Highlights from the ESA-Arts Conference @ University of Surrey, Sep 1-3

This was a really enjoyable first exposure to the world of sociological conferences. I thought it would be a nice idea to provide some of the highlights here. The theme of the conferences was 'Arts and the Future' and there were many papers on issues regarding arts participation, boundaries, new technologies, consumption, markets, education, communities and concerns over the future of the arts.

The conference began with a round table discussion about the recently departed  Richard A. Peterson, a giant in the world of arts sociology. The discussion was led by editor of Poetics, Timothy Dowd and was suitably deferential yet there was a lively debate about Peterson's relevance in relation to Bourdieu's work.

One of the key note speeches was co-presented by Barbara Adam (professor of sociology at Cardiff) and Cardiff-based artist Seth Oliver. Adam has been working on the sociology of time for many years and it's fascinating stuff. In a nutshell, she claims that time is simply what you make it to be and that in turn is socially determined. That's over simplistic, but she has five monographs and 150 articles to explain it more detail. In fact, she thought the topic is so vast and complex that it was impossible to relay anything of importance to an audience in a one hour key note speech, whereas she noted that artistic approaches seem to encapsulate time concepts within the process of art-making and within the artwork itself. Thus began a collaboration with Oliver. The resulting presentation included large (eight foot high or thereabouts) scripts written in an almost poetic manner that hint at the complexities of time accompanied by static visual artworks by Oliver. Adam then did a short talk about the collaboration and read the texts while the audience listened and examined the artworks. I thought this was a very interesting experiment and I very much like the idea that art can transmit more information within a set period of time then scientific talk can. I'm not sure it was wholly successful, however, and I'm not convinced that many people in attendance gained a deeper insight into the time having witnessed this. I think the main problem is that the artworks were static. When I discussed this with Adam she said the fluidity is represented within the artwork; she could see the movement, or implied movement, within the object. This may be so, but if you want to feel a concept like time you need to experience it, which seems to me to need a time-based/procedural medium like music, film or dance. Oliver agreed to a certain extent, saying that they were continuing to experiment, that this was a work in progress, and mediums like film were being discussed. Nevertheless, it was fascinating and I need to read more of Adam.s work. It also relates to my plans of alternative deliveries of sociological material (cue mysterious music).

The other keynote speaker was from futurist Wendy L. Schultz. Her presentation was a technology-heavy affair and how these future or developing technologies might affect artistic practices. I was disappointed by this presentation as I expected to see things I had never even imagined. Unfortunately, if this is the future, it's already here and it's not all that interesting. The technological tattoos was interesting, however, although can you imagine what your body would like if this went wrong, the firmware became corrupt or a virus introduced into the system? Another big part of her presentation was the Playing for Change concept. This usage of music as a 'magical universal healing power' irritates me so much I think it warrants a whole other bit of writing so suffice it to say, I was not impressed.

techno tattoos

Playing for Change


I will just bullet-point some of the other highlights:

• Victoria Alexander (Surrey) - Painted a slightly depressing but not surprising picture about British cultural policy. She made a plea for the intrinsic long-term benefits of an arts education as opposed to the current and unlikely to change policy of arts for social inclusion or boosting the creative economy. Good call, I say, but this is unlikely to change anything, unfortunately.
• Dagmar Danko (Freiburg) - Noted how current artists treat themselves as brands and have looked the world of popular music as a business model and thereby increasing their media coverage and popular appeal. Vice versa, popular musicians increasingly associate themselves with visual artists to gain artistic gravitas. 
• Kyle Devine (Carleton) - Made a call for a sociology of sound as a merging of sound studies and music sociology. This was very interesting,especially his discussion of the usage of compression techniques. This reminded me of my experience of listening to BBC Radio 1 next to Radio 3. Radio 1 is hugely compressed and sounds very up front and consistently loud whereas Radio 3 is generally uncompressed and has a wide dynamic range. This could lead to all sorts of sociological inquiries into the nature of this compression, the different types of music broadcast on these stations, who listens to these stations, where are they when they listen, what are they doing when they listen and so on.
• Volker Kirchberg (Luneburg) - Discussed his recent project eMotion, which tracked gallery-goers movements, cognitive and emotional responses during their visit to a gallery in Switzerland. The tracking was done via a special glove which measured changes in skin viscosity and temperature. What a project! After a huge amount of data was collected and analysed, the resulting morale of the story is don't go to modern art galleries unless you are already feeling miserable or you are Swiss. 

• Nick Prior (Edinburgh) - Likes Bourdieu and made a call for the post-Bourdieu crowd (Hennion, DeNora, Born) not to throw him out with the bath water. I thought this was a fair point.
• Pedro Serrao (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) - Seemed to be making a call to view sociology of arts more as an arts sociology, akin to DeNora's move from sociology of music towards a music sociology. He didn't actually say it like that, but that's what I think he meant and, if so, that sounds like a good plan.
• Yael Teff-Seker (Hebrew University) - Conducted a fascinating study of the depiction of Arabs in Israeli children's literature between 1967-1987. Particularly interesting was that the portrayals were generally positive until the Yom Kippur war. Interestingly, the children who would have read these stories with negative stereotypes are now the ones in positions of power within Israel. Be careful what your children read!
• Abigail de Leon (University of Asia and the Pacific) - I missed her talk but we had a chat afterwards a we have some common ground. Her work on social capital and human development through choral music in the Philippines is not only interesting, it shows promise. I think the process has less to with choirs, however, and more about what singing means to a contextualised social group and that it is this contextually specificity that is important rather than choirs in general. I say this even though I am also studying choral practices.

Now, if I actually wrote this much every morning on my thesis I should have no problems!