Colloquium48 - Michel Roth: Gaming the System! - Playful Proceedings of Musical Game Studies.

Music is played, games often include music. Can music also be gamified, or is there a ‘musicking’ of play? 

Two long-term scientific and artistic research projects have been dedicated to these questions: In January 2023 the interdisciplinary festival SPIEL! Games as Critical Practice with the participation of many ‘players’ from all over the FHNW, and Michel Roth’s Dissertation, a game-theoretical analysis of the musical avant-garde (2012–2022).

On the occasion of the publication of his book and of the scientific report of the SPIEL!-Festival as a gamified website, Michel Roth will reflect on his findings in interaction with a performance of his Pinball Etudes, a cycle of gamified musical studies, premiered by Raphaëlle Proust (Sampler) and Noah Rosen (Percussion), both students at Sonic Space Basel.

Literature reference:

Michel Roth: Aufs Spiel gesetzt. Eine spieltheoretische Untersuchung indeterminierter Musik, Wolke Verlag, Hofheim 2024, 534 S., 978-3-95593-152-0, open access: https://www.wolke-verlag.de/

Michel Roth is a composer and professor of composition, music theory and artistic research at the Basel University of Music (FHNW). He researches on musical applications of game theory and cybernetics (PhD from the University of Basel), collaborative art practices (Dieter Roth), organology of contemporary music and Alpine sound sociology (‘Singende Seile’). As a composer, he has received numerous prizes and grants, including the Musica Viva Munich Composition Prize for his orchestral piece Der Spaziergang (2009). His first opera, Im Bau, was staged by Georges Delnon at Theater Basel (2011); his contemporary operetta Die Künstliche Mutter premiered at Lucerne Festival (2016). As the founding director of the Lucerne Studio for Contemporary Music, he worked with Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann and Sofia Gubaidulina, among others. Michel Roth is associate researcher at the Institute of Alpine Cultures at the University of Lucerne and curator of the international festival SPIEL! Games as Critical Practice at Theater Basel (2023).‘musicking’ of play?