their archaic qualities and reinforce the typical image of the audience as affluent and elderly. In some cases, their attempts to address this issue extends only as far as using the web for marketing purposes. In others, often through education departments, more adventurous and experimental work is carried out. In recent years, a number of digital operas and digital symphonies have been created which offer various models of how the new technologies may be used within this context.
This PhD will examine the development of digital operas and symphonies through a written survey and a practical project. The project will test the hypothesis that these forms may find a new expression in a digital context. The project will be undertaken with The Opera Group and will result in a digital work.
For further information, please contact Jos Atkin jatkin@dmu.ac.uk Tel. 0116 250 6146.