Sound Off

This advanced digital media course explores the
continuum between sound
and silence in digital time-based work. Through
screenings, listening
sessions, readings and guest artist visits, we
will think through artists'
strategic implementations of silence and its
ability to honor the inarticulable,
refuse to incriminate, and preserve opacity. We
will also listen closely to
artists' imperatives to generate sound as they
re-articulate historical
narratives, resist erasure, and complicate the
dynamics of who can be
heard.
As a class we will think about the limits of a
visual frame, and the
possibilities that offscreen and onscreen sound
can offer. We'll investigate
the voice as a medium, strategic use of diegetic
and nondiegetic sound,
and the history of recorded sound, among other
topics.
We will begin by learning about the materiality of
sound waves and the
recording devices that allow us to repeat them.
Students will learn technical
skills for recording audio, editing audio and
video, and spatializing sound in
installation. Each student will build their own
audio archive to pull from, as
well as learn to source from pre-existing
archives. Over the course of the
semester students will be expected to complete two
finished works plus
one short experiment, and participate actively in
critique and class
discussions.