New Book review online

 

Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt - Andrew Simon. Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2022

 

 

 

Book review by Søren Møller Sørensen


 


 

New Book review online

 

Listening to Places. Exercises Towards Environmental Composition - Robin Parmar. Derry (Northern Ireland): Void Gallery, 2022

 

 


Book review by Marcel Cobussen



 


SOUND ON SCREEN II - HYBRID CONFERENCE, OXFORD BROOKES UNIVERSITY, 5th-6th JULY 2023 | CALL FOR PAPERS


DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: FRIDAY 24th MARCH 2023 (23:59)


Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, an indication of whether you would prefer to appear in person or online, and a brief biography of no more than 150 words to soundonscreen@outlook.com by March 24th 2023.


The second Sound on Screen conference welcomes submissions for 20-minute papers from scholars and practitioners that explore the relationship between music and/or sound and the screen. We welcome submissions from speakers at any career stage (including postgraduate MA or PhD candidates) and from a wide range of disciplines such as musicology, film and television studies, cultural studies, communications studies and so forth. The first Sound on Screen conference invited participants to take their cue from Chion (1994) and Mera et al. (2017) in drawing together ‘different practices and technologies under the same umbrella without attempting to obfuscate the differences that exist between them’. This resulted in a diverse range of topics and speakers, and allowed us to create interdisciplinary panels that brought different fields and viewpoints into fruitful dialogue with each other. We intend the second Sound on Screen conference to continue this rich discussion and so in addition to inviting any relevant paper proposals, we particularly welcome submissions that engage with the interplay between sound and music on screen, and also considerations of equality, diversity and inclusion in relation to music and sound on screen. This conference will be held in person at our Headington campus in Oxford, but hybrid options will be available to presenters and delegates.


Topics might include, but are not limited to:


• Music and sound in narrative film and/or television
• Music and sound in documentary forms
• Music and sound in videogames
• The absence of music and sound in film and television
• The relationships between music and sound
• EDI and screen industries
• Gendered music on screen
• Music and sound in animated film and television
• Audience engagement with music and sound on screen
• Sound on screen as practice: composers and/or sound design
• Sound effects and/or noise on screen
• Pre-existing music and sound on screen


The programme committee may, at our discretion, extend the conference to three days if demand deems it appropriate. If your paper is accepted, we will provide the opportunity to select your preferred presentation day, including the potential third day.


The programme committee consists of Dr. Jan Butler (Senior Lecturer in Popular Music, Oxford Brookes University), Dr. James Cateridge (Senior Lecturer in Film, Oxford Brookes University), and Dr. Matt Lawson (Senior Lecturer in Music, Oxford Brookes University), and Dr. Lindsay Steenberg (Reader in Film Studies, Oxford Brookes University).


The Conference is organised with the support of the Centre of Research in the Arts (CoRA)
Further information can be requested by contacting soundonscreen@outlook.com
Details of the first Sound on Screen conference can be found at Sound on Screen 2021.


 

 

Polyphonic landscape - Save the date
ArtEZ Professorship Theory in the Arts in collaboration with Zone2Source (platform for art, nature, and technology in the Amstelpark, Amsterdam) are pleased to invite you to the online opening seminar of Polyphonic Landscapes on Thursday 16 March 2023, 12:00 – 17:00.


(Admission free, registration required: polyphoniclandscapes.artez.nl)


Polyphonic Landscapes is an artistic research programme on sound and ecology in which 4 international artists explore the Amstelpark during a series of residencies in the Park Studio:

• Budhaditya Chattopadhyay (IN/NL)
• Yolande Harris (UK/US)
• Teemu Lehmusruusu (FI)
• Lia Mazzari (IT/UK)

Their research will result in an exhibition in and outside Het Glazen Huis in the fall of 2023.

Online opening seminar

In this first seminar, the participating artist-researchers will present their projects, after which they will
engage in an interview with an assigned critical friend. Each session will conclude with a Q&A.

Programme for the day:
12.00 – 12.15 Word of introduction
12.15 – 13.15 Budhaditya Chattopadhyay in dialogue with Sharon Stewart
13.15 – 14.15 Teemu Lehmusruusu in dialogue with Alexandra Supper
14.15 – 14.45 Break
14.45 – 15.45 Yolande Harris in dialogue with Ximena Alarcón
15.45 – 16.45 Lia Mazzari in dialogue with Ximena Alarón

Zoom link will be sent in time after your registration.

Landscaping
A growing number of scientists, scholars and artists agree that we have entered the Anthropocene, a geological era in which humankind has become a major force in shaping the Earth. In this context the concept of landscape acquires a new urgency, as well as a new meaning: Where landscape historically has often been thought of as a picturesque vista or a passive backdrop for human protagonists, contemporary artists and theorists conceptualize landscape not so much as a noun but as a verb. The latter expresses a continuous flux of becoming in which both human and more-than-human agencies are entangled in a polyphony of 'world making', i.e., landscaping.

Listening as research
In the artistic research project Polyphonic Landscapes sound artists Budhaditya Chattopadhyay (IN, NL), Yolande Harris (UK, US), Teemu Lehmusruusu (FI) and Lia Mazzari (IT, UK) enquire into the question of how sound and the act of listening can contribute to a more active understanding of landscapes. In other words: How can our sense of hearing foster a more embodied, inclusive, relational, and reciprocal connectivity to our environment, the latter being ecologically understood as a process in which various life forms, materials, energy flows and temporalities are involved?

The underlying goal of the project is to gain more insight into how artistic research(-ers) produce new entrances to layers of knowledge that are not, or hardly, accessed by regular academic practices. The ways in which the artists give shape to their explorations and how they demonstrate the public aspects of research are an important point of focus.

Polyphonic Landscapes operates at three levels:


1. Sonic research into the urgent relation between nature and culture
2. Research into the agency of both theory and practice in artistic research
3. Research into the ecology of the senses and the multisensorial

Researchers and location
In Polyphonic Landscapes these questions will be explored by four internationally acclaimed sound artists. Their one-year-long artistic research will result into the creation of new sound works that facilitate embodied and situated ways of knowing and experiencing landscapes. To foster a fruitful cross-pollination between artistic practice and critical theory, researchers of the ArtEZ Professorship Theory in the Arts (led by Peter Sonderen, project leader Joep Christenhusz) and Zone2Source director Alice Smits will act as a theoretical sounding board, alongside other experts.

The artists will focus their research on the specific landscape of the fifty-year-old Amstelpark where Zone2Source is located. The Amstelpark, designed for the Floriade in 1972, is a hybrid environment in which the urban and natural are closely intertwined. The proceedings of their investigations will be shared during three public research seminars. To conclude the project, the connected sound works will be exhibited by Zone2Source from mid-September through mid-November 2023.

National Research Agenda (NWA)
Polyphonic Landscapes is part of the Art Route NWA-project Bit by bit, or not at all within the scheme ‘Small Projects’ which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). In this project several cluster questions will be addresses that were posed by the National Research Agenda. For instance: ‘What is quality of life?’ and ‘What does art mean to people?’.

Polyphonic Landscapes seeks to find new perspectives on these questions by means of artistic research that inquires after the relationship between nature and culture, and the position of the human and non-human in particular. It endorses the NWA Art Route’s view that, in the face of global climate breakdown, art can be an alternative way of knowledge production that sidesteps dichotomies between subject and object, knowing and experiencing, human and non-human, in the face of climate breakdown.


 

 

 

Journal of Sonic Studies: New issue online - Voice and Listening as Techniques for Political Life 

 

https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/558896/1937426

 

Guest Co-Editors: Fadia Dakka, Kirsten Forkert, Ed McKeon, Jill Robinson and Ian Sergeant 

 

Contributors:Ximena Alarcón-Díaz & Ed McKeon, Sarah Amsler, Kate Lacey, Sipho Ndlovu and Ryan Sinclair,  Rajni Shah, Rodrigo Toro and Donovan Hernández, and Tom Western.

 

We are launching today this special issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies on ‘Voice and Listening as Techniques for Political Life’: a forum for contributions across cultural studies, performance studies, political geography, social science, deep listening, sound art, and performance poetry.

 

When we staged our one-day symposium on this topic at Birmingham City University in March 2021, we were marking the anniversary of the UK’s first lockdown during the global pandemic. With tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths already recorded and unbearable strain on hospitals, doctors, and other public services, it felt urgently important to take time out with others to both gain a better understanding of the current situation as well as to discover strategies for action and renewal.

 

Perhaps it was the enforced isolation and withdrawal from public space that prompted our attention towards matters of voice and listening. Congregating with others had been restricted by law. Social media began to function as a kind of proxy or ersatz political arena, yet this mediation of everyday political practice brought with it a host of distortions. . As we know only too well, algorithms amplify some opinions and diminish others, demanding our prolonged attention with distractions, rage, and outrage.

