In the introduction for the last year London Conference, we briefly presented the IRAM activities in the first two years and the beginning of the third year. In the period between the second and third London Conference, IRAM continued its fast growth, introducing new activities and improving the existing ones.

        In this sense, the accent on the video area - recording of the documentary videos, the start of the IRAM Chronicle and the IRAM Internet Student TV, the improvement in the video editing and video postproduction, the introduction of the first DVDs and the public presentation of IRAM documentary videos - was particularly important.

        The improvement of these activities was achieved through the acquisition of the new, i.e. additional equipment:  a SONY digital camera (DCR-VX2000), the Macintosh G5 computer, the editing software Final Cut Pro4 and DVD Studio Pro. In addition the new video studio was built with a control room with digital audio and video recording and editing capacity including light mixing facilities. The official launch of the studio was on the January 24, 2004, and soon IRAM staff started building the experience in using the new technology, as well as the introduction of the use of lights during the recording of IRAM documentaries.

        It is also important to emphasize that the entire design, the installation and the maintenance of the new equipment, same as in the past, was done by the IRAM staff. Bearing in mind the existing studios, the design of the new ones was carefully planned to avoid unnecessary replications and to add special functions to each new unit. Also, through the use  of the existing Ethernet connection , all studios make one unit with share capacities for the users at all locations. At the moment IRAM possesses : a recording studio at the UKIM FM Concert Hall, a studio for educational, postproduction and archiving purposes, a studio for the Internet Student Radio with recording and control room, a studio for video recording (Internet TV) with recording and control room, three digital units for video editing,  and a digital  audio unit for archiving and recording.

        With the intensification of its video activities IRAM’s main goal was to cover the under-represented areas in the music culture and culture in general. The reduced interest of TV companies in Macedonia, especially for classical and contemporary music, mainly because of commercial reasons, results in missing coverage of many important music and cultural events. Together with the complete audio digital coverage of  live events happening in the UKIM Faculty of Music Concert Hall, and at the occasions where the UKIM FM ensembles  or professors were performing in other concert halls, the events were recorded with the IRAM video facilities. Soon after each event, their audio was placed at the IRAM Internet Student Radio, and the short movies at the Internet Student TV.  This was how the IRAM Chronicle was born. The 14 short movies posted on Internet and the other video documentary materials recorded recently, already form a small but extremely important audio/visual archive of music and other cultural heritage of Macedonia, the region and in general, the world.

        To promote its video archiving activities IRAM performs regular public presentations of its documentary videos. From October 2003, regularly in monthly intervals, IRAM organised public projection of its movies at the UKIM FM Concert Hall. This events provoked special interest not only among professional audiences, but also among the other general viewers. In cooperation with Macedonian national TV, IRAM prepared a 30 minutes documentary video for its activities, presented at MTV in December 2003. The largest portion from this movie was recorded with the IRAM facilities, including the entire editing.

        Bearing in mind the importance of the IRAM conferences for the IRAM research and scientific activities, the exchange of the opinions with the international specialists and community and the dissemination of the results of the IRAM activities,  the existing two IRAM conferences: “Contemporary Trends in Musicology and Ethnomusicology”  and “Reflections on Macedonian Music”, became traditional, i.e. they are planned to be held annually in the future as well. Last year we organised the Second Struga Conference, and this is the Third London Conference. In January 2004, during the celebration of the anniversary of the Internet Student Radio, IRAM launched an additional third conference in Skopje. The conference was concerned with  “Cultural Policy and Music Education”, again with an idea to take place annually in the future. This creates a blend of subjects covering different areas of IRAM’s interest.

        Together with the new activities, the concern about the digital archiving of the cultural heritage continued with the same intensity. Among the special new achievements is the digitisation of the 53 cassettes of the Vidoeski Collection.  The cassettes emerge from another very important area for the understanding of the cultural heritage of the region ? the dialects of Macedonian.  The collection was recorded in the 1970s and the 1980s by the students of the professor and one of the founders of the Macedonian linguistic school, Bozhidar Vidoeski (1920-1998). The collection contains numerous folk tales and stories about the historic and other events from the past. Although there is only one music example, this material presents excellent complementary material to the songs of the Firfov Collection. The collection was obtained through the cooperation with the Centre for Areal Linguistics at the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts (MANU). Similarly to the Firfov Collection, where after the digitisation, the secondary textual database was formed, the researchers of the Centre for Areal Linguistics are working on the identification of the digital audio data. The experience IRAM already had in this area, especially after the substantial improvement of its secondary textual databases for the audio files stored at IRAM, was a solid starting point for this activity at MANU. The first digital audio database with the dialects of Macedonian is already attracting linguists not only from Macedonia, but also from abroad. There are no doubts that this rare collection will be used for further research not only in the linguistics area, but also in ethnology, anthropology, sociology of culture etc.

