Sound Art ~ Spring 2009

Syllabus: Sketch

This syllabus is a guide. It will help to give you a sense of the pace of the course, with the due dates for each of the major, student –generated, course components. Essential readings, examples of sound art and technical resources will be introduced weekly. My expectations for you are high. When possible, I will respond to student interests in an improvisational manner and shape the course accordingly. I will, periodically, add readings, technical tips and conceptual frameworks to cultivate the inquiry and creative work that I expect from all students.

The specifics of the related artistic, intellectual, and technical resources will be posted online. It will be your responsibility to check regularly to learn about upcoming events and available resources.

ARTS 3605 / ARTS 5650 Sound Art

1/20
Week 1~ Introductions and Course Overview
Readings: What is Sound Art?

~ IN ~

1/27
Week 2 ~ Site and Sound
Share one minute sound sketches re: 1/20/2009
Sound explorations
Reading:
The Art of Noises Luigi Russolo
Gather sounds for site-sound sketch

2/03
Week 3 ~ Acoustic Ecology/World Soundscape Project
Discuss Readings :: What is Sound Art? and The Art of Noises
Field recordings
Share 1 minute site-sound sketch
Experiment with found sound / local noise

2/10
Week 4 ~ Sound Maps
Share 1 minute remixes of class archive of site sounds
Sound Artist Presentations

2/17
Week 5 ~ Spark Festival
Spark Festival
Sound Studio time

UK sound artist Ray Lee @ the Walker

2/24
Week 6 ~ *Site Sound Presentations*

~ IN BETWEEN ~

3/03
Week 7 ~ Embodied Sounds
Guest Artist: Bert Fraher
DIY - Piezos and mini-amp
Sound Artist Presentations

3/10
Week 8 ~ Interactive Sound
Experimental and Media Arts exhibition visit
Introducing the Arduino
Sound Sketch presentations
Sound Artist Presentations

~ 3/17 ~ Spring Break ~ no class ~

3/24
Week 9 ~ Circuit-Bending
Sound Artist Presentations
Present "Embodied Sound" Project Concept

3/31
Week 10 ~ Embodied Sound Projects
Sound Artist Presentations
Replay ~ presenting work to date

~OUT ~

4/07
Week 11 ~ *Embodied Sound Presentations*

4/14
Week 12 ~ Transmission Art
Sound Artist Presentations
Independent Project sketches - discussion

4/21
Week 13 ~ Transmission Art continued
Sound Artist Presentations
Independent Project proposals continued

4/28
Week 14 ~ Independent Project studio time

5/05
Week 15 ~ *Independent Project Presentations*

5/12
Week 16 ~ *Independent Project Presentations*

Administrative Details:

Your attendance is essential to the success of the course experience for you and the class. You will be allowed one absence. Given our one meeting per week class scheduled, each class is unique and not replicable. Each subsequent absence thereafter will lower your grade by 1/2 letter grade per absence. All critique days must be attended and engaged in with full participation.

To encourage you to actively explore the area described as embodied sound you will be oriented to soldering and electronics in the W123 studio space, the eXperimental Media Studio. If you have been oriented to the tools in the sculpture area, you are encouraged to use these as well. Over the course of the semester you will be introduced to other sound related resources including the installation and performance space. Additionally, you are encouraged to draw upon the resources in other departments and colleges at the university and to propose interesting visiting presenters for the class.

In order to fully participate in the class you will need to bring work in process and necessary resources with you to each class so that you will be able to use the in class studio time to both share and further develop your projects. As a participant in this course, you will be allocated storage space for ongoing work and you are encouraged to revisit work during the course of the semester.

All Projects are due as completed projects at the beginning of class on the due date and will not be included in the required critique if they are not ready for the scheduled critique.

The nature of a studio art course is such that you will need to devote out of class time to creating artwork, doing research and developing your own relationship to contemporary art processes and theories.

This course exists as a catalyst for your artistic development, as a context for producing art and as a community of people committed to stimulating dialogue about art and ideas as they relate to us individually and socially.

Overview of Evaluation:

20 % attendance and participation and project sketches
20% presentations (1 artist presentation and 1 skill sharing presentation)
20% project #1 presentation and related blog documentation, full participation in the critiques
20% project #2 presentation and related blog documentation, full participation in the critiques
20% project #3 independent project and related blog documentation, full participation in the critiques

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yip yip yip rrrrrrrrradio.

