1) Kahn, Douglas and Gregory Whitehead (Eds.). Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio, and the Avant-Garde, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992. These readings are rich and complex but well worth the digging. Kahn and Whitehead provide an excellent collection of essays on early historical and even mythological considerations of sound as a cultural medium then move on to throughly contemporary considerations.The reference to radio in the title belies the breadth of these works.
2) Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994. This work does a wonderful job of being both integrative with respect to image and sound and reductionist to the point of rendering sound understandable in its own right. It is a very enjoyable read.
3) Neil Strauss (Ed.) Radiotext(e), New York, NY: Semiotext(e), 1993. Here we have an ecclectic collection of articles that range from outrageous ravings to reasoned considerations. Lots of these article are just fun to read. This collection was a kind of breakthrough in assembling a body of thought about sournd, especially as it connects to radio.
4) Compiled Student Research Papers. This material is also required although it is not available for purchase. It will be on reserve at the Undergraduate Library. Later in the course we will share your own explorations into the world of sound. They will be collected, compiled, and placed on reserve. Please provide two copies of your work to be bound with the others and placed on reserve.
5) Selected Readings, a compilation of readings from a number of sources. This compilation is available as a Course Pack at Student Stores. It is required material.
6) Internet resources. Students enrolled in this course are required to have an email address and regular high quality access to the World Wide Web. If you have not already done so, go ahead and update your browser to the latest version and make sure plug-ins that enable Java, Shockwave, and other more advanced applications are installed. In addition you are required to subscribe to the class mailing list. The internet will prove to be a valuable arena for exploration as you decide on semester projects and audio proposals. In addition, a number of supplemental text materials listed in the schedule of readings and assignments will be found on the Web. Barry Truax's web page is a good beginning place for exploring the field of acoustic ecology. His online Handbook for Acoustic Ecology is at the very least an excellent annotated dictionary of audio related terms. It should be used as a beginnng point for any new territory of exploration. You can search the text by theme or by alphabet. Many audio examples are included in the site. A more technical source is the Rane Professional Audio Reference, an online dictionary of audio and audio-related terms. Bookmark both of these for future reference. Arnte's Sound Site is a good general site for sound matters. It contains many wonderful links to other sound related sites as well. And finally, just for fun, Rolf Langenbartels has an interesting site called Soundbag in which he presents a new sound art related image every week. It is worth every minute it takes to go back and browse all the previous postings on this site. The opening page is accompanied by a delightful and peaceful composition by Eric Satie.
7) Earplugs. Ok this is not a textbook but it is a requirement for the course. Buy some "Hearos" or some other kind of sound attenuating earplugs. Those intended for one-time use are fine. Make sure the ones you select reduce incoming audio levels by at least 26db, more if you can find them. Get these right away as they will be needed for an out of class assignment the first week.
Course Objectives:
1 The main objective of this course is develop an appreciation of the
many ways that artists, philosophers, and social activists have
conceived
of and even developed examples of sound as a unique and powerful
artistic
medium.
2 The second objective is to explore sound as it drives and is driven by production in other media, especially television and film.
Course Structure:
This course consists primarily of lectures, auditions, and discussions
derived from the assigned readings. Students are expected to attend
each
class session and participate fully in the day's discussion. Rigorous
preparation
will be required for credible participation in discussions. There will
be two written examinations, several short assignments including one
close
reading of audio in a film or other medium, a semester project, a
production
proposal, and a final examination.
Semester Project:
I am using the term "semester project" to describe the major piece
of work you are expected to complete by the end of the semester. For
most
of you it will take the form of a 10 - 15 page term paper. That,
however,
is not the only option. I would seriously consider some kind of
creative
approach that looks a some aspect of the audio enterprise.
Nevertheless,
any creative or production oriented project must be accompanied by some
written theoretical discussion.
