Category: Conferences

CFP: North American Conference on Video Game Music

Scholars are invited to submit proposals for the inaugural North American Conference on Video Game Music, organized by Steven Reale, William Gibbons, and Neil Lerner, which will take place January 18–19, 2014 at the campus of Youngstown State University in Youngstown, OH.

The keynote speaker for the conference will be Karen Collins, Canada Research Chair in Interactive Audio at the Canadian Centre of Arts and Technology at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, and author of Game Sound (MIT Press, 2008) and Playing With Sound: A Theory of Interacting With Sound and Music (MIT 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
• The intersections of game music and other media (film, TV, etc.)
• Critical and/or hermeneutic approaches to game music
• Case studies of particular games
• Pedagogical implementations of music in video games

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, contact information, and the title of your paper.
• Send proposals to William Gibbons (william dot gibbons at tcu dot edu) by October 1, 2013. Successful candidates will be notified by November 1, 2013.

For further information, please contact Steven Reale (smreale at ysu dot edu).

See http://musicologyconferences.xevents.sas.ac.uk/event/show/11266.

Ludo13 Success!

It is the morning after Ludomusicology 2013, so I thought it would be a good time to blog some stats as I did last year. Ludomusicology 2013 saw:

  1. 17 papers (exc. keynotes/industry/reserves) delivered across 9 hours over 2 jam-packed days
  2. Delegates from at least 8 different countries (including far-flung locations such as Australia, the USA and Finland)
  3. 2 (x1hr) keynotes from Mark Grimshaw and Will Gibbons
  4. Industry session (1.5hr), interview with Stephen Baysted and presentation from Rich Aitken (Nimrod)
  5. 225 live tweets to an audience of 46 followers
  6. Lots of technology including presentations delivered over Skype (from Hong Kong), Google Hangouts (South Africa) as well as the usual suspects of twitter, Facebook, WordPress, Powerpoint, Prezi, FMOD, Logic, a whole bunch of Web 2.0 technologies for the website and live feed projections…
  7. Last, but not least, a great deal of tea and coffee, and many sandwiches provided sustenance!

We are very grateful to everybody who presented their work–it is your contributions that determine the success of an event like this, and we are very fortunate to have been able to discuss an eclectic range of issues. My very personal selection of highlights include:

  • Will Gibbon’s keynote case study on silence and morality in Shadows of the Colossus
  • Richard Steven’s hugely important contribution to the ways in which we conceive truly (bi-directional) interactive music. I’ll paraphrase Rich’s sentiment as I think it expressed what everyone felt: ‘Why on earth aren’t we doing this already?!’
  • Several conversations on developing medium-specific (or genre-specific…) terminology following talks from Kevin Donnelly and Jonathan Herrick
  • Great insights from Stephen Baysted into the reality of breaking into the industry and the constraints of composing in a commercial environment
  • Gaute Andersen’s important foray into ludomusicology and gender studies, and in particular, his case study on masculinity in Deus Ex: Human Revolution

There were many other moments that chimed with my own particular research interests, I’m sorry I cannot write about them all here but hopefully the archive of tweets will give some indication as to their nature and range. Thank you to both Mark Grimshaw and Will Gibbons for providing such excellent keynote addresses and once again, to all the contributors.

We have uploaded a few photos to Facebook, please post your own and like our Page!

We would also like to thank Anahid Kassabian for hosting the event, and Liverpool University (and Music Dept.) for allowing us to have access to their buildings and resources. Personally, I should also like to reiterate my thanks to Jemima Cloud and James Barnaby for organising practically everything and everything practical. They ran a great show for us! My thanks also go to Michiel Kamp and Tim Summers–the respective heart and soul of Ludomusicology.

Finally, I am pleased to announce that the Ludomusicology conference will return next year, and the year after…! We look forward to hearing from those who could not be here this time and will publish further information in the next few months. In the meantime, I for one will have to go and re-write half my thesis!

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