Audio Archives Research Articles

Usability Testing of the Metadata Management of Audio Archive

The aim of this research is to test the usability of the audio archive metadata management application. This application is used to record all song collection data in the form of cassettes and vinyl and is also used to search for collection data easily and quickly. This research used System Usage Scale (SUS) method to test the application usability. The SUS Testing was carried out by distributing a questionnaire which consists of 10 statements to 30 respondents to determine the assessment scale based on percentile rank, grade, adjective rating, acceptability, and net promoter score. The result of the system usage scale testing showed an average total score of 83. By detail, this result explained that the percentile range assessment scale is between 90-95%, grade is A, adjective rating is in the Excellent category, acceptability is in the acceptable category, and net promoter is in the promoter category. Thus, it can be concluded that the audio archive metadata management application is suitable for use as a search and retrieval tool for song collections in the form of cassettes and vinyl. However, in order to increase the application’s usefulness, the application can be more developed in the future by adding additional features to meet the criteria as a better metadata management tool.

Sounds of History: A Digital Twin Approach to Musical Heritage Preservation in Virtual Museums

Musical cultural heritage, as an important component of cultural heritage, possesses significant cultural value and inheritance significance. With the development of society and the passage of time, these precious traditional musical cultural heritages inevitably face the dilemma of gradual depletion or even disappearance. In the digital age, effectively protecting and inheriting these musical cultural heritages has become an urgent problem to be addressed. Therefore, this paper proposes an application method based on digital twin technology, exploring how to protect and inherit musical cultural heritages through digital twin technology. By leveraging digital twin technology, a virtual museum dedicated to showcasing the richness and historical connotations of music cultures is created, preserving and simulating the soundscapes of historical music eras. Through the integration of audio archives, 3D modeling, and interactive displays, users can immerse themselves in the experience of historical music in the digital space. This paper evaluates the feasibility and cultural preservation value of this digital music history museum through the creation of music digital twin technology instances and user survey feedback and discusses the prospects of digital twins in the field of musical cultural heritage.

Tapping on Collective National Trauma

Tapping on Collective National Trauma

Voicing the Archive. Marysia Lewandowska in Conversation with Magdalena Ziółkowska on the absence of female representation in institutional histories

Conversation between artist Marysia Lewandowska and curator Magdalena Ziółkowska, revisiting Lewandowska's early practice and formative years in London, including the Women Audio Archive, as well as archival several projects devoted to recontextualization and displacements of institutional practices and narratives, and the most current installation and performance Welcome (2023), commissioned by Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover.

MANAJEMEN METADATA ARSIP AUDIO DENGAN APLIKASI SEDERHANA PERKANTORAN PADA MUSEUM MUSIK INDONESIA

Metadata provides the necessary context to understand and organize systems, data, and content management. Thus the metadata in the archive has a fairly important role, with the existence of archive metadata it will facilitate the management of archives, both static archives or dynamic archives. At the Indonesian Music Museum in Malang City, there are various collections of audio archives from all over Indonesia which are static archives that need to be preserved for their authenticity and physicality as they are part of Indonesia's cultural heritage. The archive collection is divided into various forms, namely in the form of tape cassettes, CDs, and LPs. This study aims to describe the needs of metadata management within the scope of electronic records management. Metadata management is compiled by recording a collection of audio archives on tape cassettes for the pop song category at the Indonesian Music Museum. The metadata management development approach uses a simple office application with Microsoft Access media, so that the audio archive metadata in the Indonesian Music Museum can be digitally compiled. Of course, this can facilitate audio archive retrieval activities and their maintenance.

