For health reasons, Prof. Butler has to cancel his visit to Switzerland. The conference is unfortunately cancelled.

Title : Communicative Strategies, Ideologies of Liveness, and Listener Orientation among Electronic Dance Musicians

Abstract : In DJ sets and laptop performances, an unprecedented level of technological mediation comes into conflict with the expected “liveness” of performance. As a result, musicians frequently express various techno-performative anxieties in explanations of their approaches. In particular, they are concerned that the audience experiences a performance, one that is imbued with a sense of live presence, rather than simply the playback of a recording or the clicking of a mouse. They work to convey this “presence” in a number of ways, which include dancing, other significant physical gestures, and the use of carefully selected electronic hardware. The audience responds in kind, thereby completing the liveness of the event. 

Mark J. Butler has held the professorship in Popular Music Studies at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin since October 2021. His research focuses on contemporary, groove-based popular music. He is an expert on electronic dance music. His first book, Unlocking the Groove (Indiana University Press, 2006), developed theoretical and analytical models for rhythm and meter in electronic dance music, a repertoire that had not been previously explored from a musicological point of view. He is also the editor of an anthology entitled Electronica, Dance, and Club Music (Ashgate, 2012), which was the first published reference book on the subject. He was President of the U.S. branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music from 2015–2017.