Bonnie Han Jones

This course will introduce students to basic techniques of working with sound as an artistic material. As a prerequisite for many of the department?s upper level offerings, the class is designed to familiarize the student with both the technology and the historical and aesthetic background relevant to our facilities and courses, to the field of ?sound art? and experimental music in general, and to the application of sound in other disciplines (video, film, performance, installations, etc.) Equipment covered will include microphones, mixers, analog and digital audio recorders, signal processors and analog synthesizers. Hard-disk based recording and editing (ProTools) is introduced, but the focus is on more traditional analog studio technology. The physics of sound will be a recurring subject.

Examples of music and sound art, created using similar technology to that in our studios, will be played or performed and discussed in class. The listening list will vary according to the instructors? preferences. Readings are similarly set according to the instructors? syllabus: some sections employ more or less reading than others, contact specific instructors for details.

Students are expected to use studio time to complete weekly assignments, which are designed to hone technical skills and, in most cases, foster artistic innovation. Some of these projects can incorporate outside resources (such as the student?s own computers and recordings), but the emphasis is on mastering the studio.

How is hearing a form of thinking? What forms of knowledge are created through our sense of smell? What does it mean when we say that we live in an ¿hegemony of vision¿? This course will explore ways of knowing and making from our sensorium ¿ our entire sensory apparatus. Sound will serve as our sensory point of departure, and throughout the course we will frequently work with concepts of listening and vibration, expanding them into other sensorial realms. Through this class, students will develop their sensitivity to perceiving sound, touch, taste, image (light), and smell and tap into the artistic possibilities of this new awareness. Using our classroom as a laboratory we will conduct sensory experiments and develop new sensory focused techniques for performance or installation works.
The course draws on practices and theories from sound and sensory studies, sensory ethnography, embodied art practices, performance studies and perception science. Students will engage with a diverse range of readings from scholars such as Salomé Voegelin, Juhani Pallasmaa, Emily Thompson, Donna Haraway, Amber Jamilla Musser, and artists including Pauline Oliveros, Kevin Beasley, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Christine Sun Kim, and Krystal Mack.
Course work will vary but will typically include, keeping a regular, multisensory experience journal, weekly readings and short written/creative responses, collaborative ¿studies¿ in the form of short performances/installation, student-led demos/lectures. The mid-term and final projects will consist of an individual or collaborative performance and/or installation work that engages with what we have learned in the course.

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.