Organisation of Future Meetings and Workshops
Several ideas were put forward with respect to the progression of the network, in particular the way in which future meetings and workshops will be organised.
Specific themes such as 'improving conventional instruments' and 'creating new timbres' were touched upon, but also more generic themes such as 'perception' and 'testing compositional thoughts' were suggested. Another suggestion was to divide up into separate workshops for specific groups (i.e. composers, makers, researchers), followed with some concerns about ensuring that each meeting is sufficient general for everybody to attend. The practicalities and difficulty of getting instrument makers to attend meetings was pointed out, and the suggestion made that this would only happen with very dedicated workshops.
Near the end of the discussion, the suggestion was made that there should be general meetings that are somewhat 'themed' by the organising host. For example, a meeting in Edinburgh with some more general discussions in the morning and a specific workshop on wind instruments in the afternoon. In relation to this, the suggestion was made that it could be very efficient to run such a meeting on the back of another event on the same topic - for example, the Early Music Exhibition in London.
This idea was further explored in multiple individual discussions afterwards, and the meeting organisers sensed that there was a widespread enthusiasm for this model amongst the participants. Several participants volunteered to host a meeting:
- Cambridge
- Edinburgh
- Bradford
- Belfast (SARC)
- London (Metropolitan joint with Royal College)
- Dartington
Even the exciting idea of hosting a meeting in Paris was heard, although it is not clear whether that would be within the financial budget of the network. It was noted that Joel Gilbert of Le Mans University, currently Chair of the Musical Acoustics Group of the French Acoustical Society, is interested in fostering links with the network.
A further point was made about creating links with related networks in Culture and Creativity programme, in particular:
- Technology and the Healthy Human Voice in Performance
- Spatial Audio Creative Engineering Network (SpACE Net)
- Live Algorithms for Music (LAM)
The possibility of a joint meeting, themed 'New Musical Instruments', was mentioned.
A further few specific practical points were made during the discussion, concerning:
- The process of identifying industrial members (contacting BDRS, British Horn Society etc.
- Adding specific info on the network website (info on members, facilities available - measurement techniques, anechoic chambers etc).
- Developing work in historical acoustical development of instruments + performance development.