Milestones of Establishment and Ways to Save the Audio Archive of the Art Studies Institute of the Republic of Uzbekistan Sciences Academy

The global movement for the preservation, study and dissemination of Cultural Heritage is directly connected with the cultural policy of the Republic of Uzbekistan, which is confirmed by a number of relevant state documents. The fixation and study of traditional music as the basic value of the Uzbek people are closely connected with the activities of the Art Studies Institute of the Republic of Uzbekistan Sciences Academy. The purpose of this article is to provide information about the Audio Archive (Phonoteka) of this Institute, historical milestones of its creation, ways of its preservation and further use. In accordance with the specified purpose, the selected object is considered in the historical and chronological aspect. The period of formation of the two main collections of the Audio Archive is consistently covered – phonographic (1930–1940) and tape recorder (late 1940s–1990). The significance of the Audio Archive as а unique object of historical and cultural memory and an important scientific and educational source was revealed. The former ways of its preservation and introduction into science and practice are discussed. Information is provided on the implementation of the project in 2015, within the framework of which a set of 8 CDs with 69 of the most representative examples of genres and forms of Uzbek music from a collection of tape recordings was created. A brief description of the content of discs was given, and the significance of the project, which became the first step in popularizing the Institute’s archival records in digital format, was indicated. The tasks of preserving and further using the Audio Archive fund in the near future are outlined: digitization of the entire audio fund, compilation of a digital catalog and databases. This article includes historical facts about the formation of the Audio Archive of the Art Studies Institute of and to a certain extent summarizes its materials. Its practical significance lies in the dissemination of information about this audio archive, attracting the attention of the scientific community and a wide audience to the Uzbek musical heritage. The interest of specialists in the project of complete digitization of the Audio Archive dictates the need for further study of this unique object.

Promotion of Bandura Art Abroad at the Turn of the 1980s and 1990s

The purpose of the research is to determine the genre and thematic directions of the creative activity of bandura players of the Ukrainian diaspora and Ukraine in the context of the Ukrainian Free University (Munich, Germany) in the period of the 80s and 90s of the twentieth century. In particular, audio recordings from the collection of the UFU archive and reports on the activities of the educational institution from 1985-1990 were used. Research methodology. The researcher used the source, historical, axiological, musicological, and cultural approaches. The source study method was used to analyze new archival sources (textual, documentary, and audio-media) to research Ukrainian bandura art in its mainland and diaspora dimensions. Other approaches and methods made it possible to consider the areas of activity of bandura players in a foreign environment (historical and typological and historical and chronological methods), the value of their achievements for the promotion of bandura art in the world in the period of the 80s and 90s of the twentieth century (axiological approach), and to analyze the contribution of bandura players from North America, Europe, and Ukraine at the compositional, performing, and pedagogical levels to the world Ukrainian culture (musicological and culturological approaches). Scientific novelty of the research. For the first time, the materials of the audio archive of the Ukrainian Free University concerning bandura art are introduced into scientific circulation. Conclusions. The main principles and manifestations of the popularization of bandura art abroad in the 80-the 90s of the twentieth century are revealed. The personalities of soloists and groups of bandura players from the diaspora and Ukraine, lecturers and instructors of bandura training held at the Ukrainian Vulnerable University, whose creative activity was presented at public concerts in Munich, interviews and presentations on the air of Radio Svoboda, are highlighted. The article analyzes the period that marked not just the intensification of the concert and pedagogical activities of bandura players from other foreign countries but also the expansion of their cooperation with bandura players from Ukraine on the eve and at the beginning of independence. These factors remain relevant in the context of the need to generalize and analyze the achievements of bandura art abroad as a component of Ukrainian musical culture and its development in different historical and temporal periods.