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Keith Townsend Obadike discusses his perspective on sound art in this essay Sound in Art .

Posted by Diane Willow at 8:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sonic Fragments was a 2 day festival and symposium held at Princeton 03/28/08 - 03/29/08.

The focus is on narrative and mediation in sound art.

The follow offers a more in depth description:

We hear while we are in the womb, long before we see. For the rest of our lives, hearing essentially precedes the rest of the sensorium, as we move through a world of sonic fragments which affect us phenomenally and emotionally but of which we are often unaware. These fragments are mediated by our environment, our bodies, our individual and collective memories, and the technologies that pervade contemporary life: from books to radio to television to iPods. Through these mediations sounds give rise to stories, which though they might be as hazy as an aura, begin to narrate the world we move through as they themselves move through our bodies and minds.

Sonic Fragments is a sound art festival and symposium exploring how these mediations effect meaning in our lives, and how artists are actively engaging narrative and mediation in their work. We are hoping for a diverse and interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars and artists, between theory and practice.

Our panelists include William Basinski, Jon Brumit, Rubén Gallo, Brenda Hutchinson, Tianna Kennedy, Thomas Y. Levin, Camille Norment, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Kristin Oppenheim, Ed Osborn, Michael Schumacher, and Stephen Vitiello.

Exhibition artists include William Basinski, Betsey Biggs, Jon Brumit, Michael Bullock, Seth Cluett, M.R. Daniel, Michael Early, Brent Fariss, Alan Goodrich, Johanna Hallsten, Brenda Hutchinson, John Kannenberg, Kenneth Kirschner, Leonel Kaplan, Tianna Kennedy, Stephan Moore, Preston Poe, Leah Rico, Jennifer Schmidt, Michael Schumacher, Scott Smallwood, Stephen Spera, Debra Swack, and Samson Young.

Posted by Diane Willow at 8:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Required Text: Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories by Alan Licht

Required materials: headphones with 1/8" inch connection.

Optional materials: jump drive of at least 512MB will be helpful

Posted by Diane Willow at 7:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

free103point9 is a New York State-based nonprofit arts organization establishing and cultivating the genre Transmission Arts by promoting artists who explore the idea of transmission or the physical properties of the electromagnetic spectrum for creative expression.

Posted by Diane Willow at 7:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SoundTransit is a collection of environmental sounds.

It is described as "The SoundTransit project revolves around a growing collection of environmental sounds recorded by 'soundhunters' from all over the world. Each sound artist described the place and moment of the recording, the characteristics of the location or the peculiarity of the sound itself. These stories add another dimension to the sounds; one that connects and simultaneously exceeds time and place.
"

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Annea Lockwood shares her perspectives on Sound Art in an online interview with N.B.Aldrich.

You can download this document as well.

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Stephen Vitiello shares his perspectives on Sound Art in an online interview with N. B. Aldrich.

You can download this document as well.

Posted by Diane Willow at 5:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Macauly Library

The Macaulay Library at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology is the world's largest natural sound and video archive of animal behavior. Its mission is to collect and preserve recordings of each species' behavior and natural history and to make them available for research, education, conservation, zoos and aquaria, wildlife managers, publishers, the arts, and both public and commercial media. Since 1930, recordists of all backgrounds have contributed their recordings, which now number to several hundred thousand in total. A large percentage of the recordings can be searched and played online. The Library also provides services for consultation, custom compilations, and professionally edited versions of its assets.

Posted by Diane Willow at 9:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Freesound Project

he Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License. The Freesound Project provides new and interesting ways of accessing these samples, allowing users to

* browse the sounds in new ways using keywords, a "sounds-like" type of browsing and more
* up and download sounds to and from the database, under the same creative commons license
* interact with fellow sound-artists!

The Freesound Project is a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds. Freesound focusses only on sound, not songs. This is what sets freesound apart from other splendid libraries like ccMixter.