 

We are grateful to the editors of the Journal for giving us this opportunity to pause and reflect further, to invite a global array of contributions, and to share this with a broader public. This is an urgent discussion to be had and we invite you to take part. In addition to reading and listening to the different pieces, do join us for our live hybrid launch event on Friday 10 March, 4-5:30pm GMT (face-to-face at BCU and online on Zoom). Communication is not a one-way street and we want to listen and hear your thoughts as well as to embrace practices of voicing and listening that reflect the values that this special issue is designed to promote.

 

Online: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/journal-of-studies-special-issue-launch-online-tickets-537829712147

 

In Person: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/journal-of-sonic-studies-special-issue-launch-in-person-tickets-537897364497


 


Assistant Professor in Sound Studies and Sound Art (0.2 FTE)

 

The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) is looking for a Assistant Professor in Sound Studies and Sound Art. ACPA is one of the seven institutes of Leiden University's Faculty of Humanities, and originated from a partnership with the University of the Arts The Hague. One of the new ACPA initiatives is to establish a Sound Studies Center which will concentrate on four key topics: the development of the discourse around sound; creating sound artworks; consultancy work on sound policies; education in and through auditory culture.

 

Key responsibilities
The new Assistant Professor will take on the following responsibilities commensurate with career stage:

 

  • co-developing a newly established Sound Studies Center
  • further developing the discourse on sound studies and sound art
  • developing sound artworks and/or helping to facilitate sound art in and around Leiden
  • stimulating the role of sound artists in the (re)designing of public (urban) places

 

Selection criteria
The candidate we are seeking:

 

  • has a PhD in sound studies, sound art, or a field relevant for this position
  • has a good overview of contemporary practices and discourses on sound and sound art
  • has published on sound and sound art
  • has demonstrable experience in organizing sonic events
  • has experience in applying for grants and other forms of subsidies
  • can act as a co-supervisor of PhD candidates in sound art/artistic research
  • has good proficiency in English and preferable also the Dutch language
  • is ultimately able and willing to teach a course on sound studies and sound art

 

Furthermore:

 

  • Non-Dutch-speaking candidates will be required to acquire proficiency in Dutch to level B1 within two years of taking up the appointment. The candidate must demonstrate sufficient progress toward attaining this level of Dutch acquisition by the time of the probationary review. The institute facilitates Dutch-language learning with reimbursement of costs and teaching relief for an approved training programme;
  • Upon appointment, depending on experience and formal qualifications, the successful applicant is required to obtain a nationally recognised University Teaching Qualification (BKO); the candidate must demonstrate sufficient progress toward the attainment of the BKO by the time of probationary review.

 

Our Faculty/Institute
The Faculty of Humanities has a wealth of expertise in fields of philosophy, history, art history, the arts, literature, linguistics, religious studies, and area studies of virtually the entire world. The Faculty offers staff and students from the Netherlands and abroad an inspiring international working environment and opportunities for diversity and innovation. The research at the Faculty is organised within seven institutes More detailed information can be found on the website of the Faculty of Humanities.

 

ACPA is a research institute of the Faculty of Humanities at Leiden University. In addition to research in and through the arts, ACPA offers academic education for art students in The Hague and art education for students at Leiden University. Furthermore, the institute organizes cultural events where art and academia meet. More information about ACPA can be found on its website.

 

Terms and conditions
We offer a part-time (0.2 FTE, 8 hours per week) post for the period of 18 months from 1 April 2023, or as soon as possible thereafter, with the possibility of a permanent contract conditional on performance and funding. Salary range, depending on training and experience, is from € 3.974,-  to € 5.439,-  (pay scale 11 in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities) before tax per month, based on a full-time appointment.

 

Leiden University offers an attractive benefits package with additional holiday (8%) and end-of-year bonuses (8.3%), training and career development, and sabbatical leave. Our individual choices model offers some freedom to assemble a personalised set of terms and conditions. Candidates from outside the Netherlands may be eligible for a substantial tax break. There is a Dual Career Programme for international spouses; for further details, see https://www.medewerkers.universiteitleiden.nl/po/international-staff/social-life-and-settling-in/your-spouses-career---the-dual-career-programme-dcp.

 

 


 



New book reviews online

 

Kolonialgeschichte hören: Das Echo gewaltsamer Wissensproduktion in historischen Tondokumenten aus dem südlichen Afrika - Anette Hoffmann. Vienna: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2020



Listening After Nature. Field Recording, Ecology, Critical Practice - Mark Peter Wright. New York: Bloomsbury, 2022

 

Book reviews by Marcel Cobussen


 


1st CALLIII International Conference on Sonorities Research (CIPS) – Sounds of the end of the world


Dates: June 07, 2023 to June 09, 2023


Location: Fluminense Federal University – Niterói/RJ – Brazil


During the last decades, global changes that can be threats to human existence itself have emerged – threats caused by ourselves, as theories of the Anthropocene show. Climate change, pandemics, food shortage and wars are the result of brutal economic exploitation of the planet as well as struggles for the control of natural resources and the denial of the ongoing crisis of the planet.


The end of the world, of course, refers not just to nuclear or climate disasters, but also to the end of a worldview, models of knowledge or even cognitive, social or affective patterns. A new world emerges outlining its creative powers and its dystopias of control, automation and extraction of natural resources necessary for technological development.


How do sound and music cultures take part, articulate, face and/or politicize themselves in the face of late capitalism and the Anthropocene? What do certain sounds and certain songs teach us in the face of situations that don't seem to have any other alternative but to accelerate? Which sounds need to be heard, which are being ignored and which denounce the urgency of the end of the world? Last, but not least, what does it mean to listen to the end of the world? In this sense, the III International Conference on Sonorities Research (CIPS) - Sounds of the End of the World seeks to highlight the different sonorous aspects of our relationship with the world and with the transformations through which it has passed.

The III CIPS welcomes proposals for academic presentations and artistic performances. Some of the perspectives, but not the only ones, that interest this conference are:


1. Sound ecologies: Anthropocene, creation and entropy


2. Sound identities: Post-coloniality; Decoloniality; afro-futurisms; Amerindian Perspectivism


3. Technologies and production models: the late capitalism's sound project


4. Collective fear, emotions, media and music


5. Modes of listening, signs and sound affects in times of capitalist realism


6. Struggles, Resistances, Insurgencies: Sound, listening and survival in a world at risk


Submission of abstracts: until December 16, 2022


The 2nd call will soon be published with guidelines and e-mail for submissions.




Journal of Sonic Studies 23 online


The editors of the Journal of Sonic Studies are proud to announce that its 23th issue is online. This special issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies, edited by guest editor Diana Grgurić, brings together scholars and artists in exploring the acoustic culture of the Balkans. From a variety of theoretical perspectives broadly set in the interdisciplinary field of sonic studies, the authors contribute with articles of analytical and artistic provenance, investigating the sonic practices, their perceptions and memories, as well as the socio-political organization of music and sound in this specific geographical region in Europe.


Table of Contents:


Sounds of the Balkan – Editoria - l
Diana Grgurić

Soundscapes of Stalinism: Acoustical Experiences in Bucharest in the 1940s and 1950s - Błażej Brzostek

A Spectral Geology - D.A. Calf

Listening against "The Transition"Theodore Teichman

What is the Affect of a Merry Genre? The Sonic Organization of Slovenian Folk Pop as a (Non)Balkan Sound - Robert Bobnič, Natalija Majsova, and Jasmina Šepetavc

The Right to Polished Sound: Age and Class in the Viennese Balkan Music Scene - Ondřej Daniel

Contextualities of Listening to Soundscapes: The Past and The Present Converging in Sarajevo - Maja Zećo

 

Сарајево concrète - Lasse-Marc Riek


 

 

New book review online


Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts - Gascia OuzounianMIT Press, 2021

 

Book review by Ezra J. Teboul



 

 

Online course in sound and audio offered by Barry Truax

Following two very successful previous versions of this course, Barry Truax is offering to mentor another group of participants in a 12 week online course in sound and audio, starting May 12 and going to July 28, 2022.

 

The course will be systematically going through the Tutorial associated with the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology located on the WSP Database, and covering two modules most weeks, one in acoustics, the other in electroacoustics. Meetings will be once a week on Zoom for 2-1/2 hours to discuss these topics, scheduled for 10:30 am – 1 pm PDT on Thursdays.

 

This course will be useful as professional development to those wanting to teach sound and audio, as well as graduate students and others who would like to broaden their knowledge across multiple disciplines. If anyone wants to take the course for academic credit, they need to set this up at their own institution.

 

The particular strengths (and challenges) of the Tutorial are the parallel modules in acoustics and electroacoustics that emphasize their often ignored links. Participants may be more experienced in one or the other areas, but this course should allow for imbalances in knowledge to be addressed.

