Knowledge Transfer: Feedback

A new project series in the frame of the ULYSSES Network focuses on exploring and establishing formats for non- or at least less-hierarchical knowledge transfer in music.

This topic will be present at the Darmstadt Summer Course 2016 (29 July to 14 August 2016) at different levels with the aim to develop models, formats and strategies that can be continued by other academies and festivals of the Ulysses network.

Besides open space practices and other knowledge sharing formats, one of the core topics is feedback and critique. We discovered a lack of a constructive feedback culture in the new music scene that is all the more astonishing as creation and innovation are daily business in contemporary music.

Other arts – especially performance, theatre and dance – have been developing feedback strategies for years, but in contemporary music (composition/interpretation) the topic is not well reflected so far.

A team of tutors will try to adapt feedback methods for music and to find strategies that can be applied in special feedback sessions as well as in normal instrumental classes. The project will be based on experiences of the Amsterdam Theatre School DasArts where people have worked for a long time on that issue together with the philosopher Karim Benammar in order to develop organized feedback sessions as a collective learning experience.

The project is in the core of a new reflection on teaching, coaching, tutoring and flat hierarchies that is constantly widening the music academies’ masterclass concept.

© Daniel Pufe

70 Years: 1946 – 2016

International Summer Course for New Music (29 July to 14 August 2016)

At more than 65 public events, the 48th International Summer Course for New Music (29 July to 14 August 2016) will present some 40 premieres, including more than ten works commissioned especially for this year’s anniversary festival. A number of artistically highly diverse projects – like for example the large-scale project historage – 7 places, 7 readings – are offering artistic responses to the seven decades of Darmstadt’s history and also to the digital archive of the Darmstadt International Music Institute (IMD), which has been established extensively in the last few years. The motto “Music in the Expanded Field” will be at the center of the program, predominantly with new commissioned works in which performance, venue, light, sound motions, audience movements and many other factors combine to create a composite audiovisual experience. On the theoretical side, the international conference EXCESS: Forum for Philosophy and Art (4 – 7 August 2016) will establish one of the course’s focuses.

With over 60 tutors, the 2016 Darmstadt Summer Course will offer an extensive program of tuition and workshops, from classes in composition and various instrumental disciplines, via workshops at the “Atelier Elektronik” and a writing workshop for young music journalists, to experimental projects. Roughly 450 participants from some 50 nations will be expected in Darmstadt between 29 July and 14 August 2016.

Tickets for the concerts as well as the regularly-updated program can be found at www.internationales-musikinstitut.de/en/program2016

Supported by Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain, Jubilee Foundation of the Darmstadt Sparkasse, Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, Allianz Kulturstiftung, Merck’sche Gesellschaft für Kunst und Wissenschaft
as well as many other supporters and sponsors

IMD is a culture institute of the City of Darmstadt.