Any project you choose should be suitable for a 15-20 minute presentation to the class. The last few sessions of class are open for such presentations. You are required to provide two versions of your writen work. One is a hard copy turned for grading. The other is an electronic version published on you personal web page or submitted to me electronically as either an HTML or a WORD document. In the case of software (video tape, film, audio tape, computer diskettes, etc.) submit one copy to me and one to be placed on reserve at either the Swain Hall Checkout Room or the Undergraduate Library. Only approved projects will be accepted. Any information contained in any project is fair game for the comprehensive final exam. There is a Semester Projects Page on the web. It will contain links to all student term papers for this semsester. (There is also a link to papers from Spring 2000). Remember, these projects are to be treated as online course text material.
All projects must be approved in advance. The first step in gaining project approval is to submit a one page proposal. We will negotiate from there. Proposals may be submitted anytime before the March 22nd deadline. The sooner you get the proposal to me the sooner you can get started. Don't wait until the last minute. Early proposals are also more likely to be approved. If you do not submit a proposal, I will assign you a project. Semester projects are due April 12th. Presentations will begin on that date.
Production Proposals:
Each student is expected to submit a proposal for an audio project
s/he actually would like to do, given the time and resources to do so.
The idea behind this assignment is to encourage students to think
creatively
in the audio medium. Proposed projects may be for broadcast or
installation/performance
in a particular space. Follow the link to the Audio
Genre Development Foundation Request for Proposals for more
details.
Note that for this course, the most important part of the proposal is
the
artistic or creative concept. You are expected to justify your
proposal,
in part, by discussing how your idea advances the understanding of
audio
art. While your idea must be both technologically and financially
feasible,
the budget section of the proposal is not weighted as heavily as it
might
be in a production course. If you are also taking Comm 130 this
semester
(Spring 2001) see me before you get started. (Due: April 26)
Close Reading of Film Sound: Notes
to be posted later. Check back here.
Steven Connor's essay on Michel Serres's Five Senses is a good addition to Ackermans chapter on hearing. Read, especially the section entitled "Boîtes." Serres may also be providing some categorical expansions to the scheme of Michel Chion (We will get to him later). Connor provides additional provocative information in his essay Voice, Technology and the Victorian Ear wherein he proposes that the advent of optical technologies have profoundly affected the relative priveleges of vision and hearing but not in the ways we might think. It is a good piece to read in conjunction with Chandler's work on Phonocentrism, etc.
Steven Connors has also done a series of radio essays on sound for the BBC. Noise is a five part series of programs that ". . . will listen to these noises, and try to evoke the new modes of hearing being formed in response to the omnipresence and insistence of noise."
Week 3 (Jan 23, 25):. Sound before radio. How did people think about the possibility of capturing and manipulating sound? Was there a developed aesthetic for the manipulation of sound (nonmusical sound) before the advent of radio? What can we say about the history and prehistory of recorded sound? Paul DeMarinis, an installation artist has a series of sculpture he call Edison Effects. One of them, Fragments from Jericho, is an interesting reflection of our collective wish for ancient sounds to have been recorded. He is Interviewed by Shaun Davies and Annemarie Jonson. In the interview he addresses voice, machines, interfaces, perceptions of divinity, and a number of other of technology and sound related issues. Lazarus Bowl, a contemporary version of this concept can be seen in a recent episode of X-Files. Here, Mulder and Scully are dealing with words captured the wet clay of a potters wheel 2000 years ago.
Steve Schoenherr provides a good outline History of Recorded Sound. There is even a brief accounting of some of the precursors although this falls far short of being a complete prehistory of sound recording. A few additional insights into the prehistory of recorded sound can be gleaned from the first paragraphs of Henry Edmunds' history of the "Graphophone." Charles Cros' should probably be credited as the first one (before Edison) to invent a device that could actually "record" sound and play it back. History it seems has not treated him well. It was Leon Scott, however, who invented the first actual recorder of sound waves, meaning that it was able to produce a visual representation of the wave forms involved. The device, a phonautograph, was not capable of playing the recorded sound. It was merely a visual representation. Of course not all technologies survive. Here is a good look at some of the recording technologies that did not survive. Another good history of the phonograph can be found here.
