Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
- Convenor:
-
Patrick Keilbart
(Goethe University Frankfurt)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Workshop
- Regional groups:
- Southeast Asia
- Transfers:
- Open for transfers
Short Abstract:
In this workshop we discuss the relationship between infrastructural materialities and contemporary socio-technical and natural environments with respect to power relations and social imaginaries. Focusing on infrastructures and practices of Un/Commoning, we reflect on TechnoEnvironments in SEA.
Long Abstract:
Environmental transformations in Southeast Asia have received much attention in anthropological studies on this area; what has been less examined so far is the link between these environmental and rampant (digital) technological transformations.
In this workshop, we explore anthropological perspectives on evolving socio-materialities connected to the entanglements of technological and environmental transformations in Southeast Asia. These socio-materialities consisting of networks of artefacts, relations, human and non-human bodies and landscapes are increasingly shaping life, work, culture and identity in Southeast Asia. Beyond interest in the relationship between media technology and the physical and natural environment, this also means to trace the complex and dynamic relationship between media infrastructural materialities and our contemporary socio-technical and natural environments. Current processes of digital and material Un/Commoning in Southeast Asia have effects on social and political in- and exclusions, economic developments and the ecological relations between humans, non-humans and the world.
The scope of the workshop will be relationships between infrastructural materialities and contemporary socio-technical and natural environments, including power relations, social imaginaries and concepts of sustainability. Focusing on infrastructures and practices of digital and material Un/Commoning, we reflect on the digital commons as part of TechnoEnvironments in Southeast Asia.
Accepted contribution:
Contribution long abstract:
How can we know about a music genre from the vantage point of an infrastructure? Roaming inside and around three studios of Guwahati, Assam, India while conducting ethnography for 14 months, an anthropologist ruminates an existing sub-genre “Asomiya adhunik geet” (Assamese Modern Song) or composers, musicians, engineers around the studios referred as Modern songs, from the vantage point of sound making infrastructure. What musicians of Assamese popular music pursue this genre as its evolution from its origin as All India Radio (AIR), Indian state-owned public radio broadcaster, produced genre called “Sugam Sangeet” vis-à-vis produce regular interval and engage with contemporary audio technologies in recording studios which I say as hardware infrastructure and most importantly the technology which formulate the sound i.e. timbre of this genre which I call it software infrastructure i.e. Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an audio plug-in software interface. For this exploration, the paper will engage with the entanglement between musicians and audio technologies in production of Asomiya adhunik geet” and VSTs as the software infrastructure how it is metamorphosing timbre of a genre of a popular music. Finally, paper will argue translocality and its discontents, describing VST plugins made from abundance of resources in technological center Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH, a Hamburg, Germany based musical software and hardware company is creating songs of scarcity in periphery like Guwahati, Assam, India.