Ian Rogers

Journal article in Rock Music Studies

In 1992, American band Guided By Voices released their fifth album Propeller. A last-ditch effort, Propeller contains the best unreleased material of band leader Robert Pollard. In debt, the band hand-decorated 500 vinyl copies of the album and quietly distributed them. Luckily, this limited release caught the attention of influential musicians, and recording label Scat Records, sparking broader interest in the band. This article explores how Pollard built his subsequent career. It delves into his unconventional song writing practices, ultimately arguing that Guided By Voices’ longevity lies in a dedication to prolificacy.

Tami Gadir

Book chapter in the The Oxford Handbook of Electronic Dance Music

This chapter argues that DJs face precarious working conditions, which are a greater struggle when combined with gender and other common forms of discrimination. The DJ is viewed as an edgy entrepreneur, enacting the gendered, neoliberal belief that hard work and competition are rewarded with success. While intersectional social justice struggles such as the #MeToo movement have had a positive effect on gender asymmetries in DJ culture, old divisions between high and low culture influence whether DJing is taken seriously as music-making. From such a defensive posture, notions of high versus low also affect DJ culture internally, for example, through DJs’ relationships with music technologies. These follow the widespread forms of gender prejudice applied to technological expertise—predominantly that cis women are less technically capable than cis men. Ultimately, this chapter makes sense of all such gender and neoliberal ideologies in dance music through an understanding of DJing as labor.

Charlotte Markowitsch

Journal article in Rock Music Studies

Throughout recent rock discourse, the term dad rock has been used selectively to describe rock music and its ethos. By seeking an expanded definition of dad rock, this article explores contexts which have shaped its current use. Informed by literature pertaining to rock music culture, masculinity, and the rock canon, this exploration will determine the identities, eras, and sounds which are susceptible to the dad rock label. This will be further supplemented through accounts from online discourse and a quantitative analysis of tracklist data collected from nine dad rock playlists and compilation albums.

Ian Rogers with Ben Green

Book in the 33 1/3 Oceania series

Released in 1996, Kitten Licks catapulted Brisbane indie-rock three-piece Screamfeeder into the '90s alternative-rock boom alongside Powderfinger, silverchair, You Am I and Regurgitator. International tours, regular festival shows, and TV appearances followed. And yet, commercial success for Screamfeeder was comparatively short-lived. By the end of the decade, the band's outlook was bleak: at a career standstill and unable to record new music. Today, both Screamfeeder and Kitten Licks endure as fiercely loved cult icons. In its vitality and idiosyncrasy, Kitten Licks captures a moment of cresting change for a band, a city and a national scene, while continuing to delight and inspire those who discover it anew.

This book tells the story of Kitten Licks in the words of those who lived it, and who still do. How it was made, how it was swept up into '90s mythology and what the journey tells us about the fickle nature of music production in Australia, namely: how to survive it.

Mark Gibson with Tony Moore, Chris McAuliffe and Maura Edmond

Book published by Bloomsbury Academic

Fringe to Famous examines exchange between small scenes of cultural production and mainstream institutions and markets.

Drawing on extensive original interviews, Fringe to Famous offers an overview of transformations in Australian culture since the 1980s, concluding with suggestions for cultural policy 'after the creative industries'. It proposes an idea of 'generative hybridity' between fringe and mainstream that allows us to imagine new possibilities for arts and culture in the 2020s and beyond.

Catherine Strong with Andrew R. Brown, Andy Bennett and John Ferguson

Journal article in Organised Sound: An International Journal of Music and Technology

Examining the role of arts and culture in regional Australia often focuses on economic aspects within the creative industries. However, this perspective tends to disregard the value of unconventional practices and fails to recognise the influence of regional ecological settings and the well-being advantages experienced by amateur and hobbyist musicians who explore ubiquitous methods of music creation. This article presents the results of a survey conducted among practitioners in regional Australia, exploring their utilisation of creative technology ecosystems. This project marks the first independent, evidence-based study of experimental electronic music practices in regional Australia and how local and digital resource ecosystems support those activities. Spanning the years 2021 and 2022, the study involved interviewing 11 participants from many Australian states. In this article, we share the study’s findings, outlining the diverse range of experimental electronic music practices taking place across regional Australia and how practitioners navigate the opportunities and challenges presented by their local context.

Shelley Brunt with Amane Kasai

Book chapter in the Handbook of Japanese Music in the Modern Era

This chapter examines the shifting status of Japanese singer Misora Hibari (1937–1989) in Japan’s long-running televised song contest Kōhaku Utagassen (Red and White Song Contest). We begin by discussing Hibari’s significance in Japan’s postwar music history before presenting a chronology of her live Kōhaku song performances. Next we consider how she has been memorialized in death, typically via video montages, cover songs, substitute performers, and posthumous duets in Kōhaku. This memorialization culminates in the 2019 digital resurrection of Hibari for the 70th Contest through the holographic “AI Hibari,” created using Vocaloid technology. We show how AI Hibari’s performance of the custom-composed song “Arekara” (Ever Since Then) serves to perpetuate a sense of her immortality.

Charlotte Markowitsch

Conference paper presented at IASPM-ANZ 2023.

The study of rock music culture has long recognised how rock has utilised terms of authentic, autonomous artistic value in order to justify its own cultural significance as an art form (Moore and Martin, 2019, pp.1-7; Regev, 1994, p.97). As a symptom of this, the rock canon was formed in order to widely acknowledge the best timeless artists and albums which meet the stylistic and social criteria of rock which was first set in the 1960’s (Jones, 2008, p.25; Bennett, 2009, p.475). Artists who enter the canon are rarely moved from this position, setting a standard which newer artists strive to achieve (von Appen and Doehring, 2006, p.33). Prior research has problematised the canon, calling for consideration of how it upholds rock culture’s historical privileging of white, male identities, and have further observed how this process has been internalised through national perceptions of quality in rock (Strong, 2010, p.125; Dhaenens, 2021, p.6). However, limited research has interrogated these issues extensively on a national scale. The purpose of this study is to observe how processes of canonisation affect the manner in which rock is consumed, perceived and broadly participated in by Australian media, artists and audience members. In turn, this project will capture the status of rock culture in Australia and comment on values, identities and attitudes which constitute it. To do so, the research project described in this paper observes empirical data collected from participants of rock music culture in Australia through a mixed-methods approach of a survey supplemented by semi-structured interviews. This paper will discuss the initial findings from this data and look comparatively to key scholarly ideas pertaining to broader rock ideologies, the rock canon, and the masculinisation of rock.