Friedrich
Kittler, GramophoneFilm Typewriter, translated by Geoff Winthrop-Young
and Michael Wutz (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997),
Chapter
1:
Gramophone. (endnotes and pictures to be inserted later). Ok.
I am not actually going to assign this but I am going to include it in
the list of readings. It is one of the most interesting literary,
cultural,
and technological histories of recorded sound I have seen. The truly
interested
student will read it. Graduate students are required to do so.
It is difficult to pin down the prehistory of recorded sound. Our longings to create and recreate sound predate recorded history. The mythology of Aurora and Tithonus and their son Memnon, for example, is rife with acoustical references. Tithonus, granted immortality but not immunity from aging by Zeus ultimately withered away to nothing more than his voice whereupon, Aurora, perhaps mercifully, turned him into a grasshopper. Their son Memnon was immortalized by collossal statues that were said to emit sounds with the rising of the sun. The story of Echo, the mythological servant to Hera who fell in love with Narcissus, is another acoustic tale from the ancients. Like Tithonus, Echo dwindled away leaving nothng but her disembodied voice which in her case was limited to imitating others.
Even within the annals of recorded history, this prehistory remains obscure. Scott Lincoln Davis' compilation of Giambattista della Porta's writings give us a glimpse into some of the more systematic consideratons for producing sound through artificial means. Elsewhere in his writings we may see some of the prehistory of amplification of sound. His writings on the properties of the harp are both entertaining and revealing of an interesting understanding of the power of sound. He touches on the idea of parts of some living things retaining their essence or "virtues" after death. Thus, drums made from the skins of certain animals will affect other living animals. A more contemporary prehistory is in "Before the Beep: A Short History of Voice Mail," an essay by Thomas Levin. This is a great look at some of the real and mythic precursors to recording devices. It is a "must read." Technologies exist because they are desired and sought after.
Week 4 (Jan 30, Feb 1):. Many of these
explorations
were key to the development of automata and simulacra that produced
sounds
of various sorts and imitated other aspects of organic life. At some
point
we will have to distinguish between reproduction (as in recording) and
reproduction (as in imitation). Read The
Role of Automata in the History of Technology for a good overview
of
the complexity of the quest to reproduce human behavior with machines.
Read also The
Early History of Talking Machines for a good overview of a
particular
kind of audio device, the talking head. Ghost
in the Machine: Sound and Technology in Twentieth Century Literature,
a dissertation by Michael Heumann exposes many interesting references
to
audio technology in recent literature. Read Chapters One and Two (at
least).
You will see that it is different from the imposed reading of radio
refernces
onto Melville's Moby Dick as we see later in Whitehead's Out
of the Dark: Notes on the Nobodys of the Radio Age (This essay is
also
included in the Wireless Imagination textbook.). Finally, there is the
matter of Ventriloquism
as a reflection of our embrace and mystification of the disembodied
voice.
This piece by Steven Connor is merely a promotional introduction to his
book, Ventriloquies: A Cultural History of the Dissociated Voice.
Fascination with the disembodied voice may even predate prehistory.
In the beginning was the Word
(VACH). And the Word was with God and the Word was God.
