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Blog post op de blog van het Amsterdam Creative Industries Network. Tijdens de Berlin Music Week hebben Inholland-onderzoekers Koos Zwaan en Sabine de Lat van het lectoraat Media, Cultuur en Burgerschap de eerste bevindingen gepresenteerd van een lopend onderzoeksproject getiteld ‘No Limits: The Value of Dutch Music in the Online Domain’.
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This paper presents an overview of studies that explore the impact of digital signage, environmental design and the use of background music on time perception and customer experience, thus exploring the psychological value of time.
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At its core, raving has existed in opposition to normativity, and so has electronic music. If newcomers enticed by hard trance remixes of 2000’s Top 40 hits embrace this opposition, it is often done in ways removed from history. As Loren Granic AKA Goddollars, co-founder and resident of A Club Called Rhonda in Los Angeles, stated: “Many of the newcomers are straight/white kids who are very far removed from the LGBT community, despite fist-pumping by the millions to a music that was born from gay people of colour sweating their asses off at 5 AM in a Chicago warehouse.” If the role marginalized people have played in the creation and pioneering of their favourite music is ignored, how would people react when told that their fun might also harm marginalized groups? The ethics of lockdown raves have always been fraught, as their repercussions reverberate beyond the people who choose to attend them; meanwhile, data shows that people of colour were more likely to be targeted for attending raves during the lockdown.
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As the economy becomes more globalized, a growing number of events are exerting an influence on activity and innovation globally in different fields. Therefore, we argue that "eventful cities" can act as important catalysts for eventfulness in other places as well. This article analyzes the case of the Sónar electronic music festival, an event that originated in Barcelona, Spain, but which now runs different editions in many cities worldwide. This empirical study of the innovation capacity of a cultural event examines how a locally based music festival has transformed itself by using the global "space of flows" to influence the local "space of places." The Sónar Festival has turned itself into a relational hub in a global cultural network, using stylistic innovations to link geographically dispersed nodes in order to create new products, open up new markets, and strengthen its own position as a global source of eventfulness.
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Seeing improvisation as something that really needs its place in conservatoire training and education may be more or less ‘new’. However improvisation itself is of course not at all new and has existed since as long as we can remember. I will not go into that any further, it would take not a single address but a symposium of at least two weeks.
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Drug consumption estimates are of relevance because of public health effects as well as associated criminal activities. Wastewater analysis of drug residues enables the estimation of drug consumption and drug markets. Short-term and long-term trends of cocaine, MDMA (ecstasy), amphetamine (speed) and methamphetamine (crystal meth), were studied for the city of Amsterdam. MDMA (+41%) and cocaine (+26%) showed significantly higher weekend vs. week consumption, while no differences were observed for the other drugs. The consumption of MDMA, cocaine, amphetamine and methamphetamine significantly increased between 2011 and 2019. Weekly trends emerging from wastewater analyses were supported by qualitative and quantitative data from a recreational drug use monitoring scheme. However, information collected in panel interviews within nightlife networks and surveys among visitors of pubs, clubs and festivals only partially reflected the long term increase in consumption as registered from wastewater analysis. Furthermore, methamphetamine use was not well presented in survey data, panel studies and test service samples, but could be monitored trough wastewater analysis. This illustrates that wastewater analysis can function as an early warning if use and user groups are small or difficult to reach trough other forms of research. All in all, this study illustrates that wastewater-based epidemiology is complementary to research among user groups, and vice versa. These different types of information enable to connect observed trends in total drug consumption to behaviour of users and the social context in which the use takes place as well as validate qualitative signals about (increased) consumption of psychoactive substances. Such a multi angular approach to map the illicit drug situation on local or regional scale can provide valuable information for public health.
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This study employed an exploratory approach by applying practice theory to insights gathered throughthe triangulation of interview, document analysis and observation methodologies to 1) map the SacredHarp Singing practice scope and give a nuanced picture of its performativity in the Netherlands, witha particular focus on the Sacred Harp group from Amsterdam comparing it to one from Bremen and 2)investigate the underlying rise of transformative emotions, the social, secular, and religious meanings, andthe sense of belonging to an international community. The findings suggest that Sacred Harp enthusiastsin the region are keen on retaining the legacies of the traditional singers by establishing similar singingatmospheres and by following the practice’s historical customs and practices, including the communalsinging in the “hollow square” and the affinity towards democratic participation. The findings alsoindicate that while there is a noticeable level of commitment and excitement among local enthusiasts,the growth of the groups’ memberships is hampered by a lack of interest by the general public, possiblyin connection with insufficient strategies for publicizing the practice. Therefore, the existence of thesebarriers could imply that the practice would probably grow at a relatively slow pace in the region.
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