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Introduction to Sound Studies (500-0-20)

Instructors

Neil Kanwar Harish Verma

Meeting Info

Helmerich Auditorium: Thurs 12:00PM - 2:50PM

Overview of class

As techniques for sonic expression have grown more sophisticated - from installation art to narrative podcasts and video games - the questions that we bring to bear on sound and its place in our lives and histories have also begun to evolve. This course aims to give sound professionals a grounding in that conversation by immersing them in Sound Studies, a new and inspiring field that occupies an intersection between the arts, social sciences and humanities.



Sound Studies helps us to understand how music works through the popular media, interprets and unpacks great soundtracks and albums, uncovers the history of the sound technologies that we use, asks how hearing changes over time and across cultures, looks at the politics behind forms of vocal expression and mixing particularly around issues of race, gender and identity, and calls attention to sonic dimensions of environments. In recent years, Sound Studies has also been taking the form of sound and provides raw ideas for podcasts, films and other sound works. Indeed, it was scholar Murray Schafer who coined the term "soundscape," a concept that is now not only used by a whole field of artists, but also by acousticians, game developers and urban planners.



Each week we begin by considering significant works of sonic expression, using them as a framework to understand key questions in Sound Studies today. Though much of our emphasis will be on sound in popular forms of media, we will also consider various forms of sound technology, sound art, and sound performance. Students will be introduced to a range of sound-based industries and learn how they work together. Key works of sound art and design will demonstrate the aesthetics of sound, for example: the expressive ways in which sounds are combined with images in media culture; and how mediated sounds facilitate new encounters with the lived environment. Students will gain an understanding of how sound mediates identity and provides a medium for cultural expression.

Learning Objectives


  • To give sound producers a sense of the guiding questions, problems and projects in sound studies today.


  • To acquaint students with the histories of the devices, techniques and industries shaping sound production across cultures, and particularly with how politics and social difference shape sound creation and reception.


  • To break down the walls between sound theory and sound practice by focusing on how key innovations have inspired both.


  • To inspire original thinking about sound that is rooted in its multi-model past and future.

Evaluation Method

Assessment breakdown:



Participation 20%

Group Presentation 10%

Short Essay 30%

Theory to Practice Project 40%



Regular attendance and active participation are expected. You should complete all readings and listening before the day on which they are assigned below. Please come to class with thoughts and questions ready: this is much more important than understanding everything in the reading.



Participation will sometimes require students to bring in materials for discussion.


Assignments



Review essay. Each student must write a 4-6 page essay about a subfield of sound studies, based on one or two books not assigned in class. You might use the Hilmes reading as an example for what a "review essay" looks like, structurally. The more specific your subfield, the better. For example, students interested in film might look at the most recent scholarship on how music and effects work in digital cinema, while those interested in gaming might consider recent sound studies texts exploring key figures in that field. Students must have a tentative bibliography of three or four possible books by Week 4. The project is due Week 6.



This is a survey course that necessarily skims a very broad set of materials. The review essay assignment is designed to give you the opportunity to dig deeper in a subject area that's important to you personally, something you want to achieve greater depth in.



Group Presentation. In Week One I will put you in groups. Each group is responsible for coming to class with one audio track of some kind - a song, a field recording, a bit of their own tape, a youtube video - that responds to a reading from the week. Students will play and explain their choice.



Theory to Practice Project. Students will be required to produce a final project that uses sound practice to solve, complicate, or reimagine a question we have discussed in the course of our readings. The main criterion is that the project must use sound to answer a research question that can't be answered without it. Students are encouraged to use this project as a prototype for their eventual final capstone study in sound at the end of the MA sequence in Spring. Students must meet one-on-one with faculty by the end of Week 7 to approve a plan. All students will present preliminary work on their project in a 5-minute talk in the final class.

Class Materials (Required)

All readings and sounds provided on Canvas