Nelson Serrano, Nora Kushner, Margie Clauss, Vanessa Heynes
Our Idea
Over the years, The Cave has hosted a variety of professional and student acts alike, and we would like to see how these previous performers have evolved with the venue. Have different artists and bands maintained a connection over time and is there an underlying attribute that unites them? What student bands have grown in the music industry? What stage in the Cave’s development did these bands play in and what was student demand like then? These are the questions we are hoping to answer.
Methodology
Processes: We are looking for dates and bands. This is for our timeline, which should be easy to make with probably just a spreadsheet and using JSTimeline. Our network on the other hand might be a bit more interesting. We need to measure how different bands are connected to each other. This could be done in a few different ways. We can look at genre, shows performed, documented friendships between bands, and other music streaming metrics. To get this data we will need to look at a few sources and decide more fully how we want to connect our groups. Ideally though, since our data will be collected by us, we won’t need to use extra data cleaning and can mostly create our own excel spreadsheets. We might need to use a tool such as Voyant to analyze text to see if there are connections.
Additional Sources: Cave Archive Collection, Instagram, Cave Webpage
Presentation: We plan to present our data in the form of a timeline and network analysis. We will most likely be using JSTimeline and a platform that facilitates interaction for network analysis.
Deliverables and Timeline
- Timeline of Deliverables:
- Week 8:
- Tuesday: Nail down sources and start to compile and clean data.
- Thursday – Sunday: Work on Timeline of bands at the Cave
- Week 9:
- Tuesday: Work on Network of connections between bands
- Thursday: Put the network and timeline together and clean up the presentation of the data/website.
- Week 10:
- Tuesday: Presentation
- Week 8:
Example Project:
Network Analysis – Nora explains: The previous network analysis I looked at inventing abstraction | moma was very powerful in conveying how abstract art spread across Europe, so it will be interesting to apply this same method to music/artists at Carleton.
Personal Interests in the Project:
Nelson:
As a current Cave employee and someone who has played at The Cave, I am fascinated with its history. I would love to see how bands that started at The Cave, like mine, are faring now!
Margie:
I hadn’t interacted with the Cave much before this summer, but I got to spend a lot of time there then. Being able to have live music and gatherings again at such a local space is really exciting, but it’s also really hard to wrap my head around some of the amazing groups that performed in that very space. It’s fun to see how the Cave, which to me is kind of a homey space, has hosted and evolved over its history.
Nora:
I find the history of the Cave interesting, being that it is the first student-run pub. I think it will be intriguing to examine how music taste has evolved over time.
Vanessa:
I find the Cave’s concept as a whole to be super cool and I think it’s great that Carleton has created such a space for students to use that is both appropriate for college students and flexible. I’m particularly interested in music/live performance, so I think it’d be interesting to present the evolution of bands/artists who’ve performed on campus (could potentially look into the information available on Sproncert if data on the Cave isn’t sufficient). For our network analysis, the nodes could be bands and the edges could be genres. Color coding the nodes based on what year the band performed may also be beneficial.
Ryan:
I went to the Cave only once but it was on Diwali. There wasn’t any live performance but there was music to which a lot of people danced including me. I got intrigued by the Cave since then. More precisely, I’ve always wanted to know about the bands that used it the most and where these people are today.