Author: Mark Sweeney

We are delighted to announce our Call for Papers for Ludo 2016! Please help circulate our poster online, and around your institutions!

April 8^th–10^th, University of Southampton
Fifth Anniversary Conference on
Video Game Music and Sound
Call for Papers

The organizers of Ludo2016 are accepting proposals for research presentations at the fifth annual Easter conference. While we welcome all proposals, we are particularly interested in papers that support the theme of ‘Video Game Audio and History’. Possible topics on this theme include:

• Factors in the history and development of game audio,
• The changing relationships between music in games and in other media,
• Challenges and approaches to game audio historiography,
• Canonicity and the curation of game audio,
• Video game music and other music histories.

Presentations should last twenty minutes, to be followed by questions. Please submit your paper proposal (c.200 words) by email to ludomusicology@gmail.com by January 31^st 2016.

We also welcome session proposals from organizers representing two to four individuals; the organizer should submit an introduction to the theme and c.200 word proposals for each paper.

Proposals for papers in alternative formats, such as performances or demonstrations, should be discussed with the conference organizers before the abstract is submitted.

The conference will feature a keynote address by Neil Lerner (Davidson College), co-editor of Music in Video Games: Studying Play (Routledge, 2014), with further keynote speakers and guests to be announced shortly.

#ludo2016

Hosted by Kevin Donnelly, the Music Department and the Film Department at the University of Southampton.

Organized by Michiel Kamp, Tim Summers, Mark Sweeney.

We are thrilled to announce that Ludo2016 will be taking place on 8th-10th April 2016 at the University of Southampton. This will be our fifth anniversary, after conferences at Oxford, Liverpool, Chichester, and Utrecht Universities, and therefore it is a particularly special, celebratory occasion for us. We are very proud and grateful for the fantastic and diverse contributions to past events, and are looking forward to what we hope will be the best Ludo conference to date! We’ll be putting out a Call for Papers as soon as possible, but whether you’re able to submit or not, make sure you save the date for what promises to be be an auspicious event.

Ludo2016 will be hosted by Kevin Donnelly, the Music Faculty and the Film Faculty at the University of Southampton. You can expect more details to follow in due course; keep an eye out on the website for further announcements in the coming weeks!

Deadline: October 1, 2015

Conference Dates: January 16–17, 2016

Conference Venue: Davidson College (Davidson, NC)

Scholars are invited to submit proposals for the third North American Conference on Video Game Music, which will take place January 16–17, 2016 at  Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina. The conference organizing and program committee is composed of Neil Lerner (organizer, Davidson College), William Gibbons (TCU), Steven Reale (Youngstown State University), James Buhler (UT Austin), Karen Cook (University of Hartford), and Elizabeth Medina-Gray (Humboldt State University).

The keynote speaker for this year’s conference will be ethnomusicologist Kiri Miller (Brown University), author of Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance (Oxford University Press, 2012).

We are soliciting proposals for presentations on any aspect of music in games, including, but not limited to:

• The history of music in video games
• Approaches to analyzing game music
• Intersections of game music and other media (film, TV, etc.)
• Critical and/or hermeneutic approaches to game music
• Case studies of particular games
• Game music and pedagogy
• Ethnographic approaches to game music

Additional information regarding the conference:

• Papers will be twenty minutes in length, with an additional ten minutes for discussion.
• Proposals are limited to 250 words, and should include the title of the paper, but should otherwise include no identifying information, including metadata.
• In the body of an e-mail, include your name, institutional affiliation (if applicable), contact information, and the title of your paper.
• Email proposals to vgmconference AT com by October 1, 2015. Successful candidates will be notified on or around November 1, 2015.

For further information, please feel free to contact Neil Lerner (nelerner AT davidson.edu) or direct questions to the conference email address (vgmconference AT mail.com).