 

The Tutorial and Handbook files will be downloaded by each individual for ease of access. The preferred browsers are Safari and Firefox (those with the Catalina OS and Chrome are likely to encounter problems). Additional software for experimentation will be made available.

 

The meeting time will be Thursday morning at 10:30 Pacific time, for North and South Americans, which will be the evening for those in Europe. Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that participants from other parts of the world would be able to participate as easily given the time differences; however, a Pacific Rim version with Susan Frykberg (who is based in Australia/NewZealand) may be available and will involve a modest fee (contact sfrykberg@gmail.com) if you are interested.

 

Those interested who have the time (you will probably need a minimum of 8 hours a week for study, apart from whatever time would be spent with the personal listening and studio experiments), please contact Barry Truax at truax@sfu.ca, also if you have any questions or would like to view the Tutorial in advance, which is recommended.



New release by Joseph Nechvatal

After having published the decades-spanning cassette retrospective Selected Sound Works (1981-2021) last year, on March 14, 2022, Pentiments is releasing here Joseph Nechvatal’s The Viral Tempest double vinyl LP and Bandcamp tracks. 

 

The audio on the first disk – made in collaboration with Andrew Deutsch – is OrlandO et la tempete viral symphOny redux suite. It uses an anonymous reading of Virginia Woolf's Orlando as a type of sonic signature that Nechvatal’s virus-modeled artificial life audio material reanimates. The second piece, pour finir avec le jugement de dieu viral symphOny plague, serves as a brother suite to the first and instead uses Antonin Artaud's controversial recorded performance of his radio play To Have Done with the Judgement of God as the sonic figure. 

 

The LP is in an edition 200 with a full color gatefold jacket, full color labels, an 11x11" 12-page full color exhibition catalog documenting the paintings featured in Nechvatal’s 2020 Orlando et la tempête art exhibition at Galerie Richard (Paris) and an 8.5x11” insert featuring an interview with him by S.K.G. Noise Admiration. 


 


New book review online



The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies - Michael Bull and Marcel Cobussen. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020

 

Book review by Vincent Meelberg


 


ARC Session Sounding Sonic Materialism by Academy of Creative and Performing Arts - Leiden University

 


On December 6, 2021 Marcel Cobussen hosted a special event in Studio Loos in The Hague (the Netherlands) on Sonic Materialism. Featuring the American trombone player, theoretician, and instrument builder Kevin Fairbairn, the Welsh composer and improviser Richard Barrett, and the Argentinian sound artist and composer Gabriel Paiuk, the event was comprised of 3 lecture-performances (and a brief introduction by Cobussen), exploring how Sonic Materialism can sound, how sound as sound can contribute to a more theoretical discourse on (New) Materialism.

 

A registration of this event can be found here


 


New book review online

 

 


Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution - Martin Spinelli and Lance Dann. New York: Bloomsbury, 2019

 

Book review by Jeremy Wade Morris



 

Free E-book | Negotiating Noise: Across places, spaces and disciplines

 

 


Negotiating Noise Across Places, Spaces and Disciplinesbrings together writing by 20 researchers from across Europe and South-East Asia on the slippery but fascinating topic of noise. What is noise, where can it be heard, and what should we do with it? These questions are answered in very different ways in this book from the perspectives of research in ar­chitecture, anthropology, cultural history and theory, ethno- and his­torical musicology, digital culture, linguistics, medicine, musical com­position, sociology, sound design, sound art, and urban planning. Drawing on transdisciplinary conversations at two workshops – one at Lund University and one at the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus – the book bridges professional as well as cultural divides. It sets out current research trajectories in the different disciplines involved in researching noise through a series of Position Papers. It also brings these perspectives together through a series of jointly authored Manifestos for the future.

 

The book can be downloaded via this link:

https://books.lub.lu.se/catalog/view/115/132/1287-1


 


Sonic Aggregator project by Tuned City and Soundtrackcity


 

Sonic Aggregator is a collaborative project of Tuned City and Soundtrackcity about ‘sonic placemaking’ hosted by ABA Air Berlin Alexanderplatz at Haus der Statistik in Berlin. With Peter Cusack, Vanessà Heer, Michiel Huijsman, Udo Noll. Sonic Aggregator has been long in the making and postponed several times due to covid measures, but finally this project is about to happen! The official opening is on 17 September. In the week thereafter presentations, workshops, soundwalks and a salon are open to the public. Have a look at the programme make reservations!

 

opening Sonic Aggregator: Friday 17. September 17:00
AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz, Haus der Statistik 
Otto-Braun-Straße 70-72
Berlin, 10178 Germany

 

The opening of Sonic Aggregator is part of ABA Air Berlin Alexanderplatz programme on Berlin Art Week 2021.

Sonic Aggregator is financially supported by Creative Industries Fund NL and the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

 

Who has the right to decide how our urban environment should sound?

This question is at the heart of the Sonic Aggregator project, in which everyone is invited to research the sound environment of HAUS DER STATISTIK from 17 to 27 September and speculate on the sounds of the future city. How does it sound now? How should it sound? Who or what determines that?

To enable this research and speculation we will install the listening art object Sonic Aggregator on site. The object - a modular, sculptural installation - invites people to linger, listen and interact, transporting and conveying the idea of urban sound, like a kind of Trojan horse, directly in the urban environment. While sitting in the object's acoustically perfected semi-open sound space, visitors can virtually navigate through a defined part of the city via touchscreen and immerse themselves in the respective sound worlds.



Free online course in sound and audio this fall offered by Barry Truax

 

Following a very successful summer version of this course, I am offering to mentor another group of participants in a 12 week online course in sound and audio, starting around Sept. 9 and going to Nov. 25.

 

We will be systematically going through the Tutorial associated with the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology located on the WSP Database, and covering two modules most weeks, one in acoustics, the other in electroacoustics. We’ll meet once a week on Zoom for 2-1/2 hours to discuss these topics.

 

This course will be useful as professional development to those wanting to teach sound and audio, as well as graduate students and others who would like to broaden their knowledge across multiple disciplines. If anyone wants to take the course for academic credit, they need to set this up at their own institution.

 

The particular strengths (and challenges) of the Tutorial are the parallel modules in acoustics and electroacoustics that emphasize their often ignored links. I would expect participants to be more experienced in one or the other areas, but this course should allow for imbalances in knowledge to be addressed.

 

The Tutorial and Handbook files will be downloaded by each individual for ease of access. The preferred browsers are Safari and Firefox (those with the Catalina OS and Chrome are likely to encounter problems). Additional software for experimentation will be made available.

 

A meeting time will be arranged to suit the participants, but it will likely be Thursday morning at 10:30 Pacific time, for North and South Americans, which will be the evening for those in Europe. Unfortunately, it’s doubtful that participants from other parts of the world would be able to participate as easily given the time differences; however, a Pacific Rim version with Susan Frykberg is also being planned.

 

Those interested who have the time (I estimate you will need a minimum of 8 hours a week for study, apart from whatever time would be spent with the personal listening and studio experiments), please contact me at truax@sfu.ca, also if you have any questions or would like to view the Tutorial in advance.

 

Here’s some of the feedback from the summer version of the course:

 

[The course] was an invaluable experience for me, and I really am grateful for the opportunity

 

… there's *a lot* to (re)learn and review from the Handbook and the Tutorials

 

The course completely changed my understanding of sound and my relation to it.

 

It was a great experience and it refreshed knowledge and brought new one, and I enjoyed the huge and important research you have put together.

 

It really allowed a lot of concepts that I vaguely understood to solidify and gain clarity, and it also revealed many ideas and phenomena that I was really clueless about. The information on the electroacoustic side of things really helped me understand things that I aurally understood, but never technically really grasped. It's given me a lot more confidence to tackle processing and effects.

 

Barry Truax

Professor Emeritus

Simon Fraser University



HOME AND COVID-19: Dwelling and belonging in pandemic times - CALL FOR PAPERS AND CREATIVE RESPONSES

 

A two-day symposium, 24 - 25 November 2021

 

The Museum of the Home, London, and online 

 

How has home changed during the COVID-19 pandemic? 

How have people experienced home in different and unequal ways? 

How could home change for the better in a post-pandemic future?

Researchers, artists, curators, community workers, faith leaders and others are invited to submit proposals for 20-minute papers on, and creative responses to, Home and COVID-19 for a two-day symposium at the Museum of the Home, London. 

We welcome proposals that consider home in different places and contexts, and in a multiplicity of ways, including: domestic spaces and practices; home and belonging in relation to the neighbourhood, city, nation and/or diaspora; home, dwelling and (im)mobility; home as embodied, sensory, emotional and material; and home as a site of inclusion, exclusion and inequality.  

