Sound Affects - Sound Art

This course will include a series of
lectures, workshops, and assignments with emphasis
on experimentation and pre-production strategies
and techniques for capturing, creating,
reproducing, and manipulating sound and audio
materials in conventional and unconventional ways.
We will study the physics of sound and acoustics.
Readings will include texts on a variety of topics
including the history of sound art, technical
audio recording, psychoacoustics, physics, and
affect theory.

The students will be introduced to analog
recording and reproduction materials and
techniques. We will experiment with and exploit
the unique qualities and limitations of analog
media before moving into a series of introductory
digital recording workshops. Working within the
limitations of this physical material will
position us to engage in more nuanced analysis of
techniques and critique of intention and content
when later working in the digital realm (of
seemingly infinite possibility.) Additionally, we
will be recreating selected analog media sound art
works as part of our process of discovery and
experimentation.

We will engage in a practice of tuning our
aural faculties through both deep and reduced
listening. If one breaks music and sound down into
parts (intervals, timbre, rhythm, pitch, prosody,
etc) does that negate the sound itself? How does
that analysis affect our holistic experience? For
the purpose of this class we will be breaking
sound down into parts but remain always mindful to
continue a discussion of how what we are hearing
is inextricably situated in our environment.

In our study of acoustics students will also
learn how to "tune a room": how to identify and
work with the resonant characteristics of
installation/performance spaces, consider how and
where the work is presented and how that space
acts as an active "participant" affecting the
performance/presentation/perception of their work.