Augmenting the Scene: The Role of Digital/Analog Interfaces in the Platformization of the Hong Kong Independent Music Scene

Date: April 13, 2026 (Monday)

Time: 6:00 – 7:00 pm

Venue: Arts Tech Lab (Room 4.35), 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus

Abstract
Digital platforms have become central to virtually all aspects of the production, circulation and promotion of musical activities worldwide. In many contexts of music production, musical content has become optimized for online circulation and discovery, while new music and social aesthetics as well as new music career strategies and intermediaries continue to emerge in relation to platform mediations of music. At the same time, offline or ‘analog’ activities continues to be a fundamental part of all forms and stages of musical activities for producers and fans alike. Bridging insights from scene studies, music industry studies and platform studies, this talk introduces the concept of scene interfaces as a new type of music intermediaries that connect, translate and distribute elements of music cultures and activities across media in the Hong Kong independent music scene. Taking the cases of the Zenegeist and Mansion collectives and their various online and offline activities as scene interface case studies, the talk specifically argues that they are at the core of processes of ‘music scene augmentation’ understood as the qualitative co-constitution of analog and digital practices and aesthetics that enable the renewal, expansion, and preservation of music scenes. In turn, this talk makes the case that scene interfaces and strategies of scene augmentation in Hong Kong and in other fragile contexts of music production both respond and provide an alternative to globalized processes of music platform optimization and diversify contemporary music platform imaginaries.

About the Speaker
Dr. François Mouillot holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University, and is currently Assistant Professor of Humanities and Cultural Studies in the Academy of Languages and Culture at the Hong Kong Baptist University. He researches cultural scenes, the music industries and independent music practices in industrialized minority contexts, with a focus on the digital and analog infrastructures that make music practice possible. He has extensive ethnographic experience in Hong Kong S.A.R., the province of Québec in Canada, and the Basque region of France and Spain. In Hong Kong, he led the Hong Kong Live Music Study, the first survey of the cultural and social value of the live music sector and of its infrastructures (venues, concert organizations, promotional agencies and digital platforms) across all music genres in Hong Kong. He has co-edited the book Fractured Scenes Underground Music-Making in Hong Kong and East Asia (Palgrave MacMillan, 2021), and his work appears in Convergence, Popular Communication, Perfect Beat, Organised Sound, Perfect Beat, Cinéma & Cie. and Critical Studies in Improvisation among other academic journals and anthologies.