The Velvet Light Trap
Call for Papers
Issue #74: On Sound (New Directions in Sound Studies)
http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/journals/papersw.html

Submission deadline: August 1, 2013

The medium of sound, long placed in a secondary position to the visual within media studies, has experienced a considerable increase in scholarly attention over the past three decades, to the point that “sound studies” is now a distinct field of scholarship. Within media studies, sound-related research today expands well beyond the film and television score or soundtrack to include a broad range of scholarship on radio and popular music. And while sound studies still tends to cohere around media studies departments, an increasing amount of sound media research is interdisciplinary in nature. A “sonic turn” is under way across the humanities and social sciences with sound studies work coming out of philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, science and technology studies, cultural geography, American studies, art history, and cultural studies. Recent issues of differences (2011) and American Quarterly (2011) and anthologies like The Sound Studies Reader (Jonathan Sterne, 2012) are just a few examples of this expanding range of interest.

This issue of The Velvet Light Trap aims to build upon many of the new lines of inquiry that are coming out of this intersection between sound media and various other scholarly perspectives. In that spirit, we are seeking essays for an issue on the research and study of sound in and across a range of media.

Potential areas of inquiry may include, but are by no means limited to: Continue reading »

Call for Proposals: Due date August 31st 2013.

The Noises of Art (site)
The conference addresses what is arguably the most prolific, varied, and groundbreaking period in the coming together, exchange, and mutual influence of visual art and sound-based practices (such as music and the spoken word). It aims to explore (principally) the visual artist’s engagement with sound, noise, music, and text while at the same time recognizing that there is a traffic of musicians, sound artists, and text artists moving in the opposite direction, who aspire to cultivate visual analogues for their work. Thus, the conference is situated at the intersection of several movements that are converging upon a point of visual-audio synthesis and exchange. In general, although not exclusively, the forum will provide and the opportunity to:

draw together visual artists and text-based artists who also use sound as a mode of creative production as well as musicians and sound- or noise-based artists who also use images (static or kinetic) as a mode of creative production; discuss, describe, exemplify, and present individual and collaborative practice; examine the commonalities, distinctives, and relationship of image, sound, and aural text in terms of their essence, methodologies, technologies, theories, aesthetics, historical trajectories, and modes of discourse; explore audio-visual practice from the perspective of cognitive, perceptual, and psychological studies.

We welcome abstracts for 20-minute-long papers, in all media and on any periods and regions, that deal with either case studies or broader methodological, theoretical, and historical questions, as well as proposals for improvisatory projects or presentations of 20-minute duration that can be performed at the conference. Please send either abstracts of 250–300 words or proposals of 700 words (including sample image (JPEG format) and sound or video files (mp3 or mp4 format), where appropriate) and a short biography of 100–150 words, and all inquiries to Sophie Bennett (sob@aber.ac.uk) by 30 March 2013.

For more information, please visit http://noisesofart.weebly.com

Reference / Quellennachweis:
CFP: The Noises of Art (Aberystwyth, 4-6 Sep 2013). In: H-ArtHist, Feb
28, 2013. <http://arthist.net/archive/4780>.