 

The symposium is convened by the Stay Home Stories project (@stayhomestories), funded by the AHRC as part of the UKRI rapid response to COVID-19. The event will include the opportunity to view artist Alaa Alsaraji’s room installation on Home and COVID-19 and material collected as part of the Museum’s Stay Home rapid response collecting project.

 

Proposals are invited on any aspect of Home and COVID-19. We welcome paper proposals and creative responses in a variety of forms. Some sessions will focus on key themes addressed by the Stay Home Stories project, including:  

 

  • The politics of home
  • Home, migration and ethnicity
  • Home, religion and interfaith work
  • Home, children and young people
  • Creative and curatorial practice
  • Home, connection and disconnection
  •  

Please submit proposals of up to 200 words and biographies of up to 100 words by 17 September 2021 to Dr Miri Lawrence (m.lawrence@qmul.ac.uk). The programme will be confirmed in early October.


 

 

 


Nameless: 20 Years of Sound Edition - Pauline Oliveros is Live

 

 

Explore the archive of Nameless Sound through never-before-released audio, video performances, and other ephemera from the 20-year vault. We are very proud to present our fourth edition, which focuses on Houston’s own composer, accordionist, humanitarian and the creator of Deep Listening ®, Pauline Oliveros.

 

Pauline Oliveros came to know future Nameless Sound Founding Director David Dove through her mother Edith Gutierrez, who worked with Dove as a telemarketer at The Houston Ballet. Over several years, an informal mentorship developed. Eventually, Oliveros invited Dove to start a branch of her Deep Listening Institute (originally named the Pauline Oliveros Foundation) in Houston. In 2001, The Pauline Oliveros Foundation Houston began operations. In 2006, we decided to branch off and form the independent non-profit organization, Nameless Sound.

 

The Pauline Oliveros edition explores the relationship between Oliveros and the Houston organization she encouraged, mentored and inspired. Ten never-before-released audio and video recordings feature performances of Oliveros’ scores as well as concerts by Oliveros with Susie Ibarra, Susan Alcorn, Maria Chavez, Tom Bickley, David Dove, Sandy Ewen, Chris Cogburn, and Ricardo Arias, among others. Written essays on Oliveros and Nameless Sound by Ione, Maria Chavez, Ricardo Arias and David Dove. To the history of the future.

 

Keep listening and explore our archive with editions featuring Joe McPheeMaggie Nicols, and Alvin Fielder, at Nameless: 20 Years of Sound.

 


 


The Listening Biennial July 15 – August 1, 2021

 

Errant Sound, Rungestrasse 20 10179 Berlin, plus participating institutions, venues, and collectives

 

www.listeningbiennial.net

 

Within today’s intensely polarized environment, in which political and social debate often tend toward conflict or impasse, might listening enact an intervention? While focus is often placed on making statements, capturing history, and the importance of free speech, listening is radically key to facilitating dialogue, understanding, and social transformation. To listen is to extend the boundaries of the familiar, the recognized, and the known. In addition, listening affords more egalitarian, decolonized, and ecologically-attuned relations, staggering exclusionary systems and human exceptionalism by way of empathetic, attentional, and morethan-human orientations: to hear beyond the often fixed schema of self and other. Listening is a power, it may open and hold, it may support and attend, and it may afford escape and deep friendship. And yet listening is greatly undervalued and neglected across society.

 

The Listening Biennial draws attention to listening as a relational capacity, a philosophical and political proposition, a creative practice, and research framework. From radical empathy to weak ontology, poetic refusal to diasporic resistance, eavesdropping to intimate envelopment, listening wields a creative and critical force that may contribute to maintaining the diversity of our social adventure.

 

The Listening Biennial brings together an international group of participating artists, musicians, and researchers, as well as institutions and collectives across the globe, to foster questions and experiences of listening. The Listening Biennial is conceived as a global project and aims at a curatorial construct of shared resonances and polyvocal manifestations. This includes the exhibition of audio works, experimental performances, and discursive events presented across a constellation of collaborating institutions and venues, where listening and locality are accentuated, and cultural specificities contribute to a greater ecology of attention. From critical storytelling, experimental noise, and musical rapture to acoustic care, interspecies contact, and environments of sounded matter, the Biennial aims at fostering a listening world.

 

Participating artists:

 

Octavio Aguilar & Diego Martínez Guillén (Mexico), Khyam Allami (Iraq/UK), Jasmina AlQaisi (Romania/Germany), Carlos Amorales (Mexico), Wah-yan Au (Hong Kong), Tania Candiani & Bárbara Lázara (Mexico), Antoine Chessex & Mélia Roger (Switzerland/France), Michele Chu (Hong Kong), Bidisha Das (India), Yannick Dauby (France/Taiwan), Emcsi (Hungary), Yolande Harris (UK/US), Jeph Jerman (US), Khaled Kaddal (Egypt), Orsolya Kaincz (Hungary), Nandita Kumar & Joseph Kamaru (India/Kenya), Isuru Kumarasinghe & Sara Mikolai (Sri Lanka), Sharon Lee (Hong Kong), Sandra Monterroso & Manuel Estrella Chí (Guatemala/Mexico), Ziad Moukarzel (Lebanon), Alecia Neo (Singapore), Angel Nevarez & Valerie Tevere (US), Daniela Medina Poch (Colombia/Germany), Surabhi Saraf (India/US), Mene Savasta (Argentina), Wantanee Siripattananuntakul (Thailand), Ish Sherawat (India), Fernando Vigueras (Mexico), Raheleh (Minoosh) Zoromodinia (Iran/US).

 

Participating organizations, venues, and collectives:

 

Errant Sound, Berlin / Ayer, Guadalajara / National Arts Festival, Makhanda / Aerial, Bergen / Space21, Kurdistan / École d’art Université Laval, Quebec City / Liquid Architecture, Melbourne / AMEE, Madrid / Klank.ist, Istanbul / Culture Monks, Kolkata / TAFMA, Nagaland / Investigaciones del Futuro, Buenos Aires / Generator Projects, Dundee / Noise N’ Roses, Budapest / 1983, Hong Kong / The Cube Project Space, Taipei

 

A related performance and discourse program is presented at Errant Sound, Berlin, on July 21st, 24th, 26st, and 31st, featuring local and international artists and scholars working through a range of approaches and topics, including Mladen Dolar and Salomé Voegelin. This includes the launch of The Listening Academy, an intensive research workshop on listening, sonic practices, and sound studies, occurring simultaneously in Berlin and London, and led by Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Lucia Farinati, Brandon LaBelle, and Carla J. Maier with Rayya Badran and Luz Maria Sanchez.

 

The Listening Biennial Founding initiator: Brandon LaBelle Curators: Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Brandon LaBelle, Israel Martínez, Yang Yeung Collaborative partners: Florencia Curci, Hardi Kurda, Gentian Meikleham, Alexandre StOnge, Lucia Udvardyova, James Webb Design: fliegende Teilchen, Berlin; Kristin Rosch

 

Support from: Oficina de Autonomia; Norwegian Artistic Research Programme / The Art Academy, Bergen; Errant Sound, Berlin; Errant Bodies Press, Berlin.




 


Call for Papers - Echoes of a Distance: Music, Protest and Community in Confined Times

 

 


How can sound and music participate in protest without access to the streets and spaces of collective music creation? How does a collective sound when there is no actual gathering possible? Alternatively, when social movements take to the streets or occupy a territory despite public health regulations – as has happened on many occasions around the globe since the beginning of the pandemic (Black Lives Matter, Wet’suwet’en resistance, Belarus, Poland, Chile, Myanmar, The Netherlands, to mention only few) – what has changed on a sonic level? How can sound and music testify to the ways our current isolation has affected our capacity to collectively organize? And in this context, what can sound-based practices grounded in improvisation bring to the ongoing social and political struggles?

 

In order to understand the political impact of the potentialities opened up by music creation in times of curfews and restrictions on the assembly of physical bodies, the International Institute of Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) at McGill University invites researchers and creators to contribute to two days of study November 19-20, 2021.

 

There is a growing interest in the relations between music, sound and social resistance in varied artistic, academic and activist milieus (Fischlin & Heble 2020, Gendron-Blais 2020, Labelle 2018, Rector & Ernest 2017, Born, Lewis & Straw 2017, DeLaurenti 2016). But the eruption of the pandemic has shaken many of the assumptions underlying these relations. This international online event aims to address how our new global situation is affecting how sound and social resistance relate.

