Project D

Composing the radio / tuning the composition: Data-mining archives and networks in search of compositional strategies

Professor Dr. Erik Oña
Electronic Studio, School of Music, FHNW Academy of Music Basel

Simone Conforti (PhD Project): Data-mining archives and networks in search of compositional strategies

Keitaro Takahashi (Programmer)

This project, although strongly anchored in the area of artistic research, intends to also delve in historical, aesthetical, and technical aspects of electronic music in the radiophonic context. The efforts will be particularly centred in the investigation of the potential for new forms of musical creation in a digital and networked context that goes beyond both the traditional concert form, and the traditional radio broadcast. To this end, it is assumed that such a context provides enormous amount of digital sonic-data, which needs to be decoded for itself, and for its compositional potential. This opens up the opportunity to revise the common history, to search for analogous internal patterns, and to search for patterns of exchange and divergence, to assess the present state of affairs, and to speculate and theorize about possible future developments. This last situation is exemplarly presented in the radiophonic art archive, which will be at the centre of the whole research enterprise. To this analytical end, software will be developed (SP D2, SP D3), which will serve the main purpose of making humanly manageable such gigantic data set.