Adrienne Arnot-Bradshaw

Conference paper presented at IASPM-ANZ 2023

Popular music studies has been influenced by (and arguably grounded in) critical cultural studies, and as such has had an ongoing interest in the role of subcultures and countercultures in movements of social and political change. While there are numerous studies on punk and post-punk as a social movement, aesthetic orientation and political philosophy, there is little that has been written on the Australian context. This paper seeks to introduce my critical ethnographic PhD project with a focus on my methodological interventions to the field, where I will engage in experimental methods in order to gain a deeper understanding of the role of infrastructure (like record stores, book stores, and venues) play in shaping Melbourne’s music scene and related ‘underground’ distinctions. The PhD project will ask questions about how participants of Melbourne’s underground punk and post-punk music scene conceptualise their relationship between music scenes and their political outlooks, what role involvement in music scenes have played in shaping participants’ identification with various political causes, and how power and struggle are understood both within and outside of the music scene.

Kate Pattison

Conference paper presented at IASPM-ANZ 2023

Taylor Swift fans, known as "Swifties", have a reputation for theorising and uncovering clues within Swift's extensive body of work. Swift encourages this behaviour, known for leaving ‘Easter eggs’ in her music videos and social media posts, usually hinting at things that she’s planning in the future. Within these fan participatory spaces, theorising and textual interpretation are a key aspect of fan productivity (Jenkins, 1992; Fiske; 1992; Hills, 2013). Amongst Swifties, this ranges from album predictions to queer readings of Swift’s work. Drawing on data gleaned from an online survey with Taylor Swift fans, and a content analysis of fan theories across Twitter and TikTok, this paper will analyse the role of fan theories within the Taylor Swift community, exploring themes of status negotiation, parasocial relationships and identity-formation.

"If you want to go down a rabbit hole with us, come along, the water’s great" - Taylor Swift, 2021

Jeri Karmelic

Conference paper presented at IASPM-ANZ 2023

Historically, the drums have been understood to be played by men and to carry inherently masculine characteristics. This paper will explore the gendered implications for women and gender-diverse drummers who play an instrument defined by its masculinity and the outcomes that arise from these experiences. The genre of ‘rock’ will be the focus throughout, an area of the music industry similarly associated with masculinity, historically. One-on-one, in-depth interviews with nine women and gender-diverse drummers primarily located in Melbourne, Australia and who play within the genre (or subgenres) of rock, have been used to do this. I will demonstrate that while participants have faced gender-specific challenges or harassment during their careers as drummers, they have responded to this using strategies of gender manoeuvring that have given them the capacity to create space for themselves. This has resulted in a music scene where women and gender nonconforming drummers are more common, visible and valued. However, the corollary of this is that these drummers still experience uncertainty around the legitimacy of their position, due to an awareness that the emphasis put on diversity in the Melbourne music scene may result in situations where they are given chances to play not because of their ability, but because of their gender identity. The affective dissonance caused by their knowledge of the possibility of tokenism requires different strategies to counteract than when encountering exclusion and sexism.

Joel Stern with Channon Goodwin and Amelia Wallin

Journal article in the Journal of Public Pedagogies

Liquid Architecture, West Space and Bus Projects are disorganising.” So began a public statement, first circulated in November 2020, co-signed by the three organisations in question. It went on: “This methodology is not a pathway to merger, but an experimental exercise in cooperative practice beyond previous models of partnership, grounded in principles of solidarity and interdependence.” In this polyvocal essay, Channon Goodwin, Joel Stern, and Amelia Wallin — former Artistic Directors of Bus Projects, Liquid Architecture, and West Space — offer accounts of disorganising, which was staged throughout 2020 and 2021 at the organisations’ shared base of Collingwood Yards in Naarm/Melbourne. By contextualising, sharing and reflecting on disorganising, we explore how artist-led forms of encounter and exchange can engage publics by challenging hegemonies, critiquing power, and engaging publics in civil dialogue. While making these claims, the essay also acknowledges the limits to achieving change under conditions governed by funding bodies, the demands of ‘professionalisation’ in the sector, and other infrastructures that curtail the radicality of our programs.

Charlotte Markowitsch and Sebastian Diaz-Gasca

Journal article in Popular Music and Society

Despite the prevalence of the cultural appropriation debate in popular music discourse, white, popular rock band, the White Stripes, appropriated African-American Delta blues culture, particularly from Son House and his song “Death Letter Blues,” without causing contestation. Appropriation of Black culture has occurred ubiquitously throughout recent music history, causing widespread contestation due to power disparity and misrepresentation. Through reviewing literature regarding cultural appropriation, and semiotically analyzing the band’s 2003 performance of “Death Letter” at Sydney’s Livid Festival, we find that the White Stripes’ intentional methods of respectful representation and stylistic disguise mitigated the perception of cultural appropriation in their performance. We posit that the band emulated a pre-established process of transculturation whereby Delta blues traits were absorbed into the 20th century evolution of rock music.

Tami Gadir

Book published by Bloomsbury Academic

For some people, at some times, in some places, on some drugs, dance music can be a gateway to transformative, even transcendent experiences. With the help of skilled DJs, dancers can reach euphoric states, discard their egos, and feel social barriers dissolve. Dance floors can be sites of openness, subversion, and even small-scale acts of political resistance. At a minimum, dance music lightens the burdens of contemporary life. At its best, dance music offers glimpses of better worlds. Yet even where dance music communities are built on principles of resistance and liberation, they nevertheless share the grittier realities of the rest of the world. Dance Music makes the case that dance music is ordinary and that something exceeding the social and spatiotemporal bounds of the dance floor is required for the transformative promise of dance music to be realized.

