Whitney D. Johnson

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.

Studio Techniques is an intermediate-level course that approaches the analog recording studio and its technologies as a creative environment for sound manipulation and exploration. Beginning with the sound sample as a material basis, the course combines a detailed approach to the fundamentals of acoustics and auditory perception with thorough instruction on analog signal processing and mixing. Students produce assigned and independent projects using these sample-based analog techniques. Topics are supplemented by listening exercises and examples of various artists? works to give historical and cultural context.

Topics in acoustics and auditory perception include sound localization, spatial characteristics of sound, frequency spectrum, and dynamics and loudness. Artists and musicians whose works serve as examples include Carl Stone, Jaap Blonk, John Wall, Laetitia Sonami, Moreno Veloso, and others.

Assigned projects include generating disparate sound materials from simple sources; composing sound/music works using self-generated samples and sources; live mixing/composing using analog technologies; independent projects using technologies and strategies introduced in the course content.

Gender theory is mobilized in feminist activism toward a variety of goals. This course will offer a survey of social theories of gender and will proceed to identify them as the foundations and justifications of social movements in each wave of feminism. Theories include de Beauvoir, Crenshaw, Rubin, Schilt, and Butler. Social movements will include suffragettes, NOW, the Combahee River Collective, riot grrrl, Sisters in Islam, and transgender social movements.

This course will situate the sociological knowledge of the aesthetic ?good? in the corporeal techniques of hearing and listening, particularly when the artistic medium of sound crosses the boundaries of the brain, body, architectural space, and material objects. As auditory culture has moved from the concert hall and music venue into galleries, museums, and outdoor public spaces, cultural practitioners have been prompted to ask how bodies perceive, understand, and evaluate the sounds they encounter. With a rich literature on sound, space, and embodiment, this course will not only survey sonic works in art music and the gallery arts but also the ways that technological advancements have changed exhibition practices and the perceptual capabilities of bodies. In combination with sound studies, a nexus of social theory and phenomenology will draw out the connection between bodies and technologies.

How can we understand the non-linear history of sound material? Alongside innovation in sound production and reproduction, older media are in vogue. Just when non-human intelligence learns to make sound and music that appeal to human culture, gallery sound artists and music subcultures return to vintage instruments, such as analog synthesizers, and antiquated reproduction processes, such as tape, vinyl, radio, and compact disc.
In this studio course, we will read brief excerpts from Gilbert Ryle, Arthur Koestler, Erik Davis, Donna Haraway, and Mark Fisher to understand the sustained appeal of outmoded sound practices, with particular attention to resistant forms of (sub)cultural production. We will listen for anachronistic aesthetics among artists then and now, including Èliane Radigue, Maryanne Amacher, Don and Moki Cherry,
Psychic TV, William Basinski, and JJJJJerome Ellis.
Most of our time will be spent making sound recordings with the tools of the 'Retro Lab' including decades-old oscillators, function generators, synthesizers, and reel-to-reel tape machines. The four major assignments for the course will follow the trajectory of electronic sound production in the 20th Century. Beginning with the 'first principles' of frequency, amplitude, duration, and timbre, we will design oscillator compositions with simple waveforms. Next, we will use analog synthesizers to work with the envelope of sonic objects. The third project is devoted to timbral composition, and we will keep the principles of frequency, amplitude, and duration fixed while varying the timbre of a work beyond 'lattice-oriented' notation. Finally, we will use magnetic tape to reproduce our works without the use of a DAW, observing the affordances and limitations of this reproduction technology.

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.