Week 5 (Feb 6, 8). Sound as art and sound with art, some theoretical approaches. Douglas Kahn's Audio Art in the Deaf Century provides an excellent overview of the ways artists have, despite the obstacles of cultural and even technological preferences for sight, sought to raise the "phonographic" endeavor to the state of art. This is both good historical background and a good introduction to later texts we encounter related to radio drama, noise music, and other themes as well. Why were light and color not enough for art? Luigi Russolo's instruments have been all but lost forever. Interesting photo evidence does remain however. Most of these are from the Art of Noises. This page is really part of a vast index of pages about the last 120 years of Electronic Music. It is a wonderful resource for anyone interested in early electronic and even some mechanical instruments. The full text of Russolo's Art of Noises is on reserve in the Undergrad Library. Read this brief essay on Italian Futurists. It is part of a commercial publisher's page. Larry Wendt's essay "Narrative as Geneology: Sound Sense in an Era of Hypertext," is itself a hypertext presentation that looks at the struggle and the need and indeed the opportunity to establish audio art. Pay particular attention to the links to Italian and Russian Futurists and Dada. This essay concerns itself primarily with the role of sound in poetry and to a lesser extent performance and theater. It is found in a special Sound edition of the online magazine, Switch. In case you are wondering what happened to the Futurists, they live, reincarnated, in LA as Ultra-Red, an "audio action collaborative." A version of the Futurist Manifesto also resides on the Web. Look for some interesting ambient audio art at the comotones site.
At some point we have to deal with silence. Perhaps this is as good as any. Read The Negative Persona of Silence (Heather de Geest) takes a cursory look at the cultural valuations of silence in Western society and Wreford Miller's thesis, Silence in the Contemporary Soundscape. It is an indepth look at the antithesis of sound, silence. Read at least the introduction, 1a, 1c, 3a, 4c, and the conclusion. I really recommend reading the whole thesis. There is also an anlytical essay on silence and ambient music, Deadrooms: From the Death of Ambient Music to Listening Material. It is on the Ultra-Red page.
Week 6 (Feb 13, 15):. Radio: Radio drama has a varied history from the US soap operas to the more daring and experimental German Earplay. Tim Crook provides a look at contemporary (and some historical) approaches to radio drama in his "International Radio Drama - Social, Economic and Literary Contexts." Gary Fearington's article on the World Acoustic Forum page, Audio Design: Creating Multi-Sensory Images For The Mind, helps provide a climate in which to think about the possibility of creating within the audio space. Drama is not the only possibility. The somewhat limited American radio art scene is superficially covered in the New American Radio homepage. For more specialized radio art, visit Jeremy Stearns's Science Fiction on the Radio page. Creating for radio requires an intricate understanding of the way we listen and experience the medium. Sheila Davies's essay. "Inhabiting The Air" provides wonderful insights into how an artist wishes the world to perceive her work as well as ways of conceptualizing audio story structure. Yuri Rasovsky's homepage is the effort of a single audio dramatist to promote his own work. So it is a commercial site. Nevertheless, it has some very good links and articles. His Radiodramatists Lexicon is a good review of terms related to audio production. It is not just limited to terms related to drama. There are also links to contemporary radio drama including a new NPR sci fi series Beyond 2000 which began in April of 2000.
Week 7 (Feb 20, 22):. More about "radio" or whatever it is.The most suitable medium for sound, or just another kind of artistic canvas? Why is it that when these people talk about radio it sounds like something different from what I hear everyday on my radio? Listening to Radio Plays: Fictional Soundscapes, is Alan Beck's overview of the elements of construction in radio drama. His analysis is really limited to the earliest established conventions (which still work even if they offend us in their simplicity) of radio drama. These conventions, like all such conventions, grew out of a lack of a grammar of dramatic construction in radio. Beck also supplies us with, Is radio blind or invisible? A call for a wider debate on listening-in. In this essay he examines the limiting effects that viewing radio as a blind medium has on the way we use the medium, create for it, theorize it, and listen to it. Jacki Apple and Helen Thorington have (are?) collaborated on a book about radio art. Their respective contributions to the introduction of the book are online but I have been unable to locate the book itself. I assume it is not yet published. Nevertheless, their introductory notes are instructive as to the state and genesis of recent radio art. Both of them are radio artists.
Virginia Madsen's essay "Notes on Sound Ecology in the Garden of Listening" addresses questions of purity or the expectation of purity in "natural" recordings. There is this idealism driven, in my opinion, by technological possibility, collective guilt over lost innocence, and the reification of some perceived perfect ecological past. How might this essay be related to Thorington's "The Noise of the Needle?"