Mike Callander

Creative project in various locations including the Australasian Computer Music Conference, Revolver Upstairs and Riverside Theatre for Parramatta Lanes Festival

Locked Grooves (LGs) are closed audio loops etched into records, first used by Pierre Schaeffer for Musique Concrete compositions (1952) and subsequently by Jeff Mills since 1992 for DJ performance. The length of these loops is necessarily 1.8 seconds, correlating to one revolution of a record. By making and assembling short loops rather than pursuing studio-based arrangements, this research examined the format’s in-principal limitations as a catalyst for amalgamating formerly distinct composition and performance practices. Locked Grooves 2019-2023 is a collection of 51 digital audio loops and two DJ performances. With the loops ready-made for improvisatory assemblage rather than ‘finished’ studio-based arrangements, this articulates a form for electronic music that is intentionally incomplete and a series of works that remain ‘open’. This project challenges the practices and outputs of both composers (typically executing arrangements) and DJ-performers (typically working with complete arrangements) and demonstrates the recombinant potential of LGs as an immediate and flexible bridge between them. Locked Grooves 2019-2023 represents an important contribution to discourse on the configuration and presentation of recorded audio and DJ performance. It was partly funded by a competitive application for City of Melbourne Arts Grants (2020). A process-driven generative performance using the LGs was double-blind peer-reviewed and accepted to the 2023 Australasian Computer Music Conference, then performed at Riverside Theatre as part of Parramatta Lanes Festival—this received Professional Development Funding from RMIT’s School of Media and Communication. The loops remain a key instrument in my professional toolkit for performing to a weekly audience of 500-1000 patrons.

Shelley Brunt, Mike Callander, Sebastian Diaz-Gasca, Tami Gadir, Ian Rogers and Catherine Strong

Journal article for M/C Journal

The idea of ‘magic' has long been used to make sense of music’s intangibility, the mystery of creative music making, and the transformative effects on audiences and other participants in music culture. This article argues that the negative effects of the pandemic lockdowns on music in Naarm/Melbourne highlight already-existing challenges in music work and break the magic spell associated with music. Using key examples from popular music studies, industry reports and new government policies, we offer an analysis of the limits of music as magic, followed by a perspective on the gradual, if fragile, ‘re-enchantment’ of the local music industry.

Catherine Strong and Tami Gadir

Journal article for Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies

This article argues that problematic gender norms in electronic music contexts – namely, their association with masculinity and overrepresentation by cis men – can be subverted through alternative education methods. We use the case study of the Electronic Music Accelerator (EMA) program, run by youth organization The Push in Melbourne, Australia, to illustrate this. Specifically, we evaluate strategies used in the EMA program to teach Ableton and related skills on building electronic music production careers. The EMA s program was designed to increase the numbers of women and gender non-conforming or gender diverse people involved in electronic music production, in response to evidence that these groups continue to be underrepresented in this area. We focus on how so-called soft skills, as opposed to the strictly technical skills normally the main focus in an Ableton course, were taught in this program. In the EMA, rather than insisting that the participants take up a ‘masculine’ attitude to adapt to the existing electronic music scene that is dominated by men, the course presented ways of working with, and even reclaiming, traits perceived as feminine, such as humility and community-mindedness. This approach offers possibilities for reconfiguring expectations in electronic music spaces.

Sam Whiting

Book published by Bloomsbury Academic

Throughout the history of popular music, the careers of many culturally significant artists and groups began on the small stages of local bars clubs, pubs, and discotheques. When the stories of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and the New York punk hardcore and post punk scenes are told, iconic venues such as The Cavern, The Marquee and CBGB's serve as the settings of their early chapters Small live music venues such as these are pivotal in the narratives and history of popular music. However, very few of them survive.

Joel Stern with Jean Dockray and James Parker

Creative project in Unsound Festival 2023: Dada/Data

Over a century has passed since the emergence of Dada art in Europe, a movement known for its innovative use of collage, sound poetry, and cut-up writing. This creative project reinterprets the Dada movement through the lens of modern computation, machine learning, data politics, and artificial intelligence while probing the political and aesthetic dimensions of cutting-edge technologies, including speech-to-text conversion, large language models, and voice cloning. By merging these technologies with the revolutionary tactics of Dada art, the project aims to explore, scrutinise, and critically examine their implications. The "Machine Listening Songbook" comprises four audio and audio-visual performances crafted by Joel Stern, Sean Dockray, and James Parker of the 'Machine Listening' research collaboration. Premiering at the Unsound Festival in Krakow, Poland, in 2023, it addressed the festival's theme of DADA/Data. Styled as a songbook—a compilation of brief musical compositions—the pieces weave elements from classic Dadaist texts by Kurt Schwitters, Tristan Tzara, and Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, reimagining them using contemporary machine learning and AI techniques. Through this synthesis, the project spans several disciplines, including video art, experimental music, sound and poetry studies, and critical examinations of software and data, thereby enriching the domain of machine listening. The research not only seeks to inform public discourse on the interaction between humans and machines, AI, sound, and listening but also emphasises the influence of artists and cultural workers in shaping how these subjects are perceived. "Machine Listening Songbook" made its debut at the renowned Unsound Festival, held from October 1-8, 2023, in Krakow, Poland.

