Network Music Festival

As much of our cultural life moves online, and our connections become virtually borderless, this brings with it the opportunity to reach build more inclusive communities. One of the guiding principles of the Network Music Festival is to aim to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. This feeds through in our funding model (free to view; Pay What You Can donations going directly to artists), the platforms we use to deliver the festival content (which prioritise open source, encrypted and transparent softwares wherever possible), and our programming.

Our OPEN CALL encouraged submissions from those who are exploring network technology for music making for the first time this year and we’re happy to programme these performances alongside more established acts in the field. We’re running a 24 hour programme in order to be accessible to all time zones, and based our scheduling on performer availability.

All of our concert events will include a Q&A session with artists where audiences can ask about the technologies and artistic ideas behind the works, and an audience chat channel will be open through out for sharing thoughts and ideas. We programmed some beginner level workshops for newcomers to get hands-on with the technology, alongside those aimed at existing practitioners.

Through these measures we hope to help build a diverse, inclusive and expansive community of network music makers and audiences. Our theme of Communities Near and Far is centring these ideas throughout the festival.

On the first day of the festival we are also running two sessions which focus on accessibility:

We’re extremely excited to be hosting a performance-workshop event with the UpStage team. UpStage has been running events in an online audio-visual venue since 2004. The project is is a female-led team and works on principles of building diversity and inclusion into all aspects of the project. The platform is built to be accessible to all:

Accessibility has been central to the project from the very beginning: we set out to create a platform that could be accessed by anyone with a basic internet connection, basic computer, and basic computer literacy, anywhere in the world. We achieved this, and now we’re working to make it accessible via mobile devices as well, reaching out to communities and geographical locations where mobile phones are more affordable than computers as well as to young people who are growing up with mobile devices. (https://upstage.org.nz/?page_id=8361)

In the UpStage session a performance of their new work Jeux de Massacre will be followed by an interactive workshop with the team introducing the platform and it’s features and discussing the future directions of the platform as they move into a new development phase.

This session will take place 1100-1300 (GMT+1), Wednesday 15th July.

Following that event at 1400-1600 (GMT+1) we have a panel discussion moderated by academic Miriam Iowerth on Accessibility and Network Music Performance.

The panel will features performers and participants in the Network Music Festival and experts in the fields of network music and accessibility: Marlo de Lara, Kofi Oduro, Jilliene Sellner and Amble Skuse. The panellists bring diverse perspectives on accessibility and will discuss the perceived accessibility of network music making, the barriers that may prevent participation, and practical steps that can help in building a diverse and inclusive community.

Due to external factors and a high number of submissions it’s taking us a little longer to get through the reviewing than we had anticipated.

We now hope to notify submitters of the outcome of the review process by 15th June 2020. The programme will be announced shortly afterwards.

After a 6 year hiatus, we’re back!!!

Responding to the mass move to online music making during the 2020 global pandemic and with increasing concern among artistic communities about the climate emergency, the festival is returning for a global fourth edition, which will take place entirely online 15-18th July 2020.

The Network Music Festival ran from 2012-2014 in the heart of the creative community in Birmingham (UK). We featured performances from more than 250 artists who explore music making via web platforms and internet connections, and we hope to build on our past festivals with this new online edition running 24 hours a day during the festival period on web streaming platforms.

The main theme for 2020 is communities near and far. As many people find themselves socially distant, the importance of community is not diminished, but rather transformed. People rely on sound to bridge physical gaps, from singing or applauding out their windows, to connecting with others online.  Our connections, then, are either intensely local, or virtually borderless. We stay in touch with friends and neighbours, but also find that collaborating across the world is not harder than collaborating across town. In this year’s festival, we want to celebrate and strengthen the musical communities people have built with networking tools, as well as exploring the aesthetics, performance practice and technologies around topics such as web-streaming, multi-location performance, collaborative music making environments, accessible and sustainable performance practice and more.

We’re happy to be teaming up with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) funded MIMIC project, who are developing a web platform for the artistic exploration of musical machine intelligence, for a special concert of new works developed with MIMIC tools.

We are also running a VR Algorave in collaboration with TOPLAP Mexico who pioneered the VR format in 2020.

We are also launching our OPEN CALL for Performances and Workshops TODAY with a deadline of 7th May 2020. DEADLINE EXTENDED TO: 11th May 2020.

As well as a general call for performances and workshops that fit under the festival themes, we also have four special performance calls: MIMIC New Works, New to Networking, VR Algorave and Student Works. We have an ‘Other’ category for submissions in other formats that fit with the theme and online format of the festival.

Network Musical Festival will build on past success bringing together communities of artists and researchers through the festival events to build a global community of artists for the festival period. The festival will feature an international line-up including pioneers in the field of Network Music and new and veteran performers who are turning to network music for the first time. Full programme announced in June 2020.

As part of the conference we will host a series of small 3 minute laptop battles.

In this anyone who is present at the conference can participate! Artists as well as audience members.

You just need your laptop, an audio setup to make some sound and you are ready to go!

Contact me or come to the conference on saturday morning 12.30 pm or contact me: Jonas // mail [AT] jonashummel.de // 07933 183296

Call for Performers to create new version of: Parallaxis for four instruments and electronics in the graphic score concert of the Network Music Festival in Birmingham UK.

Performance: SATURDAY 27th SEPTEMBER 6pm // Rehearsals Saturday 27th time/location TBA.

Please email rc@kiben.net for more information or to get involved!

more details:

https://archive.org/details/ParallaxisForFourInstrumentsAndElectronics http://nime2014.org/proceedings/papers/421_paper.pdf