Undergraduate Seminar (390-0-1)

Topic

The Art of Listening

Instructors

Antawan I Byrd

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-325: Tues, Thurs 12:30PM - 1:50PM

Overview of class

How have artists theorized listening as simultaneously an aesthetic practice and a political act? What visual forms have they given to sound's sensory, spatial, and affective dimensions? This undergraduate seminar explores these questions through artistic practices spanning the mid-twentieth century to the present. Through diverse case studies, we examine how artists have mobilized the body and sound technologies—radios, tape recorders, public address systems, and megaphones—to condition and politicize listening within situated struggles for liberation and democratic participation. We will analyze how artists amplify and spatialize sound in public space and in galleries, exploring how relational modes and formal strategies (including debate, feedback loops, sound bleed, flash mobs, and sensory deprivation) redistribute attention, negotiate access, and challenge institutional power. We will also consider how contemporary artistic practices extend listening into the evidentiary realm through audio forensics projects in which artists reconstruct contested events and challenge official narratives, demonstrating listening's role in investigative and testimonial practice. Course readings will draw from art history, media and sound studies, political theory, feminist theory, and museum studies.

Class Attributes

Advanced Expression