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PRESET- Principles of Electronic Sound Production: Systematization and Elaboration of a Terminology

Contact

Florian Zwißler

Osnabrück University
Neuer Graben/Schloss
Room 11/336
Tel.: +49-541-969-4147
Email: florian.zwisler@uos.de

There is a striking disproportion between the omnipresence of electronic sound, both in all art forms and everyday life, and the shortage of terminological tools capable of apprehending this phenomenon in a suitably scientifical way. The aim of PRESET is therefore to carry out a clear and resilient systematization of this field that substantially exceeds the scope of previous approaches. This will allow the development of a refined terminology which in turn will provide new tools for a discourse on electronically produced sounds. To this end, fundamental work will be carried out in examining the evolution of technologies and concepts of electronic sound production from a musicological as well as from a (musically) practical perspective. The key element of this approach is an in-depth survey of several electronic music studios: a large proportion of the innovations and impulses that defined a new type of musical practice originated here, however a vast number of their informational resources have not yet been explored. Besides the detailed discussion of the structure and nature of the studio as the “instrument of electronic music”, the focus of this approach will be an examination of the actual working processes of each studio as well as the interdependencies between studios. This relates to the transfer of knowledge and technology as well as possible interconnections between composers, technicians, scientists etc. The information gained will be collated in a database using a newly defined classification, which should elucidate lines of development that aren’t immediately obvious from the raw data. A synoptic analysis of the collected data will then serve as a foundation for refining the basic terminology concerned with electronically produced sound

Funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), grant number 424734041, 2019-2021

Principal investigator: Prof. Dr. Michael Oehler, Osnabrück University

Participating persons: Prof. Dr. Bernd Enders, Osnabrück University; Prof. Dr. Christian Kehrt, Technische Universität Braunschweig; Prof. Dr. Dieter Leckschat, University of Applied Sciences Düsseldorf; Prof. Dr. Christoph Reuter, University of Vienna

Project team: Florian Zwißler, Maximilian Westkemper, Antonia Rau, Philip Schwarzbauer, Minh Voong, Leonard Bruns, Tjaak Junker