Wir freuen uns sehr Sen. Ass. Prof. Dr. Orsolya Millián von der Universität Szeged zu einem Vortrag über "Histories of Music Videos" in Bonn begrüßen zu dürfen. Der Vortrag ist in Englisch.
Since its widespread permeation in the 1970s, the music video has become the dominant
means of advertising popular music and musicians, as well as one of the most influential
multimedia formats in media history. However, there exist a lot of frequently perpetuated
myths about the beginnings or the ’invention’ of music video (e. g. Queen’s Bohemian
Rhapsody [1975], Richard Lester’s feature entitled A Hard Day’s Night [1964], The Beatles’
promotional clips in the late sixties or MTV’s launch in 1981). Based on a mediaarcheological
research, the lecture examines various forms of proto-music videos (Edison’s
Kinetophone, Gaumont’s phonoscène, the soundies and the music video jukeboxes [Panoram,
Scopitone]), as well as factors in media history that led to the birth of Music Television and
the final breakthrough of music videos. After giving a sketch of the so-called ’television
model’ of music videos, the lecture will delineate some of the most essential changes in the
production, distribution and reception of music videos due to the prevalence of digital and
participatory media. The lecture proves that a grand narrative (or master narrative) of music
videos does not exist – rather, we should speak about histories of music videos.
Short bio: Dr. Orsolya Milián (1977) has a degree in English language and literature and
Hungarian language and literature from Babe?-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
(2000). She completed her PhD at the University of Szeged, Hungary in 2010, entitled
Fictions of Ekphrasis. Theoretical, Historical and Disciplinary Realignments in Theoretic
Discourses on Ekphrasis. She’s a senior lecturer at the Department of Visual Culture and
Literary Theory, University of Szeged, Hungary. She is the author of several articles and two
books published in Hungarian: Képes beszéd [Visual/Figurative Speech], 2009; Átlépések
[Transgressions], 2012. Her research interests include word and image studies, intermediality,
narratology, contemporary Hungarian literature and the interrelations between popular music
and film.