Inaugural Lecture: Professor Nick Prior
Introduction
OK Computer? Popular music in the digital age
Content
Inaugural lecture by Professor Nick Prior, School of Social and Political Science
The 1980s! A much maligned decade but one that brought deep and profound changes not just in Western polities and societies but in how popular culture looked and sounded. In the field of popular music, the results of these transformations, which we now commonly attribute to processes of digitalisation, comprise every facet: from how and where music is made to its organisational channels and the way it travels and is consumed. The inaugural will sight these changes through the very specific and provincial lens of my own biography. I will explore how my work over the last 20 years has been an attempt to navigate the practices, personnel, styles and devices of popular music within digital formations. It’s a journey that takes me from an unassuming suburban bedroom to the sense-assaulting streets of Tokyo. Throughout I acknowledge that a professorship is the apex of “playing seriously” and, as such, requires regular doses of grounding humour and humility (if not humiliation). Expect embarrassing clips.
Recorded on 24 May 2023.
- Image credits
- All photos by author, except for images generated by powerpoint (slides 1, 2, 12), and the following:
Slide 3 - https://www.flickr.com/photos/85126743@N00/4519003053 image under CC BY 2.0Slide 7 - https://openverse.org/Slide 14 - https://openverse.org/Slide 17 - https://openverse.org/Slide 19 - https://openverse.org/Slide 20 - https://openverse.org/Slide 21 - https://openverse.org/