Week 8 (Feb 27, Mar 1):.Applying theory. Trying to do meaningful "programming" of radio stations. Is this art or just psychological manipulation? Pirate Radio, Guerrilla Radio, Clandestine Radio are all unique because of the control over something beyond content. Each exists as a statement of control over both content and over the means of distribution of that content. They are autonomous because of both art and technology. All of these forms are in some sense political even when they are avowedly commercial. Among them, however, Clandestine radio is generally the most overtly political and is almost always involved in contestation of state power.
Week 9 (Mar 6, 8):. Audio art, some of which happens to be intended for radio. Once we can get beyond commercial radio and just think about artistic sound, what can we hear? Can You Hear Me? What is Sound Art? may be a good opening salvo to deal with the definitional issue. The rejoinder page, What's wrong with Sound Art? provides the remainder of the beginning. Between the two articles we have only a beginning of an attempt to define sound art. Soundarts, a now defunct online journal dealt extensively with sound art. The site was based in Japan. The Hanshin earthquake of 1995 apparently led to the demise of this wonderful journal. The archive of back issues remains available online. It is well worth some careful exploration. Audio art gets something of a definitional essay from David Troop in his work, Detachable Music: To Break the Silence of the City. He sees audio art as a reaction, even rebellion to the the extremes of structure imposed by the canons of Western music. It does cause one to wonder what we might expect to find in the way of audio art in non Western societies. Is this art technology dependent? Read The story of John Cage's The city wears a slouch hat, in preparation for when the work is presented in class. Spring Break is coming up. If you have internet access over the break, spend some time browsing the Radio Internationale Stadt site. It is a very rich and growing archive of audio art from a wide variety of genres. They are very clear about reinventing "radio" as a much more democratic medium through the use of Internet technology.MacFarland, Chapters 3-4 Radio's attributes and audience desires MacFarland, Chapter 6 Acoustic Space The Theory of Mixing: Free Radio in Amsterdam, Lovink
The Ear that Could Hear Sounds: John Cage, Dyson Selected Auditions of Various Sound Artists
Week 10 (Mar 13, 15):.Spring
Break. 
No Classes.
Week 11 (Mar 20, 22):. More audio art.It is closer than you think.The World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) listing of Sound Arts is a comprehensive look at some of the possibilities and some of the people involved. David Gans's article on John Oswald in Wired Magazine (The Man who Stole Michael Jackson's Face) is both a discussion of the audio art technique of plunderphonics and a look at some of the legal entanglements awaiting practioners of arts using published material. Ed Osborne is another audio artist worth some consideration. His work ranges from public installations to smaller art pieces that have a strong acoustic dimension as well as a visual one. He is interviewed here by Yumika Tanaka. Ron Pelligrino is a multimedia artist concentrating on light and sound composition. His web site is a good source of information on multimedia productions, especially the acoustic dimension. I recommend it for a browse if you are looking for new ways to think about sound. His interests range from acoustic ecology to PA setups in uninviting spaces. Sound art by Ted Apel takes audio into mainly the gallery space. The online multimedia journal Omnicetera.provides some interesting insights into the world of Omnimedia artists, some of whom specialize in audio. Follow links to audio excerpts from Ovengard. The Multiaudio site constructed by David Gans is another place for examples of audio art. Gans reconfigures found sounds. The Candidate Patrick Buchanan piece is very entertaining. It is also a good lesson in audio editing. Semester project proposals due March 22nd.
Week 13 (Apr 3, 5):. More on the cinema. The practice of informed listening may require the understanding of some systematic approach to the naming and positioning of sounds. Chion's modes of listening and his characterizations of audio in film provide one such approach. Gary Fearington provides another, somewhat simpler, scheme in his essay "Keep Your Ear-lids Open." The act of "listening" is a complex one made even more so by factors of expertise, physiology, emotional state, and culture. Hildegard Westerkamp explores (with an example) some of the factors in involved in listening (Listening to Listening). The article is part of a gendered panel and all the principles are women but the effects of which she speaks cannot be said to be gender specific. Nevertheless, the observation that the presence of sound and one's emotional state can alter one's perception of an environment is valid.