 

We conceive of music, protest and community very widely, and accordingly think of this event as a meeting point for artists, activists and academics to reflect and share perspectives on these issues. Potential topics of research may include, but are not limited to:

 

• Social impacts of the strategies of collective music creation during lockdown;

 

• Sonic dimension of demonstrations in the COVID-era;

 

• Music creation inspired by/related to social movements in times of confinement;

 

• Political significance of soundscapes emptied of their human presences;

 

• Telematic performances motivated by social and political struggles;

 

• Affective dimensions of imposed distancing, on a sonic and political level;

 

• The transformation of the perceptual modalities of sound in relation to the pandemic;

 

Following the interdisciplinary mission of IICSI, the event welcomes conventional textbased communications, research-creation projects, performances and artworks of various forms, and various hybrid propositions between these poles. Proposals (in English or in French) should include a short bio (250 words max.) and an abstract and/or a presentation of the artistic project (500 words max). Any project that does not only include text-based presentations should also provide links giving access to excerpts of the work to be presented (or, if the proposed work have not been presented yet, to previous work in a similar media). Please include the proposed duration of your contribution, recognizing that there will be limited time for the whole event, and that we hope to minimize “Zoom burnout” on the part of participants and attendees.

 

Deadline for proposal: May 28

 

Proposals should be sent by email to Eric Lewis (eric.lewis@mcgill.ca) and Hubert Gendron-Blais (hubert.gendron-blais@mail.mcgill.ca), with the mention “Echoes of a Distance” in the title.

 

Note: If public health guidelines and related logistical concerns allow, there may be the possibility of having some live presentations.


 

Call for Papers: 2nd International Conference on Sonorities Research – CIPS

 

We invite researchers from all areas to submit proposals for the 2nd International Conference on Sonorities Research – CIPSto be held online between June 9 and 11, 2021. Just as its first edition, the second CIPS encourages the integration of different fields of knowledge related to sound and its practices.


The theme of this edition is “Borderline Sonorities,” which emphasizes the different relations between both musical and sound practices assimilated and crystallized in different social, political and historical contexts, as well as practices that, by many reasons, are either excluded or considered secondary within the current globalized model of mediatic production and circulation.


The six working groups (WG/GT) aim at comprising different perspectives: the relation between sounds and spaces; the different uses of technology; decolonial, feminist, non humanist perspectives etc.


This edition, exceptionally, will be held online due to the current worldwide health conditions.


Each WG is proposed and organized by researchers of different institutions from Brazil, Portugal and Canada.


A specific call for artistic works/presentations will be soon announced, just as in the first edition, but this time adapted for the online format.


ABSTRACT SUBMISSION Abstracts must be submitted by March 31 to the email cips.sonoridades@gmail.com in .doc (or .docx) formats, stating in the subject of the email “II CIPS”, followed by the intended WG (the indication of the WG in the “subject” field is mandatory).


The abstract must be formatted in Times New Roman font, Body 12, spacing 1.5. The file must contain, in this order:

 

● Proposal title;

● Authors and their respective e-mails and institutional affiliation (or main activity);

● Summary of up to 500 words;

● Three to five keywords;

● Intended WG.


Abstracts can be sent in Portuguese, Spanish or English. Some WG will conduct moderation in only two of these languages, but this is indicated in the group's description.


Visit the website www.sonoridades.net or follow our next circulars for more information.


 

 

New Book review online

 

 

The Political Possibility of Sound: Fragments of Listening - Salomé Voegelin. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019


Reviewed by Sharon Stewart


 

 

Nameless Sound, Houston-based presenter of experimental music and community arts programs celebrates its 20-year history through an exclusive release of their online archive project, Nameless: 20 Years of Sound

 

Starting on January 25, in commemoration of its 20th anniversary,  Nameless Sound will embark on the yearlong project   Nameless: 20 Years of Sound. Through monthly editions, the online exploration of Nameless Sound’s history will offer a wealth of new writing and archival materials. On the 4th Monday of every month, a new edition will feature a particular theme or an artist who has left a sonic and social imprint on the networks of Nameless Sound audiences, musicians, and youth. Editions will be posted to Nameless Sound’s website at www.namelesssound.org. Many music fans are likely to be drawn to this project for its abundance of rare audio and never-before-seen video featuring some of the most important names in experimental music including Pauline Oliveros, Joe McPhee, Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Maggie Nicols, Susie Ibarra, Susan Alcorn, and Loren Connors among others.  Nameless: 20 Years of Sound will also provide rare glimpses into Creative Music Communities, Nameless Sound’s pioneering workshop program that engages youth through music improvisation in Houston public schools, homeless shelters, refugee programs and community centers. The mission of Nameless Sound is to present the best of international contemporary music and to support the exploration of new methods in arts education.

 

On January 25, we commence the project with a spotlight on Joe McPhee. The saxophonist and trumpet player is one of the most beloved voices in creative music. Known for his expressive and ecstatic sound that extends directly from the human voice, McPhee is also known for a generous and open mind that is not afraid to experiment outside of idiom or convention. McPhee has inspired Houston listeners since his first performance in the city with Arthur Doyle in 1998 (the first ever concert presented by Nameless Sound Founding Director David Dove). In 2005, McPhee was the inaugural recipient of Nameless Sound’s Resounding Vision Award. In 2010, he and John Butcher were the first musicians Nameless Sound presented at The Hill of James Magee, the enigmatic art installation constructed in a remote area of the West Texas desert. In 2017, he performed for the memorial and birthday concert for composer and Nameless Sound mentor Pauline Oliveros. In between all of that, he blew through town for a range performances and projects, including engagements with the youth in Nameless Sound’s community programs. On January 25, we invite you to journey with us through the reflections and resonances of Joe McPhee’s Houston encounters. 

 

Nameless Sound Founding Director David Dove, “Since our founding, Nameless Sound has been focused on a unique program of creative and experimental listening and sounding experiences for a range of communities as diverse as Houston itself. Though Nameless Sound is one of the only consistent regional presenters of this music and is distinct nationally for its community programs, we have flown under the radar of wider attention from international fans and press. I hope that this project will not only provide a treasure trove of archival media for fans who love the music. But I also hope that it can help to share the story of a generation of listeners and soundmakers from the US’s most diverse city, and the visiting artists who have left their mark on those listeners and helped to cultivate those soundmakers.”  

 

About Nameless Sound

Nameless Sound began in 2001 in Houston as a branch of the Pauline Oliveros Foundation (now Deep Listening Institute), then formed its own independent non-profit organization in 2006. A concert presenter of experimental music, improvisation, jazz, and sound art, Nameless Sound is unique for the community-based projects that make up the foundation of the organization. In addition to introducing Houston audiences to many of the most influential international names in experimental music, Nameless Sound has designed and implemented a far-reaching workshop program that employs a pedagogy of music improvisation to serve youth in a wide range of Houston sites. Nameless Sound’s open youth workshop at MECA (an after-school arts program) has helped to cultivate a generation of Houston experimental musicians such as abstract turntablist and sound artist Maria Chavez, rapper and member of The Young Mothers, Jawwaad Taylor, guitar experimentalist Sandy Ewen, and many more. Nameless Sound has been the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Brown Foundation, The Simmons Foundation, The Joan Hohlt and Roger Wich Foundation, Texas Commission for the Arts, Houston Arts Alliance, Houston Endowment, and the BMI Foundation.

 

For more on Nameless Sound’s history, go to  https://www.namelesssound.org/about/history.



Journal of Sonic Studies 20 online

JSS 20 is delighted to offer you eight exhibitions, a small cross-section of current research taking place in sound studies. In this issue, the reader can explore the sound worlds of the Baschet brothers’ Odontophones or follow an (embodied) investigation of the textured sound fields of Éliane Radigue’s sonic works. 

 

Take the sharply hooked turns to the Source Bleue in Tiznit, Morocco, and experience the sonic thresholds that gently mark or guide your experience. Ponder the tragic disruptions of Birdstrike through an audio documentary by Jacob Smith or be confronted with the use of noise and silence as powerful tools of disruption or coercion in the sound sculptures of Adam Basanta.

 

Take a guess at what lies within Marcel Duchamp’s With Hidden Noise (1916) or observe the physiological effects of durational listening to the sounds of Arctic winter winds featured on YouTube.

 

Finally, and perhaps most pertinent to our current situation, our readers can also consider the suggestions of Braxton Boren on how we might reduce low frequency noise transmission to our neighbours in adjacent apartment units. Perhaps with a few modifications, we can ease the sonic disturbances within this strange version of “living together apart” and improve the overall sonic liveability for all those living and working at home in close quarters.

 

Table of Contents and contributors to JSS20:

 

 



Online Tutorial for sound terminology, theory and practice, across multiple disciplines by Barry Truax

 

 

Below is a message from Barry Truax:

 

I am delighted to announce completion of my comprehensive online Tutorial for sound terminology, theory and practice, across multiple disciplines, that I hope will be of interest to those of you contemplating online teaching this coming academic year.