The evolution of performance style in the history of the International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw

The International Fryderyk Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw was inaugurated in 1927, in part out of the desire to promote an authentic performance practice in relation to Chopin’s oeuvre. Among the main concerns were the establishment of, and strict adherence to, the original authoritative text and an authentic performance aesthetic. The debate over those issues has been at the heart of the artistic mission of the Competition ever since. As the Chopin Competition indeed exercised immense influence on the performance style of Chopin’s music during the twentieth century – an influence that has continued into the twenty-first century – this paper examines the evolution of that style through Competition performances. Has the performance style evolved at all? If so, to what extent? Starting with the 5th Competition, in 1955, the year in which the Competition audio archives were started, the author discusses selected performances by most of the winners of the First Prize. Also discussed are performances by some of the pianists who did not win but whose contributions were important in terms of their influence on Chopin performance practice. Besides addressing the question of whether the evolution of Chopin performance style is encouraged, discouraged or even possible at a Competition whose main goals include establishing and preserving an authentic performance practice, the paper questions whether that goal can ever be achieved. Also discussed is the place of the Competition in relation to the changes in Chopin performance style in the piano world outside the Warsaw Competition. In the introduction, the author briefly considers some of the characteristics and challenges of the unique style of Chopin as understood through most recent achievements in musicology, cultural studies, editing, research, performance, piano pedagogy and music criticism. He also describes the main principles of the so-called ‘Polish School’ of Chopin interpretation and its impact on the development of what is currently the principal way of performing Chopin. The article is supplemented by an online playlist comprising audio excerpts of some of the discussed performances.

From Book to Playlist: How Open-Access Audio Archives are Renewing the Poetry Collection

Open-access audio archives are changing the ways we consume and conceive of poetry. This article considers exactly how they renew our sense of the poetry collection. While books provide authoritative collections assembled by a poet or an editor, open-access audio repositories with an archival concern preserve entire poetry readings in which poems are read in a different order than in print. Given the ability of poems to take up new meaning according to context – a characteristic identified by Neil Fraistat as “the Petrarchan paradigm” –, I argue that such “sets” constitute hermeneutic objects in themselves and in relation to print collections. To test this hypothesis, I turn to Louis Zukofsky, a poet known for the careful structuring of his books and his radical care for sound. Listening closely to two 1972 readings and examining a reading program for a 1941 reading at the YMHA preserved in the Zukofsky archives, I establish that such sources offer valuable insights into the work, expose a series of criteria used by poets to compose their readings, show how a poet can repurpose old poems in renewed contextures, and ultimately observe that approaching Zukofsky through his audiotexts tilts his work decisively toward song. Moreover, Zukofsky’s Fall 1972 readings foreground the curatorial role played by his wife, Celia Zukofsky. By setting to music her selections from her husband’s work, she offers two artistically complex textual realizations of a game-changing affordance of sound-recording technologies since the 1963 invention of the audio cassette – i.e. the possibility to anthologize on the receiving end. In large online repositories of recorded poetry, the playlist has become an established genre with a curatorial function, offering guided tours by artists or scholars. Tapping the widely shared desire to collect “favorites,” share them with others, and prompt them to come up with their own list in response, the playlist undeniably holds great critical, creative, and pedagogical potential.

The Vanitas of Sound Art

Abstract The author applies the concept of fermentation to sound through the prism of saturation and sonification, and studies the fermentation process as a medium and approach in sound art. He traces this medium in the works of Alexey Grachev, Rumore Bianco, Wouter Van Veldhoven, Sam Conran, and Vasily Bakanov. The article examines the history of the CYLAND Audio Archive and the formula for archiving, cataloging, and exhibiting works of sound art.

The ED is not ready for survivors of sexual violence, and especially not survivors like me.

The ED is not ready for survivors of sexual violence, and especially not survivors like me.

The Traces of a Media War: Archives of Dutch Broadcasts from London during the Second World War

The project ‘<em>Mediaoorlog</em>’ (media war) pioneers a digital humanities approach to analyse propaganda discourses in Dutch-language media during the Second World War. The core database at our disposal is the CLARIAH Media Suite, which brings together relevant collections of digitised sources, including the audio archive of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. This contribution reflects on our first efforts to study Radio Oranje, the daily broadcast of the Dutch government-in-exile from London to the occupied Netherlands. It is argued that the current online radio archive from the Second World War has its limits and that it therefore is necessary to employ a hybrid methodology, drawing on material from various collections, both digital audio fragments and paper transcripts. The following pages will provide an analysis of how these two source materials relate to each other by showing how they came into being and how they were transferred from Great Britain to the Netherlands. The first part of this contribution contains a historic overview of Radio Oranje and the trajectory of its archival records. The second part of this paper explores how these sources have been used in the late twentieth century to shape Dutch public memory of wartime radio broadcasting from London.

