Hillegonda C Rietveld
Professor Emerita of Arts & Media: Sonic Culture, School of Arts and Creative Industries, London South Bank University, and Associate Academic in Media & Communication Theory, Dept of MCCS, Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Advisory Board Member for Manchester UP (British Pop Archive); Advisory Board Cambridge UP (Elements series, Popular Music); Member of International Advisory Board of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture; Member of Advisory Board IASPM Journal.
2021-2024: Co-Director of Creative Technologies Research Centre (CTRC), LSBU
2017-2021: Chair of Sonic Culture Research Group, LSBU
2014-2019: Director of Postgraduate Research, School of Arts and Creative Industries, LSBU.
2011-17: Chief Editor of IASPM@Journal, the online open access peer-reviewed academic journal of the Association for the Study of Popular Music <http://www.iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal>
2009-2014: PhD Coordinator, Dept of Arts and Media, School of Arts and Human Sciences, LSBU.
2007 - 2014: Member of AHRC Peer Review College (Arts and Humanities Research Council)
2004 - 2014: Course Director of BA (Hons) Music & Sonic Media, LSBU.
Advisory Board Member for Manchester UP (British Pop Archive); Advisory Board Cambridge UP (Elements series, Popular Music); Member of International Advisory Board of Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture; Member of Advisory Board IASPM Journal.
2021-2024: Co-Director of Creative Technologies Research Centre (CTRC), LSBU
2017-2021: Chair of Sonic Culture Research Group, LSBU
2014-2019: Director of Postgraduate Research, School of Arts and Creative Industries, LSBU.
2011-17: Chief Editor of IASPM@Journal, the online open access peer-reviewed academic journal of the Association for the Study of Popular Music <http://www.iaspmjournal.net/index.php/IASPM_Journal>
2009-2014: PhD Coordinator, Dept of Arts and Media, School of Arts and Human Sciences, LSBU.
2007 - 2014: Member of AHRC Peer Review College (Arts and Humanities Research Council)
2004 - 2014: Course Director of BA (Hons) Music & Sonic Media, LSBU.
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Books by Hillegonda C Rietveld
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The DJ stands at a juncture of technology, performance and culture in the increasingly uncertain climate of the popular music industry, functioning both as pioneer of musical taste and gatekeeper of the music industry. Together with promoters, producers, video jockeys (VJs) and other professionals in dance music scenes, DJs have pushed forward music techniques and technological developments in last few decades, from mashups and remixes to digital systems for emulating vinyl performance modes. This book is the outcome of international collaboration among academics in the study of electronic dance music. Mixing established and upcoming researchers from the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Australia and Brazil, the collection offers critical insights into DJ activities in a range of global dance music contexts. In particular, chapters address digitization and performativity, as well as issues surrounding the gender dynamics and political economies of DJ cultures and practices.
Content:
1: Introduction - Hillegonda C. Rietveld
2: Subjectivity in the Groove: Phonography, Digitality, and Fidelity - Bernardo Alexander Attias
3: DJ Technologies, Social Networks, and Gendered Trajectories in European DJ Cultures - Anna Gavanas and Rosa Reitsamer
4: ‘Journey to the Light’? Immersion, Spectacle, and Mediation - Hillegonda C. Rietveld
5: The DJ as Electronic De-Territorializer - Mirko M. Hall and Naida Zukic
6: ‘It’s Not the Mix, It’s the Selection’: Music Programming in Contemporary DJ Culture - Kai Fikentscher
7: Electronic Dance Music and Technological Change: Lessons from Actor-Network Theory - Jonathan Yu
8: DJ Culture and the Commercial Club Scene in Sydney - Ed Montano
9: DJs and the Aesthetic of Acceleration in Drum ‘n’ Bass - Chris Christodoulou
10: The Forging of a White Gay Aesthetic at the Saint, 1980-84 - Tim Lawrence
11: DJs as Cultural Mediators: the Mixing Work of São Paulo’s Peripheral DJs - Ivan Paolo de Paris Fontanari
12: War on the Dance Floor: Synthscenen’s Military Power Games - Johanna Paulsson
13: DJ-Driven Literature: A Linguistic Remix - Simon A. Morrison
Reviews:
"DJ Culture in the Mix offers not only a broader picture than the standard monolithic account, but a refreshingly different type of picture - a cubist approach, with a dozen viewpoints thrown unpredictably together.... (It) might not be a definitive statement on DJing or danceculture, but it's a timely representation of just how broad the subject is - and should be" - Adam Harper for The Wire, April 2014, p 76.