Lauren G Chalk

PhD dissertation, Griffith University 2023

Reggaeton (or reggaetón) is a cultural and musical practice that emerges from the Latinx Caribbean diaspora. This popular music genre is generally considered to resonate with communities across Latin America and the Spanish-speaking countries of the Caribbean basin, as well as those living in their diasporas who can trace their ancestry to this region. Following the unprecedented success of the reggaeton-pop song, ‘Despacito’ in 2017, there has been an increasing proliferation of heritage projects dedicated to this popular music genre. Since beginning this research in 2019, a range of heritage responses, from a Spotify-commissioned statue to a featured display in the new Latin Music Gallery at The Grammy Museum, have emerged. After years of relative marginalisation in academic scholarship, the heritagisation of this popular music genre is under-explored. It is against this void that I situate the Representing Reggaeton project which responds to the question: how is the Latinx Caribbean popular music genre, reggaeton, represented and practised as cultural heritage?

Joel Stern with Sean Dockray and James Parker

Creative project

In a world where the reproduction, synthesis, and management of soundscapes have become ubiquitous and planetary in scope, with loudspeakers and microphones intricately woven into the biosphere, a cybernetic ecology emerges. This creative project delves into the politics, aesthetics, and economics of 'environmental soundscapes' as a dynamic field of cultural production and contestation, transformed through its encounter with contemporary techno-science. Contribution" Environments 12" is a multi-channel sound installation accompanied by printed LP sleeves, conceived by Joel Stern, Sean Dockray, and James Parker of the artistic research collaboration 'Machine Listening.' The work was commissioned as part of 'Wild Hope: Conversations for a Planetary Commons’, an exhibition at RMIT Design Hub. Taking the form of a 'concept album, 'Environments 12’ draws inspiration from the once-popular Environments series—a sequence of 11 records released between 1969 and 1979, credited with anticipating the mass market for commercial nature recordings. Unfolding across historical, contemporary, and speculative scenes, the work is narrated by an ensemble of vocal performers and their generative voice clones. Methodologically, the project integrates curatorial research, artistic production, sound studies, acoustic ecology, environmental science, and critical data studies, contributing to the interdisciplinary field of machine listening. The research aims to shape public discourse on human-machine interaction, artificial intelligence, sound, and listening while advocating for the role of artists in shaping public perceptions of these issues. Significance Commissioned by RMIT Culture and presented at Now or Never, a high-profile arts festival in Melbourne, Australia, supported by the City of Melbourne, Environments 12 was on display from 15th August 2023 to 30th September 2023. It reached a substantial audience and garnered critical coverage and reviews.

Catherine Strong with Ben Green

Journal article in Media International Australia

Increasingly, music festivals in Australia are being cancelled, postponed or otherwise impacted by extreme weather events, including floods throughout 2022 and bushfires in 2018–2019. These and other forms of extreme weather, such as dangerous heat and drought, are predicted to increase in frequency and severity due to climate change. However, relative to the size of the problem, there is a lack of attention in both public discussion and scholarly literature to the impacts of extreme weather and climate change on the festival sector, and the need to adapt in response. This study explores this issue in the context of Australian music festivals. The threat of extreme weather to the Australian music festival sector and its benefits is outlined, with reference to climate science predictions as against known festival activity, as well as a detailed overview of recent impacts. This is followed by an examination of how music festival stakeholders in industry and government are responding to this challenge, through the analysis of policy submissions, media comments and changes of practice. This article concludes by proposing a set of questions and issues for research, policy and action concerning the escalating impact of extreme weather on music festivals in Australia, with relevance to other places.

Catherine Strong and Shelley Brunt with Fabian Cannizzo

Journal article in Creative Industries Journal

This article reviews current paradigms of music industry careers in order to theorise how career breaks and interruptions may be understood by music industry workers. While the career trajectories of young, independent and early-career musicians have been examined extensively, the lives of workers who are experiencing life course transformations (such as parenthood, ageing and health issues) and those who have taken a break from the music industries, are still largely under analysed. We begin with an overview of literature on this topic to highlight the ways that career transformations and ruptures have been omitted from conventional expectations about how to develop a successful music career. Then, we examine how these points of career change and interruption can be understood in an industry where the normalisation of the DIY/independent career model has itself disrupted common narratives for understanding career progression. From here, we develop the concept of music industry workers’ ‘imagined biographies’ to explore how social identity and the material circumstances of workers shape career development. We conclude by examining how ‘mid-care er’ transformations might be conceptualised in a way that is sensitive to social inequalities, identifying its relevance for understanding music industry workers’ career development in the Australian music industries.

Mike Callendar

Journal article in Chroma: Journal of the Australasian Computer Music Association

The introduction of synchronisation (sync) to the DJ’s professional toolkit in the early 2000s proved to be controversial and divisive. Until that point, DJs had been so focused on beatmatching – the manual process of tempo-setting and alignment of tracks – that many dismissed sync as ‘cheating’. Concern over technology-assisted creative output is not unique to electronic dance music (EDM). David Hockney’s investigation into the use of optical aids by the Old Masters highlighted similar perspectives in visual art. As sync has simplified some of the mechanical aspects of DJing, DJs have shifted away from building sets by sequencing pre-recorded audio made by other music producers towards an approach that incorporates improvisatory composition and production. Through a process of reflective practice and critical review of technique and repertoire both pre- and post-sync, this paper discusses how technology shapes and informs the realisation of a DJ set, highlighting how sync has catalysed a disconnect between the performer, their gestures, the source material and audiences, necessitating a rethink on how we demonstrate and recognise technical virtuosity in performance. It concludes by arguing that virtuosity in modern DJing is primarily a product of instrument configuration and pre-production, an amalgamation of formerly distinct production and performance techniques, and identifies how sync’s affordances might inform future views on DJ practice and the presentation of EDM.

Catherine Strong and Ian Rogers with Andy Bennett and Ben Green

Journal article in Popular Music and Society

Between 1970 and 1975, at least 18 rock festivals took place in Australia, often near regional towns. These have gone largely undocumented. By focusing on these “forgotten” festivals, this article contributes to our understanding of the festival’s role in Australian music culture, mapping the Australian context over the international rock music trends of the time. These festivals highlight the contribution of regional and rural settings to the development of contemporary Australian popular music. The use of the mythology of Woodstock in discourses around the festivals demonstrates conflicts within the youth countercultures of the time, and moral panics associated with them.