Emerging Experimental Music Audio Archives

&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D; The challenges of archiving audio material in various forms continue to be present for both professional archivists and musical communities whose histories are held in these materials. Although traditional approaches to archiving allow some benefits to housing and caring for this material, particularly considering the particular care required for fragile records potentially in obsolete forms, this paper posits a greater benefit in collections of experimental music audio material that are cared for from within their communities of creation. For experimental music communities, the improvisatory content of sound material and the importance of ad hoc community gatherings form ephemeral connections that members of these communities are best suited to providing accurate and meaningful context for these collections. The paper highlights four North American experimental music archives: Chicago’s Creative Audio Archive, Calgary’s Bug Incision, and Toronto’s Continuum and Music Gallery.&#x0D; &#x0D; &#x0D;

These streets were ours: remapping Dylan Thomas’s Swansea

Audio archives are a unique tool that have helped geographers further their spatial analyses of the world. Through listening to voices from the past, the historical geographies of places are revealed and can, then, be used to better understand the numerous narratives that shape a location. But what happens if we take these recordings and reinterpret them, using an artistic lens? Can we create fresh and alternative ways of displaying and doing cultural geography? In this short essay, I demonstrate how I used selected audio archives which discussed the formative years of the life of Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas, to create a video map which combines past and present representations of the city of Swansea, Wales, to reimagine the archives for a 21st-century audience. By doing so, I reflect on how when combined with artistic methods, audio archives can be a vital tool for mapping new and innovative understandings of place.

СОХРАНЕНИЕ И ПРЕЗЕНТАЦИЯ ИСТОРИКО-КУЛЬТУРНОГО НАСЛЕДИЯ МОРДВЫ В МУЗЕЯХ АЛТАЙСКОГО КРАЯ

The article considers the features of the choice and application of forms of representation of objects of material and intangible historical and cultural heritage of the Mordovians in the exposition and exhibition activities of state and municipal museums of Altai Krai (Russia). The main regional trends in the field of scientific documentation and updating of the historical and cultural heritage of the Mordovian ethnos by means of museum activities (the formation and inclusion of thematic photo collections and audio archives in the cultural and educational activities of museums) are determined. The resource base of museum institutions of the Altai Territory, engaged in the acquisition, storage, study and restoration of objects of the ethno-cultural heritage of the Finno-Ugric people, and the transmission of traditional Mordovian culture, is reviewed.

