Electroacoustic Music Studies Network
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In 2009
CHEARS.info – How Much Chinese Electroacoustic Music Society Will Benefit from an English-Chinese Bilingual Internet-based Collaborative Research by Zhang Ruibo (Mungo)
Abstract: CHEARS is an abbreviation for the China ElectroAcoustic Resource Survey. This research covers an analysis of the categories that have been included in the EARS index (ElectroAcoustic Resource Site, the original can be found at www.ears.dmu.ac.uk; EARS is a scientific, integrated internet portal focusing on electroacoustic music terminology and resources) as perceived of from a Chinese musicological point of view. During the last three years, including the full-text translation plan that started in early 2008, CHEARS has become a bilingual internet-based collaborative research resource (the prototype can be found at http://chears.info) for people interested in the studies of electroacoustic music in China. The information concerning authors, translators, proofreaders and consultants regarding terminologies and bibliographies are all available on it.
The CHEARS.info site is not a simple web-based presentation; instead, it has converted the research from a translation and adoption of EARS to a Web 2.0 site. The term first became notable after the O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004, which refers to a perceived second generation of web development and design that aims to facilitate communication, secure information sharing, interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. In contrast to very old traditional websites, the sort which limited visitors to viewing and whose content that only the site's owner could modify, Web 2.0 websites allow users to own the data and exercise control over it (Wikipedia). Accordingly, CHEARS.info is not only trying to builds up a relevant electroacoustic music classification system, that is, an EARS site in Mandarin, but in general it is trying to provide a peer-reviewed framework (one-to-many, many-to-many relationships in its database) for the development of all aspects related to Chinese EA music research.
Firstly, by beginning to work with the organisational structure of EARS, CHEARS.info will not only contribute its Chinese resource, but also contain the whole story of the diachronic and synchronic evolution by having a bilingual-multi-user Comment system and Reader system related to terminology and the bibliography respectively. Secondly, besides offering its bibliography of sources, CHEARS.info will be go further as it will be able to collect relevant events that are held in China, such as lectures, concerts, etc. and share this with its users. Thirdly, it will be collecting, sharing, analyzing and coordinating more news and information related closely to Chinese musicians and musicologists in the electroacoustic field around the world, as well as overseas musicians and musicologists who visit China both in terms of the past and the future. In short, CHEARS is becoming a national resource, something that is certainly going to be of great value given the rapid developments in China. However, how much will the Chinese electroacoustic music society benefit from it?
Chinese academic and non-academic societies seldom communicate with each side; even academic societies in the different locations do not have sufficient communication with each other. CHEARS intends to help remedy this problem. This paper will offer an update on Chinese electroacoustic music developments as well as explain its new expanded vision through a description of the traditional yin-yang concept lies at the heart of many branches of classical Chinese science and philosophy; from this point of view (yin-yang), this paper will also try to define the relationships between the EARS framework and the rest of elements in CHEARS, between Web 2.0 and the contents of CHEARS as well as between English and Chinese texts and so on thus for helping musicians and musicologists to have a clear view on this academic symbiosis.