“It’s as if We’re Beyond Philosophy”: A Report from a Digital Humanities Conference
Note: Some of the names of conference participants have been changed or anonymised.
From 27 to 29 June 2024, I attended the conference Digital Technologies Applied to Music Research: Methodologies, Projects and Challenges, organised by the Centre for the Study of Sociology and Musical Aesthetics (CESEM) at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities at NOVA University Lisbon, Portugal. At my side was our MCICM research assistant, Jorge Lozano. Together, we had submitted an abstract for a presentation, and were delighted to find out that we indeed would be part of the event in Portugal in the – hopefully beautiful and sunny – early summer.
Initially, the call for papers caught our attention especially due to the fact that the conference sought to “foster interdisciplinary dialogue between music technology scholars and historical musicologists and to promote scholarly discussions on the applicability and usability to boost music research” (Call Papers, 2024). This made it seem like a fitting opportunity to learn more about how music research and digital technology intersected. It also provided, we thought, an important and interesting complementary perspective to our research line on digitality: namely one that focuses on music research and academic practice. Music research, Jorge and I agreed, was, after all, also a kind of musical practice – at least, if we follow Christopher Small (1998) and his idea of musicking. We believed at least enough in it to make our way to Lisbon.
Prior to arriving in Portugal, we viewed the programme of the conference online. Topics included, for example, the use of technology to increase accessibility of music notation; technological applications for preserving, archiving, and restorating music; as well as digital tools for encoding, transcribing, and analysing. Consequently, many of the approaches and projects could be subsumed under the broader umbrella of Digital Humanities, a scholarly field that applies computational tools and methods to traditional humanities disciplines.
At the same time, from the programme it became clear that this conference was very specialised and niche, looking at the topics and the music to which these technologies were applied. As the conference took place in context of the broader, interdisciplinary research project “Echoes from the Past: Unveiling a Lost Soundscape with Digital Analysis”, the music in question was largely early music, like for example early chant repertoire from medieval Portugal. In the programme, words like ‘classification’, ‘polymeters’, ‘taxonomy’, ‘optical music recognition’ and ‘concept analysis’ struck me as strange and unfamiliar in the context of this music; I wondered: what do these technologies actually do in relation to the art? How did it matter what type of music it was, or which period it was created in? What can you find out when applying technologies like classifiers and optical recognition programmes to music? As a FASoS-home-grown Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholar who had entered first the performing arts and – only later – classical music, I thought it was extremely relevant to learn more about what happens in this type of research and the questions that it raises.
Jorge and I hoped to stimulate some meta reflection on these questions with our own contribution: in our talk, we proposed an intervention to the conference programme, a music-sociological, broader interrogation of the practices and ideas that sat at the heart of the event and the kind of research presented. You can read our paper here[PD(1] . Looking at the finalised conference programme back then, we suddenly realised how much our contribution actually fell out of the programme, and what that might mean for how it was going to be received by the other researchers (who were mostly music historians, musicologists, and technology scholars).
Jorge: “I’m really curious what they will think or say. Our talk is so different from the rest of the programme. I mean of course that’s also the point. But I’m kinda more and more surprised they actually invited us.”
– Field note, Denise Petzold, June, 2024
I shared these questions. However, the fact that our abstract was accepted gave me hope that our talk would be met with open ears. To be clear: rather than worrying, Jorge and I were curious as to how our – much more constructivist – ideas would land with this audience.
I entered the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences in Lisbon on 27 June. The glass front of the large building shone in the soft morning sun; online I had read that the facade was designed to resemble an open book. Inside, I made my way up and bumped into a small group of people gathered around a large table on which I could see conference badges and tote bags. I checked in, and with my newly obtained tote lured a bit about, until I decided to ask an older white man – who was standing alone next to me, similarly awkward as I – if he knew where the rooms of the conference were. As we chatted, it turned out to be a professor from the UK, with whose co-author I had conducted an interview for my PhD thesis. Politely, we discussed our work. When I admitted that I was somewhat an outsider to the conference’s themes, he smiled and told me not to worry – historians are a friendly bunch. As some of his colleagues arrived, I left to get a coffee.
Not long after, Jorge joined. I have to admit I felt a wave of relief passing through me at his sight; finally a familiar face in the rather aged and murky hallways. I was also slightly jealous at his ability to take off inconspicuously in between to have a smoke; I might have joined and broken my no-smoke rules, had I not been pregnant at the time. This might also have spared another participant the disappointment of mistaking me for an organisational assistant, who eagerly waved his USB-stick at me only to find out that I did neither have the Wifi password nor the authority to take his presentation slides from him. Together, Jorge and I sat down in the lecture room and listened to the welcome.
There are many jokes in this welcome, all targeting the supposed outdatedness of music historians. Quote: “Of course, people working in early music always present themselves as sexy people!” The crowd seems to enjoy this.
– Field note Denise Petzold, June 27, 2024
What followed were talks, talks, talks, talks, talks. There were around 50 participants during the days, often split into two groups as there were parallel sessions. The sessions I attended were all presenting papers, sometimes read out, all with powerpoint presentations and moderators.
This is the 7th presentation of the day, and so far, we haven't heard actual music playing. Plenty of scores (early and modern), mentions of performance practice and practitioners, but nobody has exemplified it with music audio. […] I just had the thought that these examples of "musicologising" are very akin to a kind of performance practice that addresses only the purely ‘musical’ or the purely ‘technical’ concerns. Not only are the presenters hyper-focused, but the rest of participants are as well. Their questions are enquiring mostly about technical details of what the presenter discusses. In this sense, this seems like a self-contained, self-sufficient field that doesn't seem to require anything external to be whole. For example, the societal relevance of this polymeter presentation might be questioned. Who benefits from better encoding of polymeters? That is, apart from the fields from which the research stems.
– Field note Jorge Lozano, June 27, 2024
Most of the talks reflected Jorge’s observations, with only a few exceptions2. Also the session before ours was pretty much a glowing example for the type of research we were probing; I wondered how this would impact our talk as we walked in front of the audience.
Maybe we were a bit pre-disposed that we would anger the audience, but [...] I couldn't help feeling some strong tension in the air. Only now is it clear to me how much we are outsiders to this group of people. I see all these accomplished scholars, some past middle-age, with years and years of working in this way, and I wonder if we are asking the impossible. […] What we do almost feels inconsiderate…
– Field note Jorge Lozano, June 28, 2024
I also felt the tension during the talk was palpable; I clung desperately to the (very) few nodding faces in the audience. Another scholar, a woman my age whom I had bonded with during the previous day, gave me a rather well-hidden thumbs-up when we finished and received polite but meagre applause. I was sweating. Not only from the talk, the faces made out of stone, but from the pressure of also having to rectify a mistake the moderator had made in introducing our paper: he had summarised the abstract of our talk completely wrong, potentially raising different expectations in the audience.
Was this an accident, or a way to manifest discontent on our topic? Did he [the moderator] not read the abstract or did he not understand it? This is the only time something like this happened in all the presentations we attended.
– Field note Jorge Lozano, June 28, 2024
It was no use; the damage was, as we should quickly learn, done.
The first question comes from a woman, my age. She says that she does “not agree at all” with our claim that digital technologies shape music research. These technologies only do what they are supposed to do; after all we use them for this purpose. Technology does not do anything by itself; we are behind it. I scramble for an eloquent and diplomatic answer, my heart beating as I did not expect such strong opposition to one of the most basic arguments in my own field, science and technology studies: that technology and humans co-shape each other. She disagrees again and recommends a book. I thank her, I am irritated as for the loss of my words and my surely brightly glowing face, I am embarrassed, I want to go home. Why did we come here? And why does no one seem to understand what we mean, have we been that bad at communicating our argument? Have we been overstepping so much?
– Field note Denise Petzold, June 28, 2024
While this field note describes the moment of the strongest open opposition our talk faced in the discussion round and my initial response of frustration, there might have been more such moments, had it not been interrupted, as Jorge observed:
The microphone is passed to a man, who comments that he appreciates that we “discuss power relations” (?). He is rudely interrupted several times by the moderator. The chair basically stops him mid-sentence, says that the time is over, and that we could discuss this later. This we unfortunately did not manage to do, as I did not see the gentleman again.
– Field note Jorge Lozano, June 28, 2024
After our session, I let myself fall on the row of seats in the auditorium, discontent, confused, yet at the same time relieved and (even more) convinced of our argument. I had not given up the hope that someone had understood our contribution and could not wait to discuss Jorge’s thoughts and impressions. In the break, Jorge and I talked in the hallway. Now we were approached by three or four people who gave us compliments on our talk, and congratulated us on our “meta take”, which they generally “missed” in their field. I remember suddenly having the image of Lefty from Sesame Street in my head, the shady-looking, trench coat-wearing salesman whose pitches rarely are successful. We were Lefty, but instead of attempting to sell an “O”, we tried to sell constructivism and meta-reflection. And some people seem to have bought it, after all.
The British man shares how annoyed he is that no one thinks about how technology affects research and making data – it is as if “we’re” (musicologists? Music historians? Computer scientists?) are “beyond philosophy”. He describes how he has been looking for critiques of these ways of thinking about technology, particularly basing on historical insights, but only found one bad book. Our argument was important, he admits, as “no one ever seems to think about this stuff”.
– Field note Denise Petzold, June 28, 2024
That our talk did ring with some people also became clear at the beginning of this day’s keynote, which the speaker began by openly addressing our presentation and referencing the comment by the audience member. She clearly and assertively stated that technology does shape her research; specifically, that over time, technological advancements have allowed her to do things in her research that were unthinkable at earlier points, thus fundamentally changing the nature and course of her work and research practice. I felt my shoulders relax.
In hindsight I see that reflection and introspection into the research practices of the conference usually happened not in the talks and presentations themselves, but outside of them: in the in-betweens, particularly in the hallway around the coffee table, in the moments of moving from session to session, during the conference dinner, or near the restrooms, away from the crowd. I was struck how none of this reflection is organised into a programme point – yet it was there, well-hidden in the confusing architecture of staircases and elevators.
During the conference dinner, a participant argues that the presentations are too niche in the sense that they use technical vocabulary that often only other colleagues from the same specific field understand and use. I agree, especially considering my ignorance of these tech tools used by all these researchers. She thinks that these conferences should consider ensuring a more accessible approach in terms of content as to not exclude non-experts.
– Field note Jorge Lozano, June 28, 2024
As I left the building the next day, I was wrapped up in my out-of-placeness as an interdisciplinary scholar, and how Jorge and I have – as aliens – both estranged and (partially) angered this community of people. “I did not want to tell anyone to do their job!” is what I want to scream in this moment from the top of my lungs. I also knew I was making it bigger than it is, which at the same time comforted me.
Outside stood Jorge, post-smoke. We sat down on a bench, and he said, “something strange and funny happened”. I braced myself, hoping it really would be funny.
He [a participant of the conference] approaches me outside of the building at the beginning of the lunch break and says that he has been wanting to chat with me. He regrets there was no actual discussion/Q&A yesterday after our presentation. He starts in a slightly defensive tone, although perfectly kind, clarifying that his own project did not fall into what we were critiquing […]. He then comments on the presentation right before us, which he also saw as the perfect example of what we were questioning […].
As a final comment, he describes how, after our presentation, he and his colleague had told each other “These two have balls for coming into a room full of medieval religious chant scholars and talking about Eurocentrism”.
– Field note Jorge Lozano, June 29, 2024
Jorge and I had a good laugh. I swallowed the urge to go to this person and tell him that this was not the point.
Secretly, I can’t wait to board the plane.
2 For example, I very much enjoyed the talk by Corey McKay and Maria Elena Cuenca on the third day of the conference. The presenters illustrated the challenges of their collaboration, meaning between computer scientist and musicologist, reflecting openly on the different goals, motivations, and research cultures – and how to make their research work. The authors showed great insight into the norms and conventions of their own respective fields, which seemed to play an important role in the success of their collaboration.