 

The Tutorial is designed to function in parallel with the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology, for which I’ve been editor since the 1970s. It is organized into 20 self-contained (but heavily cross-referenced) modules, half in the area of acoustic sound (focusing on acoustics, psychoacoustics, environmental acoustics, speech acoustics, audiology, noise measurement and soundscape studies), the other half in electroacoustics including studio based composition and sound design (and convolution, microsound, voice-based and soundscape composition). In the past, I have spread this material over two courses, but I believe that students in each area need to know at least some of the material in the other.

 

I have been teaching this material for over 45 years and have accumulated a large resource base that I would like to share with the community. Each module includes graphics, sound examples, video demonstrations, links to the Handbook, a review quiz in multiple choice, true/false format, some intriguing sidebars, and many personal listening and studio experiments for students to try.

 

The statistics are: 20 teaching modules, 3 indexes, over 550 .wav soundfiles, over 700 graphics including many spectrograms, 20 videos, 50 demo’s, exercises and experiments, 15 sidebars with some rather unique material, and 16 quizzes (with 740 answers). Along with the Handbook folder, the size of the Tutorial is now at 4.5 Gb.

 

The target audience is 3rd and 4th year undergraduates, as well as any graduates or others who have not had a solid foundation in the area.

 

The Tutorial is created with HTML5 Audio and is designed for Safari or Firefox as a browser given the formats being used. There is now a link to the Tutorial on the index page of the WSP Database that you can access using this url (contact me if you don’t have the guest password):

 

https://www.sfu.ca/sonic-studio/WSPDatabase/

 

For individual use, it will stay in this location, but for use in classes, I’m planning on making it a download directly to the Instructor. Of course everything is negotiable, but it would probably make the most sense to have a licensing arrangement with your school for its use. The SFU server is not ideal for group access as it’s not on a secure site here.

 

Feel free to send queries or comments.

 

All the best

Barry Truax (truax@sfu.ca

Website: www.sfu.ca/~truax


 


OPEN CALL: Artist Residency Programme at the Spatial Sound Institute

 

There are less than two weeks left to submit applications for the Artist Residency Programme 2021 at the Spatial Sound Institute.

 

This year’s focus is on the development of new pedagogical approaches that make use of spatial sound technologies and listening-based practices, thus proposals addressing these topics will be given priority in the evaluation process.

The programme is open to participants from various disciplines and at various stages of their artistic or scientific career.

  • Read more about the call for proposals and how to apply here.
  • Read the preamble to this year’s programme here.
  • Apply online or request an offline package here.

 

Closing date for applications: 31 August 2020.



Open Call for (Audio) Moves: SONOHR


Movement is visible, palpable, a full-body experience. Movement is political, artistic, social. We look to movement to relax and we get uneasy when our world of movement is restricted. Where does the power to move come from? And what about the power to stand still? How do we feel when our freedom of movement is indefinitely restricted? Or when we have to move, even if we don’t want to? Audio is a disembodied medium that leads us through imaginary spaces. Our festival aims to demonstrate the varied ways movement can be translated into sound in terms of content, tone, format and imagery. The question we’re asking is: how does audio move (us)? The SONOHR Radio & Podcast Festival from 26 to 28 February 2021 is looking for program ideas that usher movement into our theatre or that put people in motion in public spaces.

 

  • Audio pieces up to 20 minutes max.
  • Live formats such as performances, interactive session, live podcasts up to 60 minutes max.
  • Innovative formats, audio- and soundwalks, audio games or similar layouts that can either be experienced regardless of location or are flexible enough to be adapted to Bern

 

The festival offers remuneration for your performance and compensation for the playback of chosen audio pieces and program sessions. Generally speaking, productions cannot be co-financed in their entirety, but small production contributions, such as for the adaptation of an existing audiowalk, is possible.

 

WHO IS THE OPEN CALL AIMED AT?

At producers and authors of audio pieces, radio features, podcasts or audio art, at sound researchers, trainers or inventors of rich, new sound formats. This year the festival is particularly addressing those submitting from Switzerland and other European countries where their national languages are spoken (e.g. Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Austria). Entries in languages other than German, French, Italian and English can only be submitted with an English or German script. The correspondence language is English.


ENTRY FORM


ENTRY DEADLINE: AUGUST 3, 2020


In addition to this open call, in June 2020, SONOHR will announce the yearly competition for contemporary Swiss radio plays from freelance authors and private radio stations. The festival will take place from 26 to 28 February 2021 in the REX cinema in Bern.


QUESTIONS? info@sonohr.ch


 


JSS Call for Papers: Sound Studies, Soundscapes, and Sound Art of the Balkans


City sounds and sounds of nature; sounds of progress and nostalgic sounds; sounds of revolution and change, and sounds of restauration; sounds deliberately produced or emerging unintentionally, serving a disciplinary function or expressing forms of freedom; musical as well as non-musical (functional) sounds; sounds of war and sounds of friendship. 

 

How do the Balkans sound? How can their sonic ambiances be characterized? What can be heard there? How should we listen to them, experience them, affect and be affected by them? What is their political, social, religious, ethical, economic, aesthetic influence or meaning? How do Balkan sound artists respond to these influences and meanings? How are sound studies developing in South-Eastern Europe? 

 

The Journal of Sonic Studies is searching for scholarly and artistic contributions that deal with the connections and relationships between the history, culture, society, and politics of the Balkan countries and the production, distribution, and reception of sounds, noises, and silence. The broader aim of this special issue is to establish “sound” as an analytical category that provides us with challenging perspectives on and a new understanding of this part of Europe. Therefore, our call does not focus on a particular historical period or research methodology, but seeks to bring together scholars and artist-researchers who share an interest in Balkan sound studies, soundscapes, and/or sound art. 

 

Themes for submission may include but are not limited to:

-       The sonic identity of any Balkan space

-       Differences between various Balkan soundscapes or differences with West-European soundscapes

-       Balkan (contemporary) sound art

-       The role, position, and function of music in contemporary South-East European societies

-       Sonic histories of the Balkans

-       Listening cultures of Balkan countries 

-       Politics of sounds or the sounds of politics in the Balkans

-       The role of silence in Balkan societies and/or discourses

-       The role of sounds in Balkan religious practices

-       Rural “versus” urban soundscapes in Balkan countries

 

Guest editor

The Croatian musicologist Diana Grguric will act as guest editor of this special issue. 

 

Deadline

Potential contributors are invited to submit completed essays by January 10, 2021.

 

For more information, or to submit an “exposition”, please contact Marcel Cobussen (MA.Cobussen@hum.leidenuniv.nl) and/or Diana Grguric (dgrguric@ffri.hr)




New book review online

 


Gallery Sound - Caleb Kelly. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017

Reviewed by Zeynep Bulut


 

New book review online

Voicetracks: Attuning to Voice in Media and the Arts - Norie Neumark. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2017.

 

Reviewed by Vincent Meelberg


Journal of Sonic Studies - Call for papers

 

The last decade has witnessed what has been characterised as a material turn in the arts and humanities, which has shifted attention from the role played by language and discourse within culture to that of objects, technologies, materials, and non-human organisms and processes. New ways of thinking about materiality prompted by developments in realist philosophy, including new materialism and speculative realism, have raised important questions about the place of the material in arts and culture, nonhuman agency, the relationship between technology and culture, anthropocentrism, and the environment. However, consideration of the sonic has not always been at the forefront of these discussions – perhaps because sound has been understood to be immaterial or addressed in ontological ways that privilege its sources. In this way materialist approaches to the sonic raise the possibility of rethinking the nature of sound itself, and thereby what is at stake in it.

 

In this special issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies we will explore how new ways of thinking about materiality might contribute to our understanding of sound, and at the same time how sound might contribute to developing ideas on materiality.

 

This special issue continues and builds on the journal’s discussion of sonic materiality in its two ‘Materials of Sound’ special issues edited by Caleb Kelly (2018 and 2019) and focuses on two fundamental questions: what is sound’s materiality and what is sonic materialism?

 

We welcome proposals for both articles and sound artworks that specifically address the issue of sonic materiality. Proposals may engage with, but are not limited to, the following topics:

 

• What is sound’s materiality, and what is at stake in a critical engagement with sonic materiality?
• How can notions of materiality politicise and historicise thinking about sound?
• What are sound’s material dimensions? Do these relate only to the objects, technologies, bodies and organic and inorganic forms of matter that create, preserve or respond to sound? Or are there ways in which sound (as event, energy or change) might be considered material?
• What new perspectives on the cultures, technologies, politics and ethics of sound are opened up by a consideration of sound’s materiality?
• How do notions of nonhuman agency relate to sound’s materiality? What is at stake in the idea of sonic agency?
• In what ways might creative practice in sound represent a form of ‘material thinking’? How do technological and material processes challenge established forms of creative practice?
• What is a sonic object?
• If the notion of sonic ecology points to the ways in which sound is situated within environments, what does a consideration of materiality bring to this?
• What are the ecological and biopolitical dimensions of sound’s materiality? How might ideas about materiality prompt a reconsideration of the relationship between the human and the nonhuman?
• How might sonic materialism function as a form of nonideal theory, through direct engagement with material objects and practices rather than idealized models of sound?
• How might a critical engagement with sound address the gap between the philosophical and theoretical approaches to materiality and the experienced materiality of sound and sound-related objects and processes?
• How can we create a language of materialism that emerges directly from the materials of sound?
• What might sound contribute to the material turn’s shift to objects, technologies, materials and nonhuman organisms and process? How might this relate to the anthropocentrism inherent in what has been termed the ‘sonic turn’, in which recent discussion of the politics of listening have focused on the human subject.
• How might indigenous perspectives on matter and sound challenge and problematise the so-called “new materialism”?