Posted by Diane Willow at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Walker Art Center presents:

UK sound artist Ray Lee’s bewitching sonic sculptures become an extraordinary choir that produces mesmerizing drones and whirls of light in a carefully shaped hourlong sound /theatrical performance. An indescribable experience, Siren incorporates 30 large metal tripods at varying heights with rotating arms that generate electronic tones. In near darkness, two performers set each arm in motion, building a dramatic, immersive spectacle of choreographed movement, light, and sound while the audience is free to roam the McGuire stage. Siren was a hit of the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Listen to Siren

Posted by Diane Willow at 7:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The dynamic Music and Sound Studies Initiative is inviting an amazing roster of artists, musicians and theorists to campus this spring.

our first event of the season ::

Friday 1/23 Jonathan Sterne

Posted by Diane Willow at 9:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

UbuWeb

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Alan Licht's Sound Art : Beyond Music, Between Categories will be the required text for the semester.

Posted by Diane Willow at 1:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Alvin Lucier shares his his perspectives on Sound Art in an online interview with N. B. Aldrich. You can download this document as well.

Posted by Diane Willow at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

N. B. Aldrich explores the question of what is Sound Art via a series of interviews.

His introduction to the questions that shape the emerging genre of Sound Art can be downloaded here.

You can access this series on his site, EMF

Posted by Diane Willow at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sound Art shapes aesthetic space and time. It is a new media genre that relates to the visual arts and music but is neither music nor visual art. We will investigate the powerful capacity of sound to shift our perception through the experience of listening and the process of producing sound art. A range of creative explorations and technologies will be introduced to engage you in an artistic process of realizing your individual and collaborative ideas with sound.

You and all of the students will be asked to contribute to an evolving database of community resources and personal inspirations. The experience of listening, a series of sonic explorations and sound sketches, an artist presentation, two sound art projects and one independent project will provide opportunities for you to develop basic fluency with the process of developing your artistic language with sound. A series of readings, responses, and discussions will broaden and deepen our understanding of the emergence and evolving scope of Sound Art.

The collective endeavors of this semester-long investigation will be documented and archived on the course blog through the active participation of all students.

Syllabus: Sketch

This syllabus is a guide. It will help to give you a sense of the pace of the course, with the due dates for each of the major, student –generated, course components. Essential readings, examples of sound art and technical resources will be introduced weekly. My expectations for you are high. When possible, I will respond to student interests in an improvisational manner and shape the course accordingly. I will, periodically, add readings, technical tips and conceptual frameworks to cultivate the inquiry and creative work that I expect from all students.

The specifics of the related artistic, intellectual, and technical resources will be posted online. It will be your responsibility to check regularly to learn about upcoming events and available resources.

ARTS 3605 / ARTS 5650 Sound Art

1/20
Week 1~ Introductions and Course Overview
Readings: What is Sound Art?

~ IN ~

1/27
Week 2 ~ Site and Sound
Share one minute sound sketches re: 1/20/2009
Sound explorations
Reading: http://www.ubu.com/papers/russolo.html
The Art of Noises Luigi Russolo
Gather local noise and found sound

2/03
Week 3 ~ Acoustic Ecology/World Soundscape Project
Field recordings
Share 1 minute sound sketches of found sound / local noise

2/10
Week 4 ~ Sound Maps
Share 1 minute remixes of class archive of site sounds

2/17
Week 5 ~ Spark Festival
Spark Festival
Sound Studio time
Sound Artist Presentations

UK sound artist Ray Lee @ the Walker

2/24
Week 6 ~ *Site Sound Presentations*

~ IN BETWEEN ~

3/03
Week 7 ~ Embodied Sounds
DIY - Piezos and mini-amp
Experimental and Media Arts exhibition visit
Sound Artist Presentations

3/10
Week 8 ~ Interactive Sound
Introducing the Arduino
Sound Sketch presentations
Sound Artist Presentations

~ 3/17 ~ Spring Break ~ no class ~

3/24
Week 9 ~ Circuit-Bending
Sound Artist Presentations

3/31
Week 10 ~ Embodied Sound Projects
Sound Artist Presentations
Replay ~ presenting work to date

~OUT ~

4/07
Week 11 ~ *Embodied Sound Presentations*

4/14
Week 12 ~ Transmission Art
Sound Artist Presentations
Independent Project sketches - discussion

4/21
Week 13 ~ Transmission Art continued
Independent Project proposals continued

4/28
Week 14 ~ Independent Project studio time

5/05
Week 15 ~ *Independent Project Presentations*

5/12
Week 16 ~ *Independent Project Presentations*

Posted by Diane Willow at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)