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TransCoding


JOB OPENING – JUNIOR RESEARCHER


Junior Researcher | 15 hours per week

We are searching for a Junior Researcher with excellent English skills to join the team of the artistic research project "TransCoding –From 'Highbrow Art' to Participatory Culture" at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz (http://www.kug.ac.at), to help bring the project to its conclusion throughout the next year (overall project duration 2014-2017). The candidate may have a background in any relevant field, including but not limited to (systematic) musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural studies, or media/communications studies. This is a part-time position (15 hours/week), which runs from 15.2.2016- 14.2.2017 with a monthly gross salary of 1012,45 € (in accordance to Austrian Science Fund-standard personnel salaries).

TransCoding is a new music/media arts project on the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), designation "PEEK Project AR 259-G21." Through TransCoding, we invite our community to participate actively on social media in a way that influences the project's artistic outcomes. The target audience is 20 to 35 years old, media literate, and tends to be more knowledgeable of the "pop" world than of classical music (http://transcoding.info).

Transcoding

Since February 2014, the TransCoding team has constructed a network of social media channels around a central blog acting as the node to our online presence (http://what-ifblog.net). This blog is the main contact point for our community, currently made up of about 900 participants from 120 countries. Via calls for entries we encourage our visitors to contribute images, sounds, and texts that we incorporate in our artwork. Through our social media channels we invite to speak out, share discourse and take influence on the creation of our artwork, thus empowering our community to express their own identities and participate in the creative process.



The community's contributions are

Thus we create an emotional connection that links our community members with not only each other but also with the tangible results of these participatory musical/multimedia creations.


The Research

In our research, transdisciplinary work stands in the forefront. We research processes of (online) communication, participation strategies, our community's motivators, and questions of artistic authority in a democratic creative process, as well as the effects of the project on our own art, the participating artists, and the community. The research is context-based and user-oriented, employing the project's inherent creative processes as the starting point for research. (See also our research questions).

Your Qualifications

The ideal candidate will have a strong grounding in research methods within the context of artistic research and an interest in developing these skills further, as well as examining art in a societal context.

Further requirements are a thorough and practical understanding of social media and its use in artistic settings, background in contemporary art, music, or multimedia, and a master's degree in a relevant field.



The junior researcher will assist the team in tackling the following questions:

Your Application

Along with your application e-mail, please send us your CV and master's diploma as PDF attachments, together with evidence of your social media presence and experience. Please also include three academic writing samples, in English or German, preferably related to our topics of interest. Deadline for applications is 31.1.2016.


Contact: Dr.phil. Barbara Lüneburg, Project Leader, Phone: +43 316 389 3218
Email: barbara.lueneburg@kug.ac.at
Address: University of Music and Performing Arts Graz, Leonhardstraße 15, 8010 Graz, Austria