Catherine Strong and Shelley Brunt with Fabian Cannizzo

Report for the Victorian Music Development Office, APRA AMCOS, the Australian Music Centre, RMIT University and the National Careers Institute

The Encore Project is an Australian research and industry intervention initiative by RMIT University, with the support of the Victorian Music Development Office (VMDO), the Australasian Performing Right Association and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (APRA AMCOS), the Australian Music Centre and the National Careers Institute. It aims to help women and gender non-conforming music industry workers restart their careers after a career break. Through focus groups and interviews with 56 music industry workers from Victoria, Australia, the project team developed the Encore Training Package and delivered a pilot trial of the training in March 2023. The Encore Training Package has been made freely available to the Australian music industry through its industry partners, helping women and gender non-conforming people to plan their career breaks with confidence and community support.

Joel Stern with Sean Dockray and James Parker

Exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA)

Our devices are listening. Previous generations of audio-technology recorded, transmitted, or manipulated sound. Today, smart speakers, voice assistants and related technologies ‘understand’ it as well. This creative project explores ‘machine listening’, not only as techno-science, but as a field of cultural production and contestation, with profound social, economic and political implications, that demand critical and artistic attention. ‘After Words’ is a multi-channel sound installation and 32-page publication, created by Joel Stern, Sean Dockray, and James Parker of the artistic research collaboration ‘Machine Listening’. The work was commissioned as part of ‘Data Relations’, an exhibition at Australian Centre of Contemporary Art. Adopting the form of a radio play, ‘After words’ explores themes of computational scripting, instruction, production, and performance through the prism of language and words. In doing so, the work gestures toward a near future in which language has been fully operationalised: where every word we speak has a computational effect and residue. Methodologically, the work incorporates curatorial research, artistic production, experimental pedagogy, sound studies, jurisprudence, and critical data studies, to contribute to the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of machine listening. The research contributes to public discourse around digital rights, data and extraction, platform capitalism and surveillance while arguing for the critical role of artists and cultural producers in shaping public perceptions of these issues. After Words was commissioned by Australian Centre of Contemporary Art, a high-profile public institution in Melbourne, Australia, as part of Data Relations. The work was on display from 10 Dec 2022–19 Mar 2023 reaching an audience in the tens of thousands, and receiving substantial critical coverage and review.

Lauren G Chalk with Zelmarie Cantillona and Sarah Baker

Journal article in the International Journal of Cultural Policy

Popular music and its heritage increasingly feature as a component of creative city strategies and urban regeneration agendas. However, local governments of small cities face challenges in replicating the cultural policies and strategies popularised by big cities. Focusing on two Australian small cities – Wollongong, New South Wales and Redcliffe, Queensland – this article draws on examples of popular music heritage activity including the Bee Gees Way and Steel City Sound. What emerges is a discussion of the different ways in which these small cities have lever-aged their music histories as cultural infrastructure as well as the disparity of support between the two cases from respective local governments. The case studies demonstrate the need for local governments to adopt approaches that cut across the continuum of heritage practice – bringing together unauthorised, self-authorised and authorised discourses and activities that foster passion and support from a range of stakeholders of popular music’s past. The article highlights that capitalising on and sharing resources, expertise and networks, and a commitment to contin-ued investment by local government and the wider community, is essen-tial for creating sustainable cultural infrastructure in small cities.

Joel Stern with Sean Dockray and James Parker

Book chapter in Acoustic Intelligence, Dusseldorf University Press

“Machine listening” is one common term for a fast-growing interdisciplinary field of science and engineering which uses audio signal processing and machine learning to “make sense” of sound and speech. Machine listening is what enables you to be “understood” by Siri and Alexa, to Shazam a song, and to interact with many audio-assistive technologies if you are blind or vision impaired. As early as the 90s, the term was already being used in computer music to describe the analytic dimension of ‘interactive music systems’, whose behaviour changes in response to live musical input, though there are precedents even before that. Machine Listening was also, of course, a cornerstone of the mass surveillance programs revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013: SPIRITFIRE’s “speech-to-text keyword search and paired dialogue transcription”; EViTAP’s “automated news monitoring”; VoiceRT’s “ingestion”, according to one NSA slide, of Iraqi voice data into voiceprints. Domestically, machine listening technologies underpin the vast databases of vocal biometrics now held by many prison providers and, for instance, the Australian Tax Office. And they are quickly being integrated into infrastructures of development, security and policing.

Catherine Strong with Fabian Cannizzo

Journal article for Journal of World Popular Music

Compared to many nations in the global metropole, Australia experienced low per capita cases of the novel coronavirus during 2020. However, despite the nation’s geographical isolation, its dependence on international travel did result in a number of infections in early 2020, prompting federal and state governments to impose travel restrictions, social distancing orders, and eventually some state-wide lockdowns. The strategy to help affected businesses and workers was a combination of income support, tax relief and economic incentives to spur on spending as businesses were able to again operate—an approach that became known as “hibernation”. This article examines music workers’ expectations for their future, and the future of the music industries, post-“hibernation”. Through surveying and interviewing workers and business owners from across the Victorian music industries during a period of lockdown, it is explored how workers position themselves in relation to the idea that the sector could return to “normal” post-COVID, and these responses are situated within creative work research. Without common spaces of socialization and common economic objectives, workers within the hibernated music industries have demonstrated individualized approaches to their career planning, fragmented by the breakdown of daily rituals and routines. Some workers are orienting themselves to a future where the sector re-opens mostly unchanged, while others believe that the industry will be fundamentally different post-COVID. Workers’ activities in lockdown are shaped by these beliefs, with many exiting or preparing for an exit from music work, while those who anticipate staying undertake extensive labour to ensure the viability of their careers. The article concludes by considering what this might mean for the future of live music events in Victoria.