Week 15 (Apr 17, 19):. The study of Acoustics in ancient and modern architecture may be a very important undertaking. Steven Waller believes that the echoic nature of caves and other sheltered areas can account for the presence of cave art in such areas. Other observers have taken note of exceptional acoustic properties of other ancient structures such as some of the Mayan ruins in Mexico. An article in Scientific American online, Sound Evidence, provides an interesting acoustic example that could demonstrate a kind of sonic intentionality in the design of Mayan Pyramids. There is more. The diagram of the acoustics of the Great Pyramid's Grand Gallery can be extrapolated to the Maya step-pyramids. Other related links include sound healing. See also: Acoustic Phenomena and "acoustics of the ball court at Chichen." Be aware that some of these links are for sites of questionable scientific validity. Okay, some are just downright wierd. Modern cathedrals and other structures often have intentional or accidental acoustic characteristics that can be quite striking. A visit to the planetarium at UNC could be instructive in this regard.
An auditorium, by its name is a listenting space. Nevertheless, much of what happens in mos auditoriums has a strong visual component. There are some spaces designed just for listenting. The Audium in San Francisco is a venue constructed just for the presentation of acoustic artwork The Listening Room , a UK site devoted to a performance space. Their web page includes a bibliography and links to other audio sites.
Designing around acoustic considerations is becoming a business in itself. In 1980, Bill and Mary Buchen formed SonArc (for Sonic Architecture), a design firm specializing in interactive installations for childrens museums, galleries, and public sites throughout the US. Large-scale public works include: Sound Parks and Science Playgrounds for kids of all ages, Aeolian (wind) Harps and designs for urban and park environments. Vitruvius would be proud. MC Squared is a design firm specializing in acoustic design. Their page is full of interesting demonstrations and information sheets. Worth a look if you have any interest in acoustic design. Anyone interested in installations should visit this page.
The
Audio Spotlight is a site at MIT Media Labs that deals with a
new technology that allows one to focus a beam of sound in much the
same
way one can focus a flashlight. This has wonderful application in
installations.
A summary of the work is in Scientific
American.
Representing the visual world with sound holds some promise for the visually impaired. It also holds some promise for the visually enriched in terms of expanding our concepts of how we might use sound. vOICe is an attempt to advance the technology of acoustic representation of visual material. This idea is being actively developed in the form of Ultrasonic Eyeglasses for the Blind. We have, for some time now, done the opposite. That is to make visual representations of acoustic material. If you want to do it yourself, try this free Spectrogram download on your own computer. We react more quickly to sound than to sight. Test it here.
Perhaps by now we can revisit the issue of the connection between sound and visual impairment with a bit more sophistication than we had in the first week. Darren Copeland's Life Unseen is a radiophonic tape composition. Over its seventy minute duration, the work explores the subject of blindness from a variety of reference points. First of all, there is a tapestry of personal perspectives pulled together from interviews made in Vancouver, Canada during April of 1996: men and women of various ages with different experiences of blindness. Secondly, there is the leading voice of the writer-actress Alex Bulmer from Toronto, Canada who describes her gradual ten year progression from being sighted to becoming legally blind. Finally, there is a melange of styles and techniques blended from the recipe books of radio producers and electroacoustic composers: documentary commentary, storytelling, poetic monologue, acousmatic music, and soundscape composition. Presentations of selected student papers/projects begin on April 19th.
Week 16 (Apr 24, 26):. Continue presentations of student papers/projects.Deadline for Audio Genre Development Foundation proposal April 26th.
Week 17 (May 1, 3):. Last class. Continue presentations of student papers/projects and review.
Week 18 (May 8, 10):. Final Examination Thursday, May 10, 8:00am
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