FAST IMPACt project members from the Centre for Digital Music (C4DM) organised a workshop on the 20th October 2017 as part of AES New York 2017 on Archiving & Restoration: AR08 – The Music Never Stopped: The Future of the Grateful Dead Experience in the Information Age.
During this workshop Thomas Wilmering and George Fazekas (who co-chaired the event) demonstrated new ways of navigating concert recordings with editorial metadata and semantic audio analysis combined using Semantic Web technologies. They focussed particularly on material by the Grateful Dead and discussed opportunities and requirements with audio archivists and librarians, as well as the broader social and cultural context of how new technologies bear on music archiving and fandom. The workshop also explored the opportunities created by semantic audio technologies in experiencing live music performances and interacting with live performance and cultural archives. The workshop included presentations by Prof. Mark Sandler, head of C4DM, introducing challenges and opportunities in semantic audio. C4DM members Thomas Wilmering and Ben White presented their research in navigating music archives and the creative use of archival material. A number of experts from the USA were invited to contribute in the areas of live sound reinforcement, metadata and semantic audio.
The workshop included a panel discussion moderated by George Fazekas. John Meyer, President and CEO of Meyer Sound Laboratories discussed how the development of new audio technologies were driven by the needs of the Grateful Dead. Nicholas Meriwether, Director of the Center for Counterculture Studies in San Francisco presented an account on the wealth of material available from the Grateful Dead and discussed challenges and opportunities in the development of music related cultural archives during a panel discussion, together with Scott Carlson, Metadata Coordinator of Fondren Library at Rice University and Jeremy Berg, cataloging librarian at the University of North Texas. The panel also reflected on how semantic audio technologies could bring about new ways to navigate and experience live music archives after demonstrations by Juan Pablo Bello, Associate Professor of Music Technology and Computer Science & Engineering at New York University and Prof. Bryan Pardo, head of the Northwestern University Interactive Audio Lab. Useful feedback on several aspects of our research in FAST was gathered from the panel as well as the audience.
Further Information:
Fazekas, G., Wilmering, T. (2017). The Music Never Stopped: The Future of the Grateful Dead Experience in the Information Age. Audio Engineering Society 143rd Convention, New York, NY, USA, October 20, 2017. (http://www.aes.org/events/143/archiving/?ID=5761)
See related publication:
Wilmering, T. Thalmann, F. Fazekas, G. Sandler, M. B. (2017) Bridging Fan Communities and Facilitating Access to Music Archives through Semantic Audio Applications. Audio Engineering Society 143rd Convention, New York, NY, USA, October 20, 2017. (http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=19335)