Lauren G Chalk

Journal article in Transformative Works and Cultures

Communities of fans are collaboratively approaching the task of preserving the materials, memories, and histories of reggaeton, a popular music genre. Two online spaces, the Hasta 'Bajo project and the Reggaeton Con La Gata platform, provide examples of community archives founded by fan-scholars. These initiatives invite participation, recognition, and celebration of reggaeton, in turn constructing and revising histories of the genre, in response to institutional and dominant discourses. This intervention, which speaks broadly to ideas on fan initiatives, frames the convergence between archivism and activism within these spaces as oriented toward the pursuit of cultural justice.

Paige Klimentou

PhD dissertation, RMIT University

This thesis examines the relationship between hardcore music and tattooing in order to more deeply understand how feminism influences decisions to get, or remove, tattoos dedicated to hardcore bands. The findings show how feminism guides fans’ tattoo decisions, and this allows for gendered resistance in traditionally male-dominated hardcore scenes, including through new forms of archiving. It adds significant new knowledge to work on gender and hardcore, through exploring the intersections between the gendered body, fandom, and tattoos in hardcore by answering the question, ‘how do tattoos connect the feminist body to the hardcore scene?’ This question is supported by two sub questions: ‘how are band tattoos related to creating space for feminism in hardcore?’ and ‘how do band tattoos allow for new forms of archiving?’ To answer these questions, I examine four aspects of hardcore and tattooing: the connections between masculinity, American traditional tattoos and hardcore; women with hardcore tattoos; tattoos dedicated to Melbourne feminist hardcore band Outright; and the removal of tattoos dedicated to American hardcore-adjacent emo band Brand New in the wake of allegations of abuse. First, I connect hardcore music to American traditional tattooing, a style with strong links to military culture, which contributes a new theorisation of how tattoos amplify the masculine nature of hardcore. Second, by interviewing women with hardcore-related tattoos, I am able to provide understanding on how feminism influenced their tattoo decisions, and how these women apply feminism to their hardcore fandom. Third, by exploring tattoos dedicated to Melbourne feminist hardcore band, Outright, I show how fans have used their feminist tattoos to demonstrate their fandom and allyship, their political views, or both, and how this is connected to trust within the scene. Finally, these new understandings inform my investigation into tattoo cover ups, specifically those relating to problematic hardcore-adjacent emo band Brand New. This investigation juxtaposes celebratory and traumatic experiences of fandom and allows us to understand the (tattooed) body as a site of remembering—as a type of performative, affective archive, a living history—while subverting the idea that tattoos are a permanent and extreme form of body modification, instead revealing their ephemeral nature.

These four perspectives enable a reconsideration of the body in hardcore, exploring not what is done with the body but what is done to the body, in the form the use of hardcore tattoos to commemorate events, mark personal achievements, to make a statement about identity, or deepen connection to the scene or particular bands in a uniquely feminist way. Taken all together, this project therefore brings together studies of popular music scenes, tattooing, and archiving to provide new knowledge on how band tattoos can create space for feminist expressions in a male-dominated scene.

Catherine Strong

Book chapter in the Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music, Space and Place

Thinking about popular music as heritage is a relatively recent phenomenon. Bennett (2015: 18–19) notes that contemporary popular music and popular culture more generally were long denied the label of heritage because their ‘mass-produced, commercial and global cultural properties. . . rendered them the antithesis of anything deemed to be of authentic historical and cultural value as this was conceived in conventional heritage discourse’. However this situation has changed over time, as popular music has aged and gained more of a ‘historical’ aspect, and as those invested in it in their youth have gained positions as cultural gatekeepers. The rise of popular music as an aspect of heritage is also connected to broader changes, including the breakdown of the ‘highbrow/lowbrow’ division in culture, and a widening conception of whose versions of the past are seen as worthy or authoritative. This has led to a situation where Brandellero et al. (2014: 219) argue that ‘for generations born after 1945, popular music forms such as rock and punk may be as potent a symbol of national or local identity and heritage as more traditional representations, for example, national and regional insignia, food, drink and sport’. This chapter will explore the connections between place, heritage and popular music, beginning with an examination of what heritage is and how popular music has been incorporated into it, and moving to look at how place has been a factor that strengthens or complicates the relationship between these.

Catherine Strong with Sam De Boise and Maura Edmond

Book chapter in The Bloomsbury Handbook of Popular Music Policy

The popular music industries have significant problems when it comes to gender equality. There is now ample evidence that major barriers exist that prevent women and non-binary people from participating fully in almost all activities related to music-making (see Strong and Raine 2019 for an overview). In this chapter, we consider how cultural policy approaches have attempted to address this issue, and to what extent they have been successful, by comparing examples from the popular music sectors in Sweden, the United Kingdom and Australia. We show that the wider national policy contexts of a country and the ways in which women, and music and the creative arts more broadly, have historically been included in policy considerations, leads to different expectations and outcomes for interventions in this area. We conclude with an examination of how policy responses to the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 may be shifting the ground on this issue.

Ian Rogers with Benjamin Morgan and Dave Carter

Report for the Australia Council for the Arts and APRA AMCOS

Web3 technologies have demonstrated potential for musicians to reach new audiences and benefit from new revenue streams. To date the uptake and exploitation of Web3 technologies among Australian musicians has been limited. This project produced 10 music NFTs with 9 Australian artists to examine the barriers to adoption of Web3 for Australian music communities. Insights were gained through in-depth interviews with participants and via assisting them to bring their NFTs to market. The project was funded by the APRA AMCOS Digital Futures Initiative and administered by the Australia Council for the Arts. Based on the experience of participating artists, Web3's potential remains largely unexplored by Australian musicians and Music NFTs seem unlikely to attract widespread adoption or displace incumbent music ventures in the near future. For many Australian musicians, Web3 presents challenges and risks not associated with existing markets for musical goods without offering compelling evidence of prospective new audiences or financial gains.

