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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Joanna Berry
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"Seattle Band Map" is a "crowd-sourced" map of the relationships and interrelationships between musician and bands in Seattle and outlying areas. Initially an analogue exercise, the map was recently (February 2011) established as a fully interactive website (http://www.seattlebandmap.com/). The conception and development of the project will be described in detail, and the potential for its evolution will be considered not only geographically, but also contextually. Musical collaborations are common, but there are similar, regionally-embedded networks of relationships within, for example, design, art, film and electronic games. These relationships also touch upon musical collaborations and activities at a variety of points. The paper will therefore consider how the project might expand to cover other forms of individual and collaborative artistic and cultural expressions. Through a series of semi structured interviews with the creator, a variety of her funders, collaborators, and members of the city’s council the paper will reveal how this technologically-mediated project adds a rich layer of understanding to the city’s artistic and cultural heritage. Interviews and cases of other the cultural and artistic sectors already noted above will also be brought in where appropriate. The paper thus proposes a new understanding of cultural embeddedness within a geographic region. The theoretical foundations of the paper lie in Granovetter’s 1975 concept of ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’ as well as the author’s own doctoral work on the changing nature of value frameworks in the music industry in her PhD thesis, to be published later in 2011. Porter’s 1990 notion of cluster theory and subsequent developments in that school will also be brought into play to assist in unpicking the various relationships that cross boundaries of culture, technology and society in this case.
Author(s): Berry J
Publication type: Conference Proceedings (inc. Abstract)
Publication status: Published
Conference Name: The City: 2nd International Conference - Culture, Society and Technology
Year of Conference: 2011
