The Games We Play: Exploring The Impact of ISMIR on Musicology

Vanessa Nina Borsan (1, 2) , Mathieu Giraud (1, 2) , Richard Groult (3, 4, 2)

1 Algomus
2 CRIStAL - Centre de Recherche en Informatique, Signal et Automatique de Lille - UMR 9189
3 TIBS - LITIS - Equipe Traitement de l'information en Biologie Santé
4 LITIS - Laboratoire d'Informatique, de Traitement de l'Information et des Systèmes

Throughout history, there has consistently existed a period of time and spatial separation between the creation of new knowledge and technology and their adaptation for widespread implementation. The article delves into how musicology and computational music research interact and exchange their approaches. Specifically, it focuses on a study of ten years' worth of papers from the International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) from 2012 to 2021. Over 1000 citations of ISMIR papers were reviewed, and out of these, 51 later works published in musicological venues drew from the findings of 28 ISMIR papers. Final results reveal that most contributions from ISMIR rarely make their way to musicology or humanities. In spite of this, the paper highlights four examples of successful knowledge transfers between the fields and discusses best practices for collaborations while addressing potential causes for such disparities. In the epilogue, we address the interlaced origins of the problem as stemming from new media or language, institutional restrictions, and the inability to engage in multidisciplinary communication.

Domains: Musicology and performing arts; Sound [cs.SD]; History, Philosophy and Sociology of Sciences

Vanessa Nina Borsan, Mathieu Giraud, Richard Groult. The Games We Play: Exploring The Impact of ISMIR on Musicology. International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR 2023), Nov 2023, Milano, Italy. pp.474-481, ⟨10.5281/zenodo.10265344⟩. ⟨hal-04142194⟩