Sebastian Diaz-Gasca

Book chapter in Nostalgia and Videogame Music: A Primer of Case Studies, Theories, and Analyses for the Player-Academic

Why listen to videogame music when you are not playing the game? Nostalgia is one of the answers to this question, and it is one that elegantly explains the various motivators that surround audiences’ decisions to relive the emotions of gameplay. This chapter argues that this consumption is due to the interaction of experiential associations (one’s personal encounter with memories about experiences related to the game music), sociocultural factors (collective memory and remembrance of game music), and marketing imperatives (the manufacturing of nostalgia as a commodity by the game industry). These three motivators inform the way in which audiences interact paraludically and re-engage with VGM beyond the diegesis. At its core, the replayability of games and the reproduction of music enable the revisiting of memories, in order to relive something resembling the initial experience, either through remixes or covers. The medium’s format also allows, and almost encourages, a similar process for the paraludical consumption of game music. Focusing on the way in which associations are created during gameplay and paraludically, the chapter explores the role played by nostalgia in these motivators, and how it is consequently manifested outside of the game.

Ian Rogers with Dave Carter, Benjamin Morgan and Anna Edgington

Journal article for M/C Journal

In a 2019 report for the International Journal of Communication, Baym et al. positioned distributed blockchain ledger technology, and what would subsequently be referred to as Web3, as a convening technology. Riffing off Barnett, a convening technology “initiates and serves as the focus of a conversation that can address issues far beyond what it may ultimately be able to address itself” (403). The case studies for the Baym et al. research—early, aspirant projects applying the blockchain concept to music publishing and distribution—are described in the piece as speculations or provocations concerning music’s commercial and social future. What is convened in this era (pre-2017 blockchain music discourse and practice) is the potential for change: a type of widespread, broadly discussed, reimagination of the 21st-century music industries, productive precisely because near-future applications suggest the realisation of what Baym et al. call dreams. In this article, we aim to examine the Web3 music field as it lies some years later. Taking the latter half of 2021 as our subject, we present a survey of where music then resided within Web3, focussing on how the dreams of Baym et al. have morphed and evolved, and materialised and declined, in the intervening years. By investigating the discourse and functionality of 2021’s current crop of music NFTs—just one thread of music Web3’s far-reaching aspiration, but a potent and accessible manifestation nonetheless—we can make a detailed analysis of concept-led application. Volatility remains throughout the broader sector, and all of the projects listed here could be read as conditionally short-term and untested, but what they represent is a series of clearly evolved case studies of the dream, rich precisely because of what is assumed and disregarded.

Shelley Brunt with Liz Giuffre

Book published by Routledge

Popular Music and Parenting explores the culture of popular music as a shared experience between parents, carers and young children. Offering a critical overview of this topic from a popular music studies perspective, this book expands our assumptions about how young audiences and caregivers engage with music together. Using both case studies and wider analysis, the authors examine music listening and participation between children and parents in both domestic and public settings, ranging across children's music media, digital streaming, live concerts, formal and informal popular music education, music merchandising and song lyrics. Placing young children’s musical engagement in the context of the music industry, changing media technologies, and popular culture, Popular Music and Parenting paints a richly interdisciplinary picture of the intersection of popular music with the parent–child relationship.

Shelley Brunt

Book chapter in Children and Media Research and Practice during the Crises of 2020

“Stay Home”. In March 2020, these words were a forceful government message to the five million residents in the city of Melbourne during Australia’s first wave of COVID-19. But when a second wave hit in July, Melburnians began one of the longest and strictest lockdowns in the world. The extreme social restrictions included mandatory mask-wearing, a two-hour window for exercise, a night curfew, and a work-from-home directive. April 2020: first lockdown. Melbourne was no longer the “live music capital of the world” because every music venue had closed. This shattered his fieldwork plans to research live music concerts aimed at children. It was clear that media-making with author's family in lockdown involved trial, error, emotions and patience. Tempers frayed due to internal and external forces. His new research outcomes are born from the unique circumstance of lockdown.

Paige Klimentou

Book chapter in Mixing Pop and Politics: Political dimensions of popular music in the 21st century

Focusing on the experience of people with tattoos based on emo band Brand New, who subsequently had their tattoos covered up following sexual assault allegations against the band’s frontman, this chapter explores the intersections between fandom, tattoos, and (im)permanence, drawing on ‘affective’ archiving theory (Baker 2015) and ‘little h’ heritage-as-praxis (Roberts and Cohen 2014). Fan tattoos are underrepresented in tattoo scholarship, with most research focused on commemorative tattoos or tattoos as ‘survival’ symbols. Therefore, affective connections between music, fandom, and tattooing have not been fully explored: few have considered what it means if a tattoo is reflective—or the source—of trauma. Destabilising Atkinson’s (2003) notion of ‘permanence’ as it relates to tattoos, this chapter shows that coverups allow people to repurpose and reclaim their tattoos and, by extension, their living, bodily archives. This has profound implications for callout culture and the relationship between fan and artist.

Kat Nelligan with Pariece Nelligan

Journal article in Perfect Beat: The Asia-Pacific journal of research into Contemporary music and popular culture

This article offers reflections on the impact of COVID-19 on the arts and entertainment industries in Australia, with a specific focus on the music industry. The pandemic has placed added financial and psychological strain on the industry’s workers and performing artists, many of whom were already struggling emotionally with financial instability and job insecurity prior to the pandemic. The federal government’s inadequate financial support for arts workers, and its failure to protect Australia’s cultural and economic assets of live music and entertainment during the pandemic, are discussed. There is a need for a COVID-19 recovery plan that addresses the impacts of the pandemic and pre-existing issues of financial instability as well as the federal government’s undervaluing and underfunding of arts industries in Australia. The article is written from the perspective of the authors’ personal experiences as creative practitioners and researchers in the creative industries, and is based on media articles and research reports published prior to and during the pandemic (2018–2021).

