Instructor: Joan Schuman
ONLINE COURSE CRN: 3720.
Limited to 15 students.
Course Description:
While sounds have been explored by both listeners and au(di)teurs for millennia, it is only within the last 130 years that mediated technologies—the phone, the phonograph, popular radio broadcasting—have permitted artists to produce work that leaves an archival, sonic trace. In this course, students gain a foundation of how sound has entered the mediated and artistic landscape by exploring contemporary artists who “ensound” (as one “envisions”) media for presenting audio- based creative work across numerous genres. These include: gallery and site-specific installations; radio artistry via terrestrial and online broadcasting; Web-based performances; international sound-art festivals; darkened cinematic airings; LP/CD anthologizing; and sound walks via new technologies (cell phones, WiFi networks, GPS tracking).
Understanding the historical-contemporary contexts of “sounded” production (Dadaist experimenters; Cagean silence practitioners; Burroughs cut-up artists; tape-art mailers; radio pirates; podcasters; mobile phone artists) allows students to question their relationship to sound as a mode of communication in either creative productions or research-based work.
This is an academic seminar that critically explores both the historical and contemporary sound and media art geographies. Students are also invited to hone rudimentary skills in approaching sonic artistry as practitioners. All students conduct sound walks; deep listening exercises; sound scavenging forays; and numerous eavesdropping expeditions in experiential relationship with their academic research. The class culminates in contributions to sound culture discourse via a curating project.
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