"There are good books on dance clubs and dance music, but this is the first volume on the figure of the dance music DJ and it is most welcome. DJ Culture in the Mix is well-organized, up-to-date and genuinely international, and brings together many of the leading figures in dance music studies. Highly recommended” - Prof Will Straw, 2013.
"Exploring everything from the fractious taste politics of New York gay clubland during the post-disco eighties to the cult of speed in 21st Century drum ‘n’ bass, DJ Culture in the Mix is a collection of probing, insightful essays that will provide stimulation and enlightenment for dance music scholars and dance music fans alike” - Simon Reynolds, 2013.
Research Articles and Chapters by Hillegonda C Rietveld
Published by Routledge: Focal Press
Justin Randell and Hillegonda Rietveld utilize an auto-ethnographic approach to explore specific patching techniques that enable what they describe as an embodied approach to creative musical synthesis. Among the central components of such an approach is the move away from the screen. As many modular enthusiasts are keen to point out, it is the tactile and physical character of modular synthesis that is elemental to not only its distinctiveness from the digital, but to the very nature of modular creative practice. Modular synthesizers have an affective and aesthetic dimension to them in so much that they invite touch and by design are created to be physically re-arranged and manipulated. As such, the performativity of modular synthesis not only extends the playing of them, but also in their assemblage and re-assemblage as users create and reconfigure their systems.
To understand how the original composers for Capcom’s arcade games were credited, in comparison to the producers responsible for porting their musical compositions for home play, we focus on three examples: Commando (1985), Bionic Commando (1987) and Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (1988). These were first created for Capcom’s 1980s arcade game library and then ported for home computers, the Commodore 64, Nintendo NES and ZX Spectrum. Resonating with Nooney’s archeological approach to gender politics in video game history, our proposed presentation is based on an excavation of game archives and game versions in order to evidence how the composers of Capcom’s successful arcade game titles found themselves in a position of invisibility, which is quite persistent and only sporadically corrected and updated. As Collins explains, an archaeological approach to game sound can achieve an understanding that circumvents, and can be critical of, dominant historical discourse. The capture of data for this chapter was performed by carefully checking for the credit information, including research of online game credit databases such as the VGMDb.net, which provides an archive of Game Soundtrack Album credits; MobyGames.com, a site dedicated to video game credits; and The Cutting Room Floor, a site dedicated to preserving information on material that is present inside the game data, but not normally accessible or used in game play. In order to review and check the data obtained, extensive use was also made of longplay video content (full gameplay videos).
Our conclusion is not only that game industry histories need revisions that take into account hidden and marginalised identities of video game creators, but also that there is an urgent need to improve the protection of creators in the game industry, perhaps even a need for standardisation of crediting practices, comparable to the film industry. This is especially pertinent for remixed or arranged in-game music which carries over into the game releases themselves.
Publisher: Routledge
This chapter addresses a transnational network of relationships within electronic dance music in the context of the machine aesthetic of techno. It is shown that a sense of a global music scene is nevertheless possible. Beyond historically shaped post-colonial and socio-economic links that underpin a range of global popular cultural forms, the techno aesthetic arguably responds to, and inoculates against, a sense of post-human alienation and a dominance of electronic communication and information technologies of the technoculture. Accompanied by a form of futurism, techno scenes embrace the radical potential of information technologies in a seemingly deterritorialised manner, producing locally specific responses to the global technoculture that can differ in aesthetics and identity politics. In this sense, the electronic dance music floor embodies a plurality of competing “technocracies”.
This book will be the first edited volume on repetition in 20th- and 21st- century popular music. As such, it offers a multi-faceted view of the subject. The wide-ranging forms and use of repetition - from large repetitive structures to micro repetitions, and even to drones - are explored in relation to both specific and large-scale issues and contexts. Over and Over brings together a selection of original texts by leading authors in a field which is, as yet, little explored. Aimed at both specialists and neophytes, it aims to shed important new light on one of the fundamental phenomena of music of our times.
The article offers a brief discussion of the early days of gabber house in 1992, compared with the current musical presentation of gabber at the CTM 2018 festival in Berlin, identifying three recurring themes: electronic distorted noise, horror film imagery and samples, as well as acceleration of the genre's tempo. As such, it is argued this musical aesthetic attempts to keep up with the nihilist, post-human, accelerated flows of digital capital.
