The Electro-Acoustic Music Mine (EAMM): An initiative for the archival preservation of electro-acoustic music

In the international field of electro-acoustic music (EAM), conferences and festivals dedicated to the genre have for decades been a primary venue for the presentation and dissemination of EAM composers' works. Since the 1970s, the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC) and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) have both held ambitious annual festivals, and both organizations routinely employ sophisticated automated systems to curate and manage their programs. What those systems lack is permanence. Historically, once a festival has ended, the artists all go their separate ways, and in the absence of any organized preservation effort, the greater part of the music becomes inaccessible, and much of it may be totally lost. The Electro-Acoustic Music Mine (EAMM), a partnership of ICMC, SEAMUS, and the New York University Library, aims to address this problem by integrating archival preservation protocols into the organizational structure of the festivals themselves. Once set into motion, this mechanism will run on an annual cycle into the indefinite future, thus ensuring the preservation of the music and its accessibility as a cultural resource for posterity.