Tami Gadir with Ann Werner and Sam De Boise

Journal article in Journal of Popular Music

This article builds on research about gender in music practice, concerned with skewed musical canons, ratios and quotas of gender representation, unfair treatment and power dynamics, and the exclusionary enmeshment with music technologies. The aim is to critically discuss what ‘gender’ is understood to be, how it has been studied and how gendered power has been challenged, in order to suggest new routes for research on gender and music practice. While we count ourselves among the scholars working in the field and critically investigate our own work as well as that of others, the article addresses some additional concerns to those of previous studies by examining how gender is ontologically constructed in these studies, how intersectional approaches can enrich analyses of gender in music practice and how the material dimensions of music practice can be actively addressed. The conclusions outline suggestions for broadening research in gender and music practice.

Ian Rogers with David Carter

Journal article in Popular Music and Society

In 1984, L.A. punk band Black Flag released My War. Coming three years after Damaged – a canonized classic of the hardcore genre – and following a period of legal dispute and touring hiatus, My War was diverse and polarizing; side two of the album featured three slow, long riff-heavy songs that run counter to the predominantly lean and fast signature sound of the band’s previous work and that of many contemporaries. With the benefit of hindsight, these tracks signaled punk’s reinvestment in heavy metal, precipitating new hybrid forms such as sludge metal, drone metal, and stoner metal. In this paper, we exhume a subset of this aesthetic lineage and discuss how it has informed a subsequent recording: Lysol by theMelvins. Through analysis of recorded works, we demonstrate how the sounds of side two of My War have been propagated and refined, highlighting the links between these idiosyncratic sounds and the pragmatic realities of low-budget studio production.

Shelley Brunt and Kat Nelligan

Journal article in Media International Australia (MIA)

How has the Australian music industry’s mental health crisis played out in the media during the coronavirus pandemic? This commentary article considers a snapshot of media reports about this issue. We survey print and online media, press releases, official websites, online seminars and social media from March to June 2020. During this time, the industry has faced financial loss, job insecurity and anxiety for the future of Australian music, thus placing unprecedented strain on an industry already characterised by poor mental health. We identify four key narratives communicated by the media, which we call (1) acknowledging grief and loss, (2) supporting creativity and well-being, (3) adapting to the new normal and (4) envisaging a post-pandemic future. These narratives illustrate overarching concern for music industry workers’ mental health and also the provision of helpful strategies for managing these issues.

Shelley Brunt with Catherine Hoad, Oli Wilson, Gene Shill and Ben Howe

Journal article in the British Journal of Music Education: An International Journal

This article investigates the possibilities of a vocational pedagogy for undergraduate popular music education which is grounded in site and city. The value of work-integrated curricula in tertiary music environments is well established; however, often absent from such discussions is consideration of how geospatial contexts mediate the opportunities and resources available to universities. In response, we provide a critical comparison of how work-integrated learning (WIL) has been developed in two undergraduate popular music degrees in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. Through comparison, we consider how the geographic locations of both programmes have shaped WIL, as well as identifying the specific economic, cultural and political tensions that emerge.

Sebastian Diaz-Gasca with Dan Bendrups, Gabriela Constanza Martinez Ortiz, Perla Guarneros Sanchez, and Elisa Mena-Maldonado

Journal article in Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration

Universities are important drivers for transnational migration to Australia, especially for students who are economically mobile, or who might be seeking to convert a transitory study experience into a more permanent migratory one. The economic growth experienced in a number of Latin American countries in the twenty-first century introduced new cohorts of Latin American students into Australian tertiary education institutions, including some from countries that may have had minimal prior presence in Australia. This includes students working towards research degrees. This article presents the autoethnographic accounts of four doctoral candidates from Latin America studying in Australia. It considers their motivations for undertaking graduate research, and the factors that brought them to choose Australia as a study destination, and the benefits and challenges they have experienced in coming here. While the candidates are all from different research fields, their experiences reveal commonalities around three key themes: opportunity, safe exploration and the role of family in enabling decisions about transnational doctoral education.

Catherine Strong and Ian Rogers with Fabian Cannizzo

Report for the Victorian Music Development Office

Career Path: The Victorian Music Business Career Life Cycle study reveals workers with music business careers are passionate and nimble, but sector disruption can lead to career instability. The Victorian Music Development Office (VMDO) worked with RMIT University to interview 27 Victorian music business professionals with over ten years’ experience to understand the skills, strategies, challenges and opportunities people require to sustain a music business career. Career Paths: The Victorian Music Business Career Life Cycle acknowledged common themes, including the: multi-access points to establish and maintain a career in an ever-shifting and evolving music industry; nimble skills and strategies required to sustain a music business career; challenges and roadblocks within the music industry; and ongoing opportunities to support and development music business careers.

Ian Rogers with Sam Whiting

Journal article in Popular Music and Society

Australia’s concentrated population presents particular challenges for touring music acts. The country’s capital cities are few, and the distance between these cities is not dotted with the type of vibrant regional music scene commonly found abroad. Yet due to an array of state and federal arts grants – all aiming to subsidisze music touring – many Australian inner-city acts venture out to these destinations hoping to find conductive performance environments. In this paper, we map the experiences of a number of Melbourne and Brisbane bands – via interviews and case study – as they tour outside of their local/city scenes.

Joel Stern with James Parker

Journal article in Law Text Culture

This essay is about how are you today, an artwork produced by six men then detained on Manus Island, along with their collaborators in Melbourne (together, the Manus Recording Project Collective). The work was commissioned in 2018 for an exhibition called Eavesdropping at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, at the University of Melbourne, the largest University-based museum in Australia. Each day for the fourteen weeks of the show, one of the men on Manus made a sound recording and sent it ‘onshore’ for swift upload to the gallery. By the exhibition’s end, there were eighty-four recordings in total, each ten minutes long. The result is an archive of fourteen hours—too large and diverse to synthesise, yet only a tiny fraction of the men’s indefinite internment. In this essay we introduce how are you today along with a series of reflections on it, including by two of the artists. We see our task as twofold. First, to document the work’s conception, production, and key realisations, both for the record and to spare the pieces that follow the trouble. Second, to offer a curatorial perspective in the process, since we were the ones who commissioned how are you today at the end of 2017.