Cultures of Home Computer Music: Technology, Networks and Products in the 1980s between the Cold War and Globalization

家庭电脑音乐文化：冷战和全球化之间 20 世纪 80 年代的技术、网络和产品

• 批准号: 497488984
• 负责人: Professor Dr. Christoph Hust
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Fakultät II
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/497488984?language=en
• 关键词: Cultures; Home; Computer; Music; Technology

Within the field of Digital Humanities, the project aims at research in the history of digitality. Its goal is to provide fundamentals of a cultural history of home computers in music during the era of 8- and 16-bit platforms in the 1980s. Based on an overview of hardware and software from the early days of home computers, the project focuses on the musical practices that formed around these points of crystallization. Following Bruno Latour, the project understands technology as an agent that is brought to action within various different networks. Thus, the project’s interest lies in a cultural history of technology as both a mirror of society and a cultural agent. It applies a twofold methodology, (1) to learn more about musical actions that the technical artifacts triggered within different networks (using methods from Historical Musicology, Cultural Studies, and Social History), and (2) to explore the creative possibilities that the technology provided (using a systematic methodology). Digital technology is used differently in different contexts. The project explores how different cultural environments with their diverse sociocultural and aesthetic prerequisites generated different actions. Examples for such prerequisites range from attributions to professional or hobby use to “levels” of culture that were often perceived as distinct during the 1980s, but also to political and social embeddings. Given the time frame between the Cold War and the beginning of Globalization, three of the latter will be focused as “the West,” “the East,” and “Asia.” The first part of the project focuses on the question how computer technology gave rise to different musical practices, to which extent these practices were interconnected, and to which extent they possibly correlated in larger cultural trends. Closely related to this, the second, smaller part of the project is devoted to an active investigation of the technological artifacts through their use in composition or sound design. Combined with an accompanying documentation and annotation, these experiments highlight the systematic potential of the technology by abstracting it from the zeitgeist of the 1980s. These two complementary approaches shed light on both techniques that were used particularly often and their cultural backgrounds, and on technical possibilities that were not used during the 1980s. This results in a multi-perspective approach in which scholarly reflection and artistic experiments complement each other without being methodologically compromised. The “mixed methods” project thus employs a combination of musical-analytical, aesthetic, sociological, techno-historical, and compositional/experimental methods to contour outlines of a cultural history of home computers in the music of the 1980s and to understand the home computer as a musical instrument and global actor in the music history of that time.

在数字人文领域，该项目旨在研究数字历史。它的目标是提供20世纪80年代8位和16位平台时代家用计算机音乐文化史的基础。基于对家用电脑早期的硬件和软件的概述，该项目重点关注围绕这些结晶点形成的音乐实践。在Bruno Latour之后，该项目将技术理解为在各种不同网络中发挥作用的代理人。因此，该项目的兴趣在于技术的文化史，技术既是社会的镜子，也是文化的代理人。它采用了两种方法，(1)更多地了解技术文物在不同网络中引发的音乐行动(使用历史音乐学、文化研究和社会历史的方法)，以及(2)探索技术提供的创造性可能性(使用系统的方法)。数字技术在不同的环境中有不同的使用方式。该项目探讨了具有不同社会文化和审美先决条件的不同文化环境如何产生不同的行动。这类先决条件的例子从归因到职业或爱好用途，到在1980年代经常被视为独特的“文化水平”，但也包括政治和社会根深蒂固。考虑到冷战和全球化开始之间的时间框架，后者中的三个将被集中在“西方”、“东方”和“亚洲”。该项目的第一部分集中于这样一个问题：计算机技术如何产生不同的音乐实践，这些实践在多大程度上是相互关联的，以及它们在更大的文化趋势中可能在多大程度上相互关联。与此密切相关的是，该项目的第二个较小部分致力于通过技术文物在构图或音响设计中的使用来积极调查它们。结合随附的文档和注释，这些实验通过从20世纪80年代的时代精神中提取技术，突出了技术的系统潜力。这两种相辅相成的方法揭示了两种特别常用的技术及其文化背景，以及在1980年代没有使用的技术可能性。这导致了一种多视角的方法，在这种方法中，学术反思和艺术实验相辅相成，而不会在方法上妥协。因此，“混合方法”项目综合运用了音乐分析、美学、社会学、技术历史学和作曲/实验等方法，勾勒出20世纪80年代音乐中家用计算机的文化史轮廓，并将家用计算机理解为当时音乐史上的一种乐器和全球参与者。