Jim Briggs

Apr 222013
 

JBriggs_photo2

Jim Briggs has been an audio engineer and sound designer for over 15 years.  He began his professional career in music recording at Manhattan’s legendary Hit Factory Recording Studios, and has gone on to mix programs for PRI’s Selected Shorts, PBS’ American Experience, WNYC/PRX’s Here’s The Thing and numerous other series on public radio and television.  His long-running artistic partnership with VIA Dance Collaborative has been showcased on major dance stages such as the Ailey Citigroup Theater and Jacob’s Pillow.  Recently, he and choreographer Adrienne Westwood installed a multi-channel, whole-space sound design for Record at One Arm Red in Brooklyn.

As Regional Director of the 2013 Megapolis Audio Festival, Jim worked to bring innovative radio producers, sound artists and experimental musicians to The New School, including Love+Radio, Mountains, Andrea Seabrook, and The Kitchen Sisters.  Jim is a Part-Time Assistant Professor at SMS and Eugene Lang College, teaching courses in radio, sound for picture, and music technology.

 Posted by at 6:02 pm People Comments Off on Jim Briggs

Course Summer 2013 – Urban Soundscapes

Apr 222013
 

Instructor: Benjamin Tausig

CRN 1910
June 3 – June 27,
Monday-Thursday, 4:00 – 5:50
Course Description  
A Puerto Rican-born New Yorker rides his bicycle from the South Bronx over the Willis Avenue Bridge into Manhattan, a Don Omar single issuing from the boombox attached to the rear of his Schwinn. The music is amplified by his stereo system, and contorted by the Doppler effect, adjacent automobile traffic, and the flowing water of the Harlem River below.
All sound is marked by motion, but rarely more so than in a city like New York, where every block seems to represent a sonic world transplanted, where the subway is a hornet’s nest of expectations about sound and personal space, and where any sound produced will, almost by default, traverse private boundaries.
This month-long, intensive summer course meets four days a week, and examines the myriad dimensions of sound and mobility in New York, from the routes by which sonic cultures immigrate to cities to the ways that sound moves through built physical spaces, from the normative social rules of sound in spaces of transportation to broadcasting technologies that set sound in motion in new ways. We will read a rich cross-section of work including ethnographies of immigrant music, theoretical writing on sound and mobility, and practical texts on sonic field recording. In addition, students will be expected to make weekly sound recordings in the city, both on their own and in group field trips, using equipment from the New School media lab. We will explore strategies for examining and representing sound in motion in urban space. Final projects will include the option of written pieces or media presentations.
 Posted by at 10:07 am Courses Comments Off on Course Summer 2013 – Urban Soundscapes

[SMS Speaker Series] Jonathan Sterne – Sampling Space: Convolution, Echo and Culture – April 30 4-6pm

Apr 222013
 

Jonathan Sterne

What does it mean to represent acoustic space acoustically?  What can we learn about social space by starting with sound?  This presentation uses an analysis of a specific type of artificial reverberation, called convolution, to begin the project of a differential theory of sonic space.  A convolution processor uses samples of the reverberation characteristics of a physical space and then combines those with another, “dry” recorded signal to produce the effect of the dry signal in the sampled space.  A voice or guitar can be placed in caves, tombs, halls or clothes dryers.  After providing some examples of convolution, Jonathan Sterne examines the technology as part of the aesthetic and technical histories of artificial reverberation, as a means of considering indexicality and realism in sonic representation, and as part of the informationalization of physical space-epitomized today in augmented and mixed reality applications.Jonathan Sterne teaches in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies and the History and Philosophy of Science Program at McGill University.  He is author of MP3: The Meaning of a Format (Duke 2012), The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Duke, 2003); and numerous articles on media, technologies and the politics of culture.  He is also editor of The Sound Studies Reader (Routledge, 2012).  Visit his website at http://sterneworks.org .This event is open to Media Studies and Parsons students and faculty ONLY.
Location:
Hirshon Dining Suite / 55 West 13th Street, rm 205Admission:
Free; no tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served
 Posted by at 9:54 am featured Comments Off on [SMS Speaker Series] Jonathan Sterne – Sampling Space: Convolution, Echo and Culture – April 30 4-6pm