The Development of Russian History of Technology in the 20th Century

On the 28th of February, 1932, the General Assembly of the USSR Academy of Sciences adopted a resolution on the reorganization of the History of Knowledge Commission (KIZ) into the Institute for the History of Science and Technology (IINT) of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The past 90 years have demonstrated scientific and practical importance of the new discipline, history of science and technology. Its history-of-technology component has played an important role in the development of this discipline. The article analyzes the path traveled by the history of technology as well as the most important results in engineering and technology, obtained both by the IHST researchers and their colleagues from other research and educational institutions. Considerable attention in the article is given to the early period of formation of the history of science. The impact of difficult Soviet prewar realities on science in general and on the tragic fate of IINT (the arrest of its director, N. I. Bukharin, invectives addressed to the Institute, and its shutting down) is analyzed. The author emphasizes that, during the period under study, the history of technology community continued with their research, and points out to the works of B. L. Bogoslovskii, V. V. Danilevskii (also spelled Danilevsky), A. A. Radtsig, S. T. Strumilin, and others. The organizational and administrative revival of the history of technology dates back to 1942 and is reviewed in the context of historical meeting of V. L. Komarov, President of the USSR Academy of Sciences, with I. V. Stalin, the head of state, during which it was deemed advisable to reinstate the Institute for the History of Science (IIE). What distinguished the history of technology in the second half of the 20th century was its steady, systemic development. Everything was changing: the configuration and balance of research priorities, methodological toolkit and the forms of studies, standards and themes of scientific work, staff, social context, and funding. The collective and individual monographs alternated as predominant forms of scientific output. The diversity of genres correlated closely with staff dynamics. The author focuses on the important role of paternalism of the foremost Soviet scientists in the history of technology. One of the main factors of disciplinary stability was the pursuit of new knowledge. In this context, the main theme clusters and their ideologists were: factographic, including field, studies (V. V. Danilevskii); current scientific and technological revolution (S. V. Shukhardin); technical sciences (Yu. S. Meleshchenko); and theoretical and methodological matrix of the technical world (I. Ya. Konfederatov). The author writes about today’s marketplace realities with undisguised worry for the future of the discipline. The sources used in this article are collective and individual monographs on the history of machines and technical sciences, publications in the journal “Voprosy istorii estestvoznaniia i tekhniki” (Studies in the History of Science and Technology), as well as the written and audio archive of the author who has been working at S. I. Vavilov Institute for the History of Science and Technology of the USSR (Russian) Academy of Sciences since 1971.

Collector`s Works of Nina Kerimova

Documentation of ethnomusic (which is at the same time the first stage of its research) forms the base of sources of musical folklore (ethnomusicology), which creates the very possibility of all subsequent explorations.&#x0D; Ethnic music, as a whole, is formed by the totality of its regional manifestations, each of which must be recorded in sufficient completeness. However, some territories for various reasons even at the end of the twentieth century, were represented on the Ukrainian ethnomusical map very sparsely. It’s a paradox, but Kirovohrad region, located in the center of Ukraine, remained one of the least explored regions. Being a region of relatively late settlement, it was practically ignored by researchers (including ignored by the relevant scientific institutions) as an uninteresting periphery.&#x0D; One of those who in the late 1980s gave the start of the modern stage of documenting the musical folklore of the Kirovohrad region, its systematic professional recording, was a graduate of the Kiev Conservatory Nina Kerimova. For ten years of active field work, the collector has recorded nearly 7000 units of musical and ethnographic information from 80 settlements. These materials today make up nearly one third of the twenty-thousand regional audio archive, collected over the past 35 years by the joint efforts of folklorists, professionally engaged in field survey of the presteppe Right Bank and its adjacent steppe and eastern Podolian territories within the Kirovohrad region and the border areas of Cherkasy, Vinnytsia and Dnepropetrovsk regions.&#x0D; The purpose of this article is to summarize and make public the information about the nature and results of N. Kerimova’s collector`s activity. A systematized, meaningful, structured, concentrated and formalized approach makes it possible to include materials from her archive into the all-Ukrainian ethnomusical and ethnomusicological information field. Methods used in the article correspond to its set goal: factographic and factological, statistical, analytical and synthetic (the latter reveals patterns in the correlation of elements of an integral system).&#x0D; The article provides:&#x0D; &#x0D; a brief overview of the history of collecting musical folklore in the region;&#x0D; basic biographical information about the researcher;&#x0D; statistical data on the number and geography of her expeditionary records, specified to the culture-genre content of the materials recorded in each locus; data on respondents (their number, age, origin).&#x0D; &#x0D; The methods and preferences of the field work are described.&#x0D; The professional level of the work is attested, the high degree of scientific value of the collected materials is argued. The audio and musical publications, which include materials from the archive of N. Kerimova are listed.&#x0D; The materials collected by N. Kerimova are characterized (a) as a separate hermetic collection-archive, (b) as an important component of the cumulative array of records made in the region and (c) in the context of a holistic view of the region's traditional ethnomusical culture that has been effectively formed nowadays.&#x0D; Along the way, the author of the article deals with the issues of cultural-genre classification / attribution of folk musical works, archiving field materials (in particular, methods of passportization and codification of records), as well as the problems of documenting and statistical processing of materials recorded from migrants (local, intraregional, interregional), that were incorporated by the new folklore environment to a greater or lesser extent

