Course Fall 2013 – Sound Matters

Instructor: John Roach
Wednesdays 3:50 – 6:30
CRN: 6136    PSDS 3703
Open to all Undergraduate students at the New School
sndmatters.tumblr.com/course

This course is all about your ears. Starting with a focused attention to the sounds of the city, you will launch into projects that interact with, interrupt, or unmask the sonic world around us.  Sound Matters is an explicitly interdisciplinary studio and offers the opportunity to create projects that might include field recording, sound collage, sound installation, audio intervention, performance, sound sculpture, drawing, or written explorations.  The ultimate goal is to become a careful listener and to enter into a deliberate engagement with sound in your work.
The ear is a powerful and underutilized tool and working with sound can offer another path toward becoming a perceptually sensitive artist, designer, or creative thinker. Points of reference for this course are drawn from fields as diverse as science, experimental music, performance art, and urban planning.
No prior experience working with sound is required, but students will have an opportunity to build their existing experience into their projects.