Music Research Seminar
Join us for our recent Music Research Seminar, featuring some of the world's leading researchers in music.
About the talk
Framing the Musical Vibration. Sensory Immersion, Improvisation, Aesthetics, and the Acoustic Lens in Anthropological Filmmaking: Examples from the field
This seminar explores how sensory immersion, improvisation and a musician's ear shape ethnographic filmmaking, drawing on two film projects by filmmaker and tuba player Miranda van der Spek. Trained under the maverick and idiosyncratic Rob Boonzajer Flaes, a pioneer of Dutch visual anthropology whose associative, sensory-led films broke with the observational conventions of the time, van der Spek treats each film as emerging from an encounter between filmmaker and filmed subjects — an exchange that shapes the final work, whether or not it is physically participatory.
Her films are based on anthropological fieldwork—whether her own or that of others—and employ aesthetic imagery and rhythmic editing to make the soul of the music palpable.
Through Worth repeating! (2011), on millet, love and music among the Ouldémé of northern Cameroon, and The Wandering Microphone (in production), which traces vernacular music recorded by Philips studios worldwide via old vinyl records, the seminar argues that only through intuitive, improvisational immersion — an "acoustic lens" — can film capture the soul of a musical culture, rather than merely record it.
About the speaker
Miranda van der Spek is a visual anthropologist and independent filmmaker specializing in the representation of musical cultures. For decades, she has produced short documentaires for ethnographic museums in the Netherlands, directed a cinematic opening film for a prominent music festival, and experimented the use of soundscapes and music within films. Additionally, she is an active tuba player who strategically deploys her musical expertise within the research and production of her films. Through her work, she advocates for a sensory-led, aestheticized, organic cinematic language that captures the soul and vibration of living musical heritage.
Car parking
If you are a guest visiting us on campus, please get in touch with musicperformance@rhul.ac.uk to log your parking details. This will need to happen in advance of your visit.
Further information
No booking required.