        The cooperation with the Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts will continue in the future. The Centre of Areal Linguistics has already given IRAM another valuable collection of audio tapes, recorded in the early 50s, also by Bozhidar Vidoeski. Among the other planned mutual activities with Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts is the digitisation of the legacy of Vasil Hadjimanov, a  large collection of tapes with folk songs, tales and other materials, recorded in the 1950s and the 1960s.

        During the last year, in order to promote the digitised collections at the IRAM archive, we published two CDs: “Female A Cappella Singing from the Firfov Collection”, and the selection from the Vidoeski collection of dialects of Macedonian. The audio materials from both CDs are already at the IRAM Internet Student Radio.

        The special attention IRAM places at the promotion of the problems of Macedonian culture resulted in the close cooperation with the Commission of the Ministry of Culture for the selection of projects and programs financed by the Government of Macedonia. IRAM co-organized of two presentations/meetings of almost all music managers leading the major music and cultural institutions in Macedonia (December 2 and December 24, 2003). These meetings were another contribution to the exchange of the opinions regarding the problems of the cultural policy.

        Furthermore, IRAM initiated cooperation with Macedonian National Radio and TV. The planned activities for 2004/2005 include a regular monthly - one hour of the IRAM production programs on MTV, and two hours of IRAM production programs on the Macedonian Radio, starting from September 2004. Also, IRAM expertise in audio and video archiving, as well as the digital audio recording will be used in the future MRTV activities.

        We should not forget the continuation of the growth of the IRAM web site, which is the largest database about Macedonian cultural heritage on the Internet, the Internet Student Radio existing for more than a year, publishing activities etc.

        To shorten our presentation of the achievements and fascinating development of this young institution, we prepared an outline of the IRAM activities. It is undoubtedly the best argument for the outstanding results we mentioned above:

1. Digitisation of Macedonian cultural heritage

a) digitisation of the Firfov Collection  (64 audio cassettes)
- 129 audio files (44.1 KHz/16 bit)
-  total of  29.47 GB (31,647,309,596 bytes) (cca. 52 hours)
- 1362 vocal, instrumental, i.e. vocal-instrumental units
- 3 documentaries on Firfov’s life
- storage of the primary audio data on a HD, additional 46 CDs in four sets (deposited at different locations UKIM FM, Firfov’s family, Buzarovski’s archive, Zurich University)
- 2 promotional CDs also included in the Internet Student Radio web site
- database with secondary textual and numerical data (60 fields)
- additional photo material (more than 100 photos and more than 110 minutes of video)

b) digitisation of the Vidoeski collection (53 audio cassettes) (in process of formation of the secondary database)
- 96 audio files (44.1 KHz/16 bit)
-  total  22.4 GB (24,055,316,378 bytes) (cca. 2200 min)
- storage of the primary audio data on a HD, additional 35 CDs in four sets (deposited at UKIM FM, Macedonian Academy of Science and Arts, Vidoeski’s family, Buzarovski’s archive)

2. Concert recordings
- total of 24,99 GB (cca. 2500 min)
- storage of the primary audio data on a HD, additional CDs deposited at IRAM, UKIM FM and the performers)

a) recordings from UKIM FM ensembles ( symphony orchestra, choir and UKIM soloists)
- 8 concerts
- 65 audio files

b) recordings from recitals and other concerts by students, UKIM FM professors and other soloists and ensembles
- 12 concerts
- 121 audio files

c) composer’s portraits
- 3 concerts
- 26 audio files

d) digitisation of records, cassettes, tapes and other materials with recordings by Macedonian and foreign performers and composers for the needs of the UKIM FM Library, Internet Student Radio and IRAM archive

3. Publishing
- 6 books with the papers from the IRAM Conferences (three London Conferences, two Struga Conferences and  a Skopje Conference, all in English)
- a text book for the sonology department students (“From Natural to Computer Sounds” in Macedonian)
- a book “Basics of Digital Archiving of the Sound” (in Macedonian)
- English-Macedonian glossary with technical terms for sound processing
- posters, programs and invitations for IRAM events
 

4. International conferences and presentations
- 7 international conferences (3 in London, 2 in Struga  and 1 in Skopje and Zurich)
- 4 presentations ( 2 in Zurich, 1 in Den Haag and Brussels)

