Electroacoustic Music Studies Network
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The Influences of International Conferences (EMS&EMSAN Track) to Chinese Academic Research Regarding ElectroAcoustic Music by Zhang Ruibo (Mungo)
Abstract: At the beginning of the twenty-first century in China (mainland only), electroacoustic music was in its infancy compared to the Western world. However, in the first decade, the development from both artistic and technological aspects of EA music was advanced at the considerably fast pace. The problem is that, on one hand, the fast development is lacking of solid support from either local (mainland China) academic researchers or serious scholarship from our musicologists diachronically and synchronically. On the other hand, all of the academic institutes, for example, centers or departments under the conservatories, colleges and universities all around the China have rapidly developed various concepts and criteria regarding electroacoustic music study, often making the boundary fuzzy between commercial products with artistic projects from popular music arrangements to interactive designs on computer music. Furthermore, without communication amongst Chinese specialists and only arbitrarily importing the expensive and luxury electronic equipments from the Western world, but ignoring the knowledge of operating them properly, most of the academic institutes are making themselves relatively isolated, so that Chinese EA music society has remained rather mysterious to the rest of the world until the end of the first decade of twenty-first century.
Without frequent international exchange, the development of EA music in China would not have flourished as much during the last decade. Besides a lot of individual foreign scholars and artists coming to China as visiting or guest professors for a short term in the universities, some of them even became resident to teach and live in China for a long term. An international conference, the Electroacoustic Music Studies Network (EMS Network), has been held twice in Beijing and Shanghai in 2006 and 2010 respectively. Moreover, after the jointly held EMS06 conference with the Musicacoustica Festival in Beijing, another smaller scale meeting specifically focused on EA music development in East Asia was establishe. which has became an annually held event during the Beijing Musicacoustica Festival in each October since 2008: CEMC/EMSAN Day.
The idea of Beijing Musicacoustica Festival emerged in 1994, but it did not transform to its formal scale (one-week long activity) as the one of the largest and most important festival focused on electroacoustic music held annually in China until 2004. It was initiated and pushed to the most sophisticated level by Zhang Xiaofu who is the director of China Electroacoustic Music Center (CEMC) under China Central Conservatory of Music (CCoM). In 2003, The Electroacoustic Music Studies Network (EMS Network) was initiated by Marc Battier (MINT/OMF - Univ. of Paris-Sorbonne) and Leigh Landy (MTI Research Centre - De Montfort Univ.), as well as Daniel Teruggi (INA/GRM) who was the third Executive Director of EMS. It is an international initiative which aims to encourage the better understanding of electroacoustic music in terms of its genesis, its evolution, its current manifestations and its impact. In general speaking, those two sophisticated events had great influences to Chinese EA music development in the last decade.
The Electroacoustic Music Studies Asia Network (EMSAN) is a research project initiated by Marc Battier at the MINT research unit (Observatoire musical français) in 2006 which aims at creating a body of musicological studies of the musical repertoire and musical practices and its main goal is to conduct a vast project on electroacoustic music and music technology in East Asia. EMSAN Track is acting as an independent session, besides held at the same time with EMS conference annually, it is not limited by the conference and usually held several times through out the East Asia counties and regions, such as China, Japan and Taiwan etc. The CEMC/EMSAN Day is a meeting in Beijing that is jointly held by Muscacoustica Festival and EMSAN, it acts as a relatively lower- level event that fills the gap of upper-level events held in China, such as EMS conference and Musicacoustica Festival. In other words, it fills the gap between the macro and micro level for Chinese EA music community and international EA music society.
This paper will cover briefly the history of the connection among Musciacoustica festival, EMS and CEMC/EMSAN Day from the historical point of view by mentioning about several key persons who made these events happened in China in the last decade, such as Prof. Zhang Xiaofu and Kenneth Fields from Central Conservatory of Music and Prof. An Chengbi from Shanghai Conservatory of Music; as well as Marc Battier (MINT/OMF - Univ. of Paris-Sorbonne) and Leigh Landy (MTI Research Centre - De Montfort Univ.) etc. And then, it will try to explain the influences and contributions that these people and events made to the Chinese EA music community, of course, by mentioning about achievement that have been made by Chinese scholars since 2006 when the first EMS conference held in China. For example, the Chinese paper session was completely isolated from English and French paper session without any translation or interpretation into English during Musicacoustica Festival time in Beijing, but the improvement was made at 2010 conference in Shanghai by combining all the Chinese papers into the EMSAN track and integrated into the conference with bilingual presentation by some post-graduate students, such as Yin Yang, Tiantian Wang, Yuan Zhou, Qing Shao from Shanghai Conservatory of Music. After that, a paper was presented by Lu Minjie from Sichuan Conservatory of Music during the CEMC/EMSAN day 2010 in Beijing during Musicacoustica Festival also made a point for “Primary Research on Interactive Music of Chinese New Media Art in the Recent Decade” etc.
Finally, the paper will illustrate this international conference also made an influence and provide an opportunity that helps some scholars in China (mainland) to build up complicated academic project, which can connect each side of Chinese EA music community and international EA music society: CHEARS.info (China Electroacoustic Resource Survey, abbreviated as CHEARS), which is a CONTINUOUS research of its own kind in China from 2006 until present. One of the initiators of CHEARS, Zhang Ruibo who is also one of the organizers of EMS conference in Beijing and Shanghai in 2006 and 2010 respectively, has participated following conferences held in Leicester, UK (2007); Paris, France (2008); as well as New York, US (2011) to have the progress of his research project presented year by year. So far, he became the first scholar in his field to present original research at an international conference outside China. His experience was followed by Zhou Qian who is also one of the organizers of EMS conference in Shanghai by presenting her paper in New York (2011): “New Trends of China Electronic Music After 2005”.