 

We would particularly welcome proposals for articles that address these topics from Global South and/or Global Majority perspectives.

 

Please send your abstract (300 words) and short contributor biography (100 words) to Andy Birtwistle andy.birtwistle@canterbury.ac.uk and Lauren Redhead l.redhead@gold.ac.uk by 30 July 2023


 


Free online course in sound and audio this summer offered by Barry Truax

 

Following three very successful previous versions of this course, I am offering to mentor another group of participants in a 12 week online course in sound and audio, starting May 11 and going to July 27. There is no fee for participating.

 

We will be systematically going through the Tutorial associated with the Handbook for Acoustic Ecology located on the WSP Database, and covering two modules most weeks, one in acoustics, the other in electroacoustics. We’ll meet once a week on Zoom for 2-1/2 hours to discuss these topics, scheduled for 10:30 am – 1 pm PDT on Thursdays (which will be 9 hours later in Central Europe).

 

This course will be useful as professional development to those wanting to teach sound and audio, as well as graduate students and others who would like to broaden their knowledge across multiple disciplines. If anyone wants to take the course for academic credit, they need to set this up at their own institution and I would supervise it.

 

The particular strengths (and challenges) of the Tutorial are the parallel modules in acoustics and electroacoustics that emphasize their often ignored links. I would expect participants to be more experienced in one or the other areas, but this course should allow for imbalances in knowledge to be addressed.

 

The Tutorial and Handbook files can be downloaded by each individual for ease of access, but participants can also use the online version. The preferred browsers are Safari and Firefox (Catalina OS and Chrome also seem to work). Additional software for experimentation will be made available.

 

Those interested who have the time (I estimate you will need a minimum of 8 hours a week for the webinar and study if you want to take it all in), apart from whatever time would be spent with the personal listening and studio experiments), please contact me at truax@sfu.ca, if you have any questions or would like to view the Tutorial in advance, which I recommend.

 

Barry Truax (truax@sfu.ca)

 

Professor Emeritus

 

Simon Fraser University


 

 


New book review online

 

Engaging with Everyday Sounds - Marcel Cobussen. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2022


 

Book review by Jean-Paul Thibaud


 

 

“Voice and Listening as Techniques for Political Life” – Live hybrid launch event


Accompanying the launch of the latest issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies, a live hybrid launch event will be organised on Friday 10 March, 4-5:30pm GMT (face-to-face at BCU and online on Zoom). Communication is not a one-way street and we want to listen and hear your thoughts as well as to embrace practices of voicing and listening that reflect the values that this special issue is designed to promote.

Online: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/journal-of-studies-special-issue-launch-online-tickets-537829712147

In Person: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/journal-of-sonic-studies-special-issue-launch-in-person-tickets-537897364497

 

Most of the authors featured in this issue will participate as well.


 


CFP Sonic Ties: Rethinking Communities and Collectives

 

 

 

isaScience 2023, mdw – University for Music and Performing Arts Vienna

 

Reichenau/Rax, Austria and online, 26-30 August 2023

 

Keynote Lectures by Srđan Atanasovski, Center for Comparative Conflict Studies (CFCCS), Belgrade,Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, University of Alberta, Sumanth Gopinath, University of Minnesota, and Ana Hofman, ZRC SAZU Institute of Culture and Memory Studies, Ljubljana

 

Sound and social relations are tightly interwoven and oftentimes contingent upon each other. ‘Sonic Ties’ offers a lens through which to study the qualities of connection and intersubjectivity that arise through sound. isaScience 2023 invites you to explore ‘Sonic Ties’ as a central mode of sharing communality and experiencing collectivity through music, dance, and other phenomena of performance and cultural expression.

 

By focusing on this specific mode of relating the sonic and the social, mdw’s interdisciplinary, international conference investigates how sound shapes collectives and communities in different societal, historical, and geopolitical contexts, and the ways in which these sonic ties reflect back on the individuals involved. Looking at communities and collectives from social movements to musical ensembles, from ethnic communities to artist collectives, isaScience 2023 seeks to investigate the entanglements of sound and power relations. What are the different forms and degrees of sonic participation and to what extent are they tied to local or globalized experiences?

 

We welcome proposals from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives including, but not limited to, Queer Theory, Musicology, Cultural Studies, Music Theory, Indigenous Studies, Music Sociology, Critical Race Studies, Ethnomusicology, Popular Music Studies, Dance and Performance Studies, Post-Colonial Studies, and Film and Media Studies.

 

Possible topics may include:

 

  • The reproduction or subversion of hegemonic social structures in sonic communities and collectives
  • The relation of sound and music to political activism (from the labour movement to decolonisation struggles, from feminist protests to critical mass bike rides)
  • Exile, diaspora, and collective memory: how communities pass on their sonic legacy across history and ruptures of displacement and create forms of sonic belonging
  • The relation between musical communities and collectives and the tradition or innovation of musical and performance styles, idioms, and aesthetics (from historical to contemporary contexts)
  • Negotiations of identity and social status in and through the participation in communities and collectives (e.g. racialization through sound, sonic dimensions of queerness)
  • The effects of sonic ties in various musical styles and genres: e.g. from ethnic reckoning in traditional music to (sub)cultural distinction in popular music to elite formation in classical art music
  • The impact of digitality on social structures through new (social) media or technologies
  • Collective practices of listening and their impact on the social (from phonograph gatherings to punk concerts, from soundwalks to the social experience of fandom)
  • Sound and public space: how the right to the city is claimed or contested in sonic terms
  • Communality through sound in relation to rurality, vernacularity, and regional communities
  • Questions of methodology: from collective authorship to the reflection of approaches and research practices, particularly the academic categorization of and its influence on communities

 

Contributions can include paper presentations (20 minutes plus discussion), panels, lecture performances, workshops, or other, innovative formats. Online contributions are possible.

 

Abstracts must clearly state your research question(s), theoretical framework, methodology, and presentation format. Please include max. 5 keywords.

 

Please submit your abstract in English (max. 300 words including references), a short biography (max. 100 words), and your institutional affiliation or location by 5 March 2023 in a single PDF file to isascience@mdw.ac.at

 

Decisions on the acceptance of proposals will be announced in April 2023.

 

isaScience is mdw’s international hybrid conference for interdisciplinary research on music and performing arts. It is held annually at Hotel Marienhof in Reichenau an der Rax, an hour outside of Vienna in the Semmering region, which is also home to mdw’s International Summer Academy isa. The conference’s conclave-like setting aims to foster intensive exchange between researchers in a relaxed atmosphere. The conference’s hybrid mode allows for active and passive online participation.

 

Academic Board: Andrea Glauser, Marko Kölbl, Stephanie Probst

 

Registration is free of charge. Complementary funding for travel and accommodation costs is available after acceptance of the proposal on a case-by-case basis.

 

mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna covers lunch and coffee breaks on-site.

 

Contact: Kathrin Heinrich isascience@mdw.ac.at

 

Websites: https://www.isa-music.org/de/isascience/ & mdw.ac.at/isascience

 

contact: isascience@mdw.ac.at

 




New book publication – Going out. Walking, Listening, Soundmaking


 

 

author and editor: 

Elena Biserna

 

coeditors: Caroline Profanter, Henry Andersen, Julia Eckhardt

 

 

umland editions, Brussels, 2022

 

English edition

13 x 21 cm (softcover)

580 pages – 34 euros

ISBN : 978-90-8264-956-7

EAN : 9789082649567

 

 

An anthology that traces the long legacy of interdisciplinary experimentations at the intersection of walking, listening, and  soundmaking.

 

 

 

Since the 1960s, the act of walking has provided a way for artists and musicians to escape the formality of the concert hall or institutional venue, engaging with shifting public spaces, natural environments, and the social and political sphere. Walking redefines notions of composer, performer, public, and music itself, while opening new modes of perception and action. Going Out addresses these developments by exploring the relationship between walking, listening, and soundmaking in the arts—from the first soundwalks and itinerant performances in the 1960s to today's manifold ambulatory projects. 