5. Internet website  www.mmc.edu.mk with the following components:
- Music Events Guide
- Internet Student Radio
- IRAM (Institute for Research and Archiving of Music) conference papers
- IRAM movies (Internet Student TV)
- information about composers, performers, musicologists and ethnomusicologists

6. Internet Student Radio
- production of 26 programs placed at Internet in Real G2 audio streaming format with over 50 hours of interviews and recordings from concerts and other music events

7. Internet Student TV
- based on the short documentary videos from IRAM events, concerts, presentations, conferences etc., (16 videos 3-5 minutes long)

8. Documentary video and photo materials
- 4 documentary videos (DV format) (2h 14 m) on Macedonian cultural heritage (with English subtitles)
- over 240 minutes of other documentary video from IRAM events (conferences, presentations) including two IRAM chronicles, a 30 minute program presented at Macedonian TV etc.
- several hundred of digital photos

9. DVDs with IRAM documentary videos and IRAM Chronicle
- 3 DVDs with IRAM documentary videos and IRAM Chronicles ( 1 and 2)

        IRAM’s excellent results and its international cooperation were recognized both on a local and international level, bringing international reputation and acknowledgement. At the moment IRAM is the leading Macedonian institution for the digital archiving of cultural heritage, and in a technological sense, probably a very rare institution in the Balkans which promotes the international standards for digital archiving. The IRAM international cooperation includes institutions from the EU, Switzerland and the US. Nevertheless, three institutions were the pivot which planned and contributed to the accomplishment of the complex objectives: Trinity College of Music, Ethnomusicological Archive at Zurich University, and Koninkljik Conservatorium from Den Haag. These institutions also made the consortium for the three Tempus projects and the SCOPES project. Without their assistance and the financial support from the EU Tempus program and the Swiss National Foundation, the majority of the IRAM activities would not have happened at all.

        On the other hand the core of the IRAM human resources is the group of young professionals who are already specialized in digital technology and digitisation of cultural heritage, highly motivated to work very hard and very enthusiastically in research, education and archiving areas.  As we always point out - to understand IRAM’s  success one must take into consideration IRAM’s structure as a blend of educational, researching, archiving and artistic activities. The established link among the educational processes, the researching and the artistic activities was crucial for the achievements of IRAM’s goals and tasks. IRAM’s activities already resulted in several very successful master’s theses, and several of the IRAM researchers have already started working on their doctoral theses.

        In this sense we would like also to point out to the capacity and flexibility of IRAM to follow and quickly adjust to the extremely dynamic changes in the global and local social, economic and cultural environment.

        Altogether, the cost-effective and extremely rational use of all resources, as well as the enthusiasm and motivation of all individuals gathered around IRAM are the basis of the impressive development of this institution. There is a very obvious difference between the value of the achieved results ( the quantity of the digitised materials, the quantity of studio equipment, the printed materials and books, Internet Radio, web-site, video documentaries, international conferences, the mobility etc.) and the accounting value of the funds invested in these activities, which is several times less than the estimated costs for such a large scope of activities.

        At the end of this introduction, as usual,  we will briefly present the structure of the papers for this year’s London Conference. The first paper, prepared by Aida Islam, is concerned with the reflections of the Ottoman Empire Culture in Macedonia, and particularly the cultural heritage of the contemporary Turkish community in Macedonia. The unique form of  music and religious culture built around the ‘teke’ centers survives to this day Macedonia. The research Aida Islam began recently, managed to uncover some of the very important aspects of the processes of acculturation in Macedonian cultural environment. Irena Mitevska’s work and experience with the textual databases of the IRAM audio archive, particularly in the cleaning and refinment of the textual database for the Firfov Collection, resulted in the paper which presents the final distribution of the data (very important for the future browsing and use of this collection) and discusses some of the problems of the formation and definition of the database fields. Viktorija Kolarovska-Gmirja’s interest in Macedonian contemporary music brings the portrait of one of the leading Macedonian composers, Vlastimir Nikolovski, while Stefanija Leshkova-Zelenkovska presents two Macedonian conductors,dominating the Macedonian music stage at the moment. Eleni Novakovska presents a fascinating figure from Macedonian music history, the portrait of Dragan Gakonovski-Shpato, the founder of the Macedonian Jazz tradition. The last paper, prepared by Vesna Maljanovska, is devoted to the presence of the classical and contemporary music in the programs of the Macedonian national TV. The impressive production of almost 1000 hours of  video for the last several decades contains numerous performances from Macedonian and world renown musicians.