Eighty years of literary audio archives at the Library of Congress: Preserving collections from the physical to digital

This paper reviews the 80-year history of two Library of Congress literary audio archives — the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature and the PALABRA Archive — and details the challenges and opportunities that the dawn of the digital era posed for such collections. Curators and archival professionals who had been accustomed to analogue collection frameworks and workflows began to develop strategies for digitisation and digital access, paving the way for the establishment of the Library’s Digital Content Management Section. This new section’s Digital Collections Management Compendium outlines the institution’s policy and guidance for its digital content managers. New complexities with handling digital files highlighted the need to develop innovative digital processing workflows, as well as the importance of documenting these workflows and techniques for future processing efforts. Continuous documentation and efforts to process digital files have led to increased confidence in utilising scripting for batch processing as well as an improved understanding of the requirements for making this content accessible. The collaboration between literary audio archives curators and digital content managers laid the foundation for similar digital preservation practices that the institution continues to build upon for other projects, and continues to ensure the successful transition of these historic literary collections into the digital era.

Indymedia Cancún, Radio Hurakán, and the Sounding of Altermundos Sonoros

This paper explores the sonic engagements and possibilities brought forward at Radio Hurakán and the Indymedia Cancún audio space, temporarily set up in 2003 during the mobilizations against the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) fifth Ministerial Meeting in Cancún, Mexico, where close to 300 media activists from Latin America, the United States, and Europe converged to provide independent coverage of alternative actions, forums, and events. It reconstructs and (re)sounds this experience by examining a variety of Indymedia Cancún and Radio Hurakán artifacts and materials, including Indymedia Cancún audio productions found in online audio archives and websites, and interviews highlighting the audio and radio collectives from the Global South that participated in Radio Hurakán, particularly focusing on community radio activists from Mexico. In this way, this paper poses that audio and radio activists were engaged in the making of altermundos sonoros, or sonic alterworlds, through skill-sharing efforts, collaborative organizing and production practices, and autonomously developed tech, generating a bottom-up sonic infrastructure to make audible a variety of sounds, textures, tonalities, and stories that resonated near and far, making possible the sounding of radical imaginaries and the opening of pathways for different ways of listening.

A Network Analysis of Postwar American Poetry in the Age of Digital Audio Archives

From the New American Poetry to New Formalism, publishing networks such as literary magazines and social scenes such as poetry reading series have served as a capacious mod-el for understanding the varied poetic formations in the postwar period. As audio archives of poetry readings have been digitized in large volumes, Charles Bernstein has suggested that open access to digital archives allows readers of American poetry to create mixtapes in different configurations. Digital archives of poetry readings “offer an intriguing and powerful alternative” to organizing practices such as networks and scenes. Placing Bern-stein’s definition of the digital audio archive into contact with more conventional under-standings of poetic community gives us a composite vision of organizing principles in postwar American poetry. To accomplish this, we compared poetry reading venues as well as audio archives — alongside more familiar print networks constituted by poetry an-thologies and magazines — as important and distinct sites of reception for American poet-ry. We used network analysis to visualize the relationships of individual poets to venues where they have read, archives where their readings are stored, and text anthologies where their poetry has been printed. Examining several types of poetic archives offers us a new perspective in how we perceive the relationships between poets and their “networks and scenes,” understood both in terms of print and audio culture, as well as trends and chang-es in the formation of these poetic communities and affiliations. We suggest that this ap-proach may offer new ways of imagining the multiple dimensions contributing to the so-cial formation of contemporary American poetry.