The New Lexicon I.
Philosophy of Music Research [research group]
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WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
The title The New Lexicon names the need to reconsider the conceptual languages through which music research defines its objects, organises its methods, presents its claims, and evaluates its consequences. Established terms such as music, work, text, context, source, archive, field, evidence, method, analysis, interpretation, objectivity, rigour, voice, knowledge, and impact remain central to research discourse. Yet their meanings cannot be assumed to be stable, self-evident, or equally adequate across different practices and histories.
These terms carry intellectual and institutional genealogies. They have emerged within particular disciplines, aesthetic traditions, technologies, languages, and relations of authority. They permit certain distinctions while obscuring others. A term may clarify one inquiry and misrepresent another. New forms of artistic research, digital analysis, collaborative scholarship, community-based work, ecological inquiry, embodied investigation, machine learning, archival restitution, and research across unstable media continually test the explanatory and ethical limits of inherited vocabulary.
A new lexicon does not mean replacing one set of words with another definitive system. The programme does not seek terminological novelty for its own sake, nor presume that established concepts have simply become obsolete. Its task is more exacting: to examine what current terms allow researchers to perceive, which assumptions they preserve, where they create false equivalences, and where new distinctions become necessary.
Lexical work is inseparable from research design. To name a document as a source, a person as an informant, an activity as data, or a performance as evidence is already to organise relations of attention, authority, and value. To distinguish description from explanation, participation from collaboration, accessibility from openness, or neutrality from accountability is not merely to refine language after a project is complete. Such distinctions can alter the questions asked, the methods selected, the responsibilities acknowledged, and the claims considered possible.
Conversely, research may disclose phenomena for which no adequate term yet exists. The new lexicon emerges through movement between inquiry and articulation, encounter and concept, evidence and argument, practice and reflection. Participants will identify key terms within their projects, trace the assumptions attached to them, compare their uses across contexts, and formulate alternatives where necessary. The objective is not universal agreement. It is to increase conceptual precision while preserving methodological and disciplinary plurality. A productive lexicon should make disagreement more intelligible, not eliminate it.
DATES
MENTORS
PROGRAMME FORMAT
RESEARCH PREMISE
WHY THE NEW LEXICON?
CENTRAL QUESTIONS
WORKING METHOD
PARTICIPANT VALUE
WHO THE PROGRAMME ADDRESSES
TOWARDS MULTIPLE PHILOSOPHIES OF MUSIC RESEARCH
APPLICATION
APPLICATION FORM AND
PARTICIPATION FEES
The New Lexicon program is produced by .abeceda Institute
.abeceda [Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy], a public-benefit NGO and non-profit organisation dedicated to advancing contemporary artistic practices and critical inquiry. Through its innovative programmes, .abeceda has gained international recognition as one of the leading platforms for contemporary music and artistic research in the Adriatic region and across Europe: www.abeceda.io