 


The book consists of an extensive essay by Elena Biserna followed by an anthology of historical and contemporary contributions in the form of documentation, essays, interviews, manifestos, scores, narratives, and reflections. Through the variety of these contributions, the book makes an argument that at the intersection of walking, listening, and soundmaking there is both a long legacy of interdisciplinary experimentations and a broad field that resounds with urgent issues in critical spatial thinking and practice.


Contributions from: Max Neuhaus, Willem de Ridder, William Levy, Collective Actions Group, David Helbich, Janet Cardiff, Jacek Smolicki, Carolyn Chen, Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec, Hildegard Westerkamp, Albert Mayr, Tim Ingold, Akio Suzuki, katrinem, Beatrice Ferrara & Leandro Pisano, Catherine Clover, AM Kanngieser, Gascia Ouzounian & Sarah Lappin, Ultra-red, Vivian Caccuri, Stefan Szczelkun, LIGNA, Edyta Jarząb, Oupa Sibeko, Brian Hioe, Brandon LaBelle, Adrian Piper, Andra McCartney & Sandra Gabriele, Amanda Gutiérrez, Jennifer Lynn Stoever, Stephanie Springgay, Carmen Papalia, Christine Sun Kim, Charles Eppley, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Viv Corringham, BNA-BBOT, Ella Parry-Davies & Ann, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Gwenola Wagon & Stéphane Degoutin, Eleni Ikoniadou, Justin Bennett, Christina Kubisch & Christoph Cox, RYBN, Alisa Oleva, Naomi Waltham-Smith, Anna Raimondo, Libby Harward.

Copy-editing: Jacob Blandy
Graphic design: Ines Cox.
Translations: Italian: Allison Grimaldi Donahue, Piero Bisello; French: Aubrey Birch; Portuguese: Miguel Carvalho.
Distributed by Les presses du reel


 

Sound Arguments - Presentation

 

Sound Arguments is an innovative laboratory-atelier for creative artists dealing with sound. Presented by the Orpheus Institute, Ghent (BE), and ACPA, University of Leiden (NL), Sound Arguments transcends the boundaries of art school or conservatory, art space or university to propose a new kind of creating-researching-learning community. It reaches into the broad and complex space of current art-sound practices. At Sound Arguments, artists will share, invent, learn and discuss.

 

Our creative, imaginative relationship with sound has entered a fantastically rich period, facilitated and necessitated by cultural, social and technological evolution. Sound acts as a new parameter in a world evolved from the practices and theory of the visual arts or as a highly sophisticated art form in music composition and improvisation. It acts as a dimension of the plastic, installation and interactive arts. It provides a perspective on place, is a vital component of environmental art and a conveyor of information through sonification. It emerges as algorithmic surface, as the trace of virtuoso improvised performance or of informal social behaviour. And it provides an interface with technology.

 

Each of these perspectives has its own discourse, practices, techniques, cultural infrastructure and institutions. Sound Arguments is a locus for this rich tapestry, a space that aims to bring together sound artists with diverse, and complementary, backgrounds. Through sustained cross-fertilisation, they will participate in the evolution of new common discourse and individual critical practice. At each of five monthly, two-day encounters you will meet and discuss with invited artists and experts, addressing issues from the abstract to the technical, from the social to the practical. Guest artists will act as catalysts for sharing and reflection between participants; you will acquire new techniques in workshops led by international experts, to stimulate and inform practice. All participants will be able to share their own projects in a wide-ranging, critical and supportive environment. As a community, we will expand horizons, vision and practice – and together hopefully evolve new discourse on contemporary sound-based practices.

 

Topics include:

 

# Hardware hacking & DIY electronics # Live coding & creative coding # Digital fabrication & 3D printing # The body in performance # Field recording # Alternative spaces and venues # Sound art theory and practice # The audio paper # Sound installation # Notation

 

Guests for the series will include: Cecilia Arditto, Alexandra Cárdenas, Nicolas Collins, Julia Eckhardt, Sanne Krogh Groth, Cathy Lane, Marcela Lucatelli, Matteo Marangoni, Caeso and Guy van Belle.

 

REGISTRATION --------------------

 

Sound Arguments will meet monthly from February – June 2023. Meetings will be held alternately in Ghent and Leiden, with the first meeting in Den Haag, February 27-28. Sessions will run on Mondays 14:00-18:00 and Tuesdays 09:00-15:00.

 

2023 dates:

 

# February 27-28 # March 27-28 # April 17-18 # May 15-16 # June 5-6 

 

The nature of this series is such that numbers must be limited. Prospective participants are invited to apply by responding to this call at:

 

https://airtable.com/shrxaL1PH2FP7cwjn

 

The form requests a brief description of the role of sound in your practice, which will allow us to balance the series appropriately. Application is open until 16 January. Applicants will be notified by January 25.

 

Sound Arguments is made available at no cost to participants, regardless of institutional affiliation. At Sound Arguments we aim to create a safe and inclusive environment for all those involved; we particularly encourage applications from historically under-represented groups in the field. As organisers, we commit to taking that into account during evaluation of the applications received.

 

General inquiries can be sent to soundarguments@orpheusintituut.be

 

We look forward to meeting you!

 

Magno Caliman (Orpheus Instituut) 

Marcel Cobussen (Academy of Creative and Performance Arts - Leiden University) 

Jonathan Impett (Orpheus Instituut)

 



New Book review online

 

Unsound: Undead - Steve Goodman, Toby Heys, Eleni Ikoniadou (eds.) Falmouth (UK): Urbanomic Media Ltd, 2019

 

Book review by Matt Lewis


 


CFP | WFAE 2023 Conference Listening Pasts - Listening Futures

 

Atlantic Center for the Arts is honored to partner with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology for our 30th anniversary conference, Listening Pasts - Listening Futures.


This is an unprecedented opportunity to highlight the local and global work being done in the field of soundscape studies and acoustic ecology.


Submissions for papers, music, workshops, and installation proposals will accepted until October 15.


For details on the location, themes, registration, and CFP please visit 

https://www.wfae.net/conference2023.html




New book review online



Book review by Mark Porter
 


Journal of Sonic Studies 22 is Online

 

JSS22 is the second special issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies on the topic Sound at Home. In the original call for papers, we asked scholars from a variety of disciplines to engage with home sounds – everyday sounds such as the hum of appliances, the babble of water piping, the chatter of media or the creaking of a wooden floor; sounds that seep in from other homes and from the world outside (traffic, music, shouting, etc.); disconcerting, unfamiliar sounds of places that have become a temporary home; or sounds that go unheard in their familiarity – using a wide range of approaches and methods. This second issue consists of contributions dealing with a number of closely related topics, namely, the home in its relation to the outside world, sonic communities within or in spite of isolation, and vocal expression as part of or in defiance of this isolation.

 

Table of Contents:

Editorial - Sound At Home II: City, Home, Body - Sonic Relations and Voice - Mette Simonsen Abildgaard, Marie Koldkjær Højlund and Sandra Lori Petersen

 

A Community Attuned to the Outside. Reverberations of the Montreal Balcony Drone - Hubert Gendron-Blais

 

Multiple Perceptions of the Everyday Unfolded: The Case Study of Sunnyside - Matilde Meireles

 

Sonic Relations as Bulging Spheres - Sandra Lori Petersen

 

Aural Expectations of Home: An Autoethnography of the Amazon Echo Smart Speaker - Stephen J. Neville

 

Overhearing the Unheimlich Home: Power and Proximity in “Shut Up Little Man!” - Hannah Spaulding

 

Composing the Field of Dwelling: An Autoethnography on Listening in the Home - Iain Findlay-Walsh

 

Dialectics of Outside and Inside: A Sonic Study of Being through Illness and Isolation - Mariske Broeckmeyer

 

Room Ambience: Home as Heard in Film and Media Arts - Budhaditya Chattopadhyay

 


 


Echoes of a Distance: Musique, Protest and Community in Confined Times - Papers and performances | November 19-20, 20

The International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI) at McGill University invites you to Echoes of a Distance, an event (papers and performances) on the ways the relations between sound, music and politics have been affected by the confinements. The event will occur November 19-20, at Le Nombre 110 (3935 de Rouen, #110, Montreal) and will be livestreamed on the FB page of the IICSI (https://www.facebook.com/improvcommunity/).

 

How can sound and music participate in protest without access to the streets and spaces of collective music creation? How does a collective sound when there is no actual gathering possible? Alternatively, when social movements take to the streets or occupy a territory despite public health regulations – as has happened on many occasions around the globe since the beginning of the pandemic (Black Lives Matter, Wet’suwet’en resistance, Belarus, Poland, Chile, Myanmar, The Netherlands, to mention only few) – what has changed on a sonic level? How can sound and music testify to the ways our current isolation has affected our capacity to collectively organize? And in this context, what can sound-based practