International Symposium on Computational Ethnomusicological Archiving

Institute for Systematic Musicology

University of Hamburg, Dec. 07.-10.2017

How could existing digital technologies in the field of music information retrieval, artificial intelligence, and data networking be efficiently implemented with regard to digital music archives? How might current and future developements in these fields benefit researchers in ethnomusicology? How can analytical data about musical sound and descriptive data about musical culture be more comprehensively integrated?

Sound archives constitute an integral part of today’s information landscape. Only since the advent of sound recording has it been possible to preserve intangible cultural achievements, especially music, spoken word, as well as the orally transmitted bodies of knowledge of non-literate societies, and to make them available for scholarly investigation through specialized archives. Within the past two decades, an increasing number of institutional sound archives have initiated projects with the objective of transferring existing holdings from obsolete analog carriers into the digital domain.

While the digital technologies employed herein have seen steady progress, for instance in the field known as music information retrieval (MIR), the corresponding theoretical and methodological challenges with regard to effectively utilizing these large amounts of complex data in dealing with actual research questions have not hitherto been adequately addressed.

To advance digital sound archives beyond their current status as mere 'storage facilities' for the preservation of musical heritage towards their being full-fledged research tools, these issues have to be subjected to critical evaluation from the vantage points of different relevant disciplines.

Several key issues with regard to the advancement of music related digital research infrastructures will be addressed:
1. Standardization of meta-data protocols and data exchange procedures
2. Implementation of advanced methods of computational signal analysis into an archival framework
3. Sustainability in digital musical heritage safeguarding
4. Bridging the epistemological divide between the empirical analysis of musical sound and the anthropology of music
5. Aiming for a closer integration of 'field and lab' in ethnomusicology
6. Enhancing the utility of digital archives for a wide variety of research questions

The symposium's objective, therefore, is to bring together leading researchers and experienced practitioners from fields such as archiving and archival studies, computer science and signal processing, musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, acoustics, and cognitive neuroscience, as well as practicing musicians from different parts of the world, thus encouraging genuinely multidisciplinary, trans-cultural intellectual exchange and collaboration.