International Association for the Study of Popular Music
Popular Music Studies Today
19th Biennial IASPM Conference
26. – 30. Juni 2017
University of Kassel
Germany
19th Biennial IASPM Conference

Panel: Dancecult Presents… EDM Contexts and Representations

Abstract: Researching popular music through transmedia festivals

The proposed presentation will offer a further development of ethnographic research methodology within the context of popular music at festivals through a case study of transmedia festivals. Transmedia festivals are international events dedicated to electronic and experimental music, related arts, and a diverse range of artistic practices which are linked to sound, art, technology and discourse. I adopted the term ‚transmedia‘ from my research field[1] as many of those festivals make reference to intermediality, transmediality or interdisciplinarity in their profiles. The festivals originated at the fringes of the new media scene – where media art was overlapping with electronic music. The roots of those festivals are found in club culture as well as in art exhibits and the festivals have wide spread and ramified networks which are characteristic for them. By presenting data of my fieldwork and contemporary ethnographic research approaches (pendulum ethnography, multi-sited ethnography, dense participant observation) I want to show how ethnographic research on festivals can reveal different perspectives on popular music and thus brings unexpected themes and ambivalences to the forefront.

Keywords: Ethnographic Research Methods, Festivals, Experimental Electronic Music, Transmediality, Precarity

Joining for the panel with:

Simon A. Morrison, University of Chester, UK
The dancefloor on page and screen: Cultural re/presentations of the club scene in literature and film