//
The DJ stands at a juncture of technology, performance and culture in the increasingly uncertain climate of the popular music industry, functioning both as pioneer of musical taste and gatekeeper of the music industry. Together with promoters, producers, video jockeys (VJs) and other professionals in dance music scenes, DJs have pushed forward music techniques and technological developments in last few decades, from mashups and remixes to digital systems for emulating vinyl performance modes. This book is the outcome of international collaboration among academics in the study of electronic dance music. Mixing established and upcoming researchers from the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Australia and Brazil, the collection offers critical insights into DJ activities in a range of global dance music contexts. In particular, chapters address digitization and performativity, as well as issues surrounding the gender dynamics and political economies of DJ cultures and practices.
Content:
1: Introduction - Hillegonda C. Rietveld
2: Subjectivity in the Groove: Phonography, Digitality, and Fidelity - Bernardo Alexander Attias
3: DJ Technologies, Social Networks, and Gendered Trajectories in European DJ Cultures - Anna Gavanas and Rosa Reitsamer
4: ‘Journey to the Light’? Immersion, Spectacle, and Mediation - Hillegonda C. Rietveld
5: The DJ as Electronic De-Territorializer - Mirko M. Hall and Naida Zukic
6: ‘It’s Not the Mix, It’s the Selection’: Music Programming in Contemporary DJ Culture - Kai Fikentscher
7: Electronic Dance Music and Technological Change: Lessons from Actor-Network Theory - Jonathan Yu
8: DJ Culture and the Commercial Club Scene in Sydney - Ed Montano
9: DJs and the Aesthetic of Acceleration in Drum ‘n’ Bass - Chris Christodoulou
10: The Forging of a White Gay Aesthetic at the Saint, 1980-84 - Tim Lawrence
11: DJs as Cultural Mediators: the Mixing Work of São Paulo’s Peripheral DJs - Ivan Paolo de Paris Fontanari
12: War on the Dance Floor: Synthscenen’s Military Power Games - Johanna Paulsson
13: DJ-Driven Literature: A Linguistic Remix - Simon A. Morrison
Reviews:
"DJ Culture in the Mix offers not only a broader picture than the standard monolithic account, but a refreshingly different type of picture - a cubist approach, with a dozen viewpoints thrown unpredictably together.... (It) might not be a definitive statement on DJing or danceculture, but it's a timely representation of just how broad the subject is - and should be" - Adam Harper for The Wire, April 2014, p 76.
"There are good books on dance clubs and dance music, but this is the first volume on the figure of the dance music DJ and it is most welcome. DJ Culture in the Mix is well-organized, up-to-date and genuinely international, and brings together many of the leading figures in dance music studies. Highly recommended” - Prof Will Straw, 2013.
"Exploring everything from the fractious taste politics of New York gay clubland during the post-disco eighties to the cult of speed in 21st Century drum ‘n’ bass, DJ Culture in the Mix is a collection of probing, insightful essays that will provide stimulation and enlightenment for dance music scholars and dance music fans alike” - Simon Reynolds, 2013.
Published by Routledge: Focal Press
Justin Randell and Hillegonda Rietveld utilize an auto-ethnographic approach to explore specific patching techniques that enable what they describe as an embodied approach to creative musical synthesis. Among the central components of such an approach is the move away from the screen. As many modular enthusiasts are keen to point out, it is the tactile and physical character of modular synthesis that is elemental to not only its distinctiveness from the digital, but to the very nature of modular creative practice. Modular synthesizers have an affective and aesthetic dimension to them in so much that they invite touch and by design are created to be physically re-arranged and manipulated. As such, the performativity of modular synthesis not only extends the playing of them, but also in their assemblage and re-assemblage as users create and reconfigure their systems.
To understand how the original composers for Capcom’s arcade games were credited, in comparison to the producers responsible for porting their musical compositions for home play, we focus on three examples: Commando (1985), Bionic Commando (1987) and Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (1988). These were first created for Capcom’s 1980s arcade game library and then ported for home computers, the Commodore 64, Nintendo NES and ZX Spectrum. Resonating with Nooney’s archeological approach to gender politics in video game history, our proposed presentation is based on an excavation of game archives and game versions in order to evidence how the composers of Capcom’s successful arcade game titles found themselves in a position of invisibility, which is quite persistent and only sporadically corrected and updated. As Collins explains, an archaeological approach to game sound can achieve an understanding that circumvents, and can be critical of, dominant historical discourse. The capture of data for this chapter was performed by carefully checking for the credit information, including research of online game credit databases such as the VGMDb.net, which provides an archive of Game Soundtrack Album credits; MobyGames.com, a site dedicated to video game credits; and The Cutting Room Floor, a site dedicated to preserving information on material that is present inside the game data, but not normally accessible or used in game play. In order to review and check the data obtained, extensive use was also made of longplay video content (full gameplay videos).
Our conclusion is not only that game industry histories need revisions that take into account hidden and marginalised identities of video game creators, but also that there is an urgent need to improve the protection of creators in the game industry, perhaps even a need for standardisation of crediting practices, comparable to the film industry. This is especially pertinent for remixed or arranged in-game music which carries over into the game releases themselves.
Publisher: Routledge
This chapter addresses a transnational network of relationships within electronic dance music in the context of the machine aesthetic of techno. It is shown that a sense of a global music scene is nevertheless possible. Beyond historically shaped post-colonial and socio-economic links that underpin a range of global popular cultural forms, the techno aesthetic arguably responds to, and inoculates against, a sense of post-human alienation and a dominance of electronic communication and information technologies of the technoculture. Accompanied by a form of futurism, techno scenes embrace the radical potential of information technologies in a seemingly deterritorialised manner, producing locally specific responses to the global technoculture that can differ in aesthetics and identity politics. In this sense, the electronic dance music floor embodies a plurality of competing “technocracies”.
This book will be the first edited volume on repetition in 20th- and 21st- century popular music. As such, it offers a multi-faceted view of the subject. The wide-ranging forms and use of repetition - from large repetitive structures to micro repetitions, and even to drones - are explored in relation to both specific and large-scale issues and contexts. Over and Over brings together a selection of original texts by leading authors in a field which is, as yet, little explored. Aimed at both specialists and neophytes, it aims to shed important new light on one of the fundamental phenomena of music of our times.
The article offers a brief discussion of the early days of gabber house in 1992, compared with the current musical presentation of gabber at the CTM 2018 festival in Berlin, identifying three recurring themes: electronic distorted noise, horror film imagery and samples, as well as acceleration of the genre's tempo. As such, it is argued this musical aesthetic attempts to keep up with the nihilist, post-human, accelerated flows of digital capital.
https://www.gamejournal.it/game-issue-6-2017-hear-the-music-play-the-game/
INTRODUCTION:
'Introduction: Towards a Polyphonic Approach to Games and Music Studies', by Hillegonda C Rietveld (London South Bank University) & Marco Benoît Carbone (London College of Communication)
"Sound has, of course, always been a crucial aspect of gaming audio-visuals. Far from merely accompanying a game, the auditory elements bring life into the game interface. Sound is a sonic vibration that produces embodied affect. It also elicits interpretations and provides the player an immersed sonic sense of architectural space. Sound effectively build the game space. The sonic dimension has always taken part in orientating gameplay perspectives, positions, and rhythms of interaction, from the ominous march of Space Invaders (Taito, 1978) to the more recent experiences of games based on virtual and augmented reality technologies. Music, moreover, provides sound with the potential for temporal and harmonic forms. Game music is a necessary element of the immersive dramatic pace and rhythm of many games. It would be very hard to think of an experimental music shooter like Rez (UGA 2001) without its central sonic element, and it would also be hard to remember a game like Streets of Rage 2 (Sega 1992) without its Yuko Koshiro soundtrack, or Super Mario Bros without its Koji Kondo score (Nintendo 1983). Game studies has only scratched the surface of the importance of music. Interestingly, elements of change come from scholars from the borders of the gaming field. Schartmann, in his study on Super Mario Bros’ soundtrack (2015) provides a holistic, contextual analysis of the success of the game that does justice to its audio-visual-interactive complexity. More simplistic analyses from game studies, on the contrary, seem to forget the sonic dimension of the game, describing it often from the mythical perspective of the genius game designer/solo artist, overlooking some of the manifold, eminently choral elements, agents, and contextual elements that made it possible (deWinter, 2015).
A reappraisal of the importance of the auditory elements in games could has two important consequences: first, it could challenge dominant definitions of video games, suggesting a more nuanced view of the medium characterized by a recognition of its hybrid and polymedia forms; second, it paves the way for alternate histories of games, in which music and sound would regain their apparent, but often overlooked, centrality in players’ experience."
CONTENT:
> Vol. 1 – Journal (peer-reviewed):
· H. C. Rietveld & M. B. Carbone – Introduction: Towards a Polyphonic Approach to Games and Music Studies
· R. Gallagher – “All the Other Players Want to Look at My Pad”: Grime, Gaming, and Digital Identity
· J. Newman – Driving the SID Chip: Assembly Language, Composition, and Sound Design for the C64
· K. B. McAlpine – The Sound of 1-Bit: Technical Constraint and Musical Creativity on the 48k Sinclair ZX Spectrum
· F. Peñate Domínguez – “Heute gehört uns die Galaxie” Music and Historical Credibility in Wolfenstein: The New Order’s Nazi dystopia
>Vol. 2 – Critical notes (non-peer reviewed):
>Playlist:
K. Collins – Desert Island Diskettes: A Journey through Video Game Sound History
>Articles:
Z. Hulme – Killing-off the Crossfade: Achieving Seamless Transitions with Imbricate Audio
T. Langhorst – The Sound of a Serve Toss: An Informational View on the Gameworld Interface as Sonic Interface Design
>Book Reviews:
M. Austin – T. Summers (2016). Understanding Video Game Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
H. C. Rietveld – M. Kamp, T. Summers & M. Sweeney (Eds) (2016). Ludomusicology: Approaches to Video Game Music. Bristol CT and Sheffield: Equinox Publishing; & M. Austin (Ed) (2016), Music Video Games: Performance, Politics and Play, London and New York: Bloomsbury
>Interview:
An interview with Mark Sweeney: The Ludomusicology Research Group
The critical exploration of performance problematizes the theorization of music signification. The contributions in this special issue investigate performance both from the perspective of musicians and from that of their audience by stressing the role of values, norms, meaning and aesthetics in their interaction. In addition, this special issue concerns the relationship between performance and place; performance does not only happen at a place, but is also of and about a place, actively contributing to it and shaping it. Furthermore, the roles of the DJ, music producer and music performer blur in multi-media stage performance settings, while listeners are increasingly playing the role of 'prosumer', thereby actively taking part in a performance ensemble that extends from physically engaged audiences to online video appearances by fans.
With many thanks to Dr. Elina T. Hytönen-Ng, Assistant Editor
----
Table of Contents
> Editorial
Carlo Nardi, Hillegonda C Rietveld, William Echard - Introduction: Popular Music Perfomance: 1-4.
> Popular Music Performance - Articles:
Allyson Fiddler - Performing Austria: Protesting the Musical Nation: 5-20
Fabian Holt - Rock Clubs and Gentrification in New York City: The Case of the Bowery Presents: 21-41.
Kim Ramstedt - Sound System Performances and the Localization of Dancehall in Finland: 42-55.
Daniel Robert McKinna - The Touring Musician: Repetition and Authenticity in Performance: 56-72.
Josep Pedro - Jam sessions in Madrid’s blues scene: musical experience in hybrid performance models: 73-86.
Gabrielle Riches, Brett Lashua, Karl Spracklen - Female, Mosher, Transgressor: A 'Moshography' of Transgressive Practices within the Leeds Extreme Metal Scene: 87-100.
Julian Schaap, Pauwke Berkers - Grunting Alone? Online Gender Inequality in Extreme Metal Music: 101-116.
> Pop Music PhD - abstract:
Julijana Zhabeva Papazova - Alternative Rock Music in Yugoslavia in the Period Between 1980-1991 and its Influence on the Present Musical and Cultural Life in Macedonia, Serbia and Croatia: 117-119.
> Reviews:
Live Architecture: Venues, Stages and Arenas for Popular Music
Eduardo Viñuela: 120-121.
Musical Performance and the Changing City: Post-Industrial Contexts in Europe and the United States - Ian Keith Rogers: 122-123.
Experiencing ‘flow’ in jazz performance
Andrew Wright Hurley: 124-125.
Musical Parody at the Late 20th and Early 21st Century - Mihail Todorov Lukanov: 126-128.
Playing it Queer: Popular Music, Identity and Queer World-making - Julia Downes: 129-131.
Women Make Noise: Girl Bands From Motown to the Modern - Kathryn Rose Hill: 132-134.
Vinyl: A History of the Analogue Record - Andrew Whelan: 135-136.
Contemporary Carioca: Technologies of mixing in a Brazilian Music Scene - Jordan Peter Saull: 137-139.
Home. Land and Sea: Situating Music in Aotearoa New Zealand - Roy Gordon Shuker: 140-142.
The critical exploration of performance problematizes the theorization of music signification. The contributions in this special issue investigate performance both from the perspective of musicians and from that of their audience by stressing the role of values, norms, meaning and aesthetics in their interaction. In addition, this special issue concerns the relationship between performance and place; performance does not only happen at a place, but is also of and about a place, actively contributing to it and shaping it. Furthermore, the roles of the DJ, music producer and music performer blur in multi-media stage performance settings, while listeners are increasingly playing the role of 'prosumer', thereby actively taking part in a performance ensemble that extends from physically engaged audiences to online video appearances by fans.
Editor Dr. Hillegonda C Rietveld Special Issue
Editors: Dr William Echard Dr Carlo Nardi Dr Hillegonda C Rietveld
Assistant Editor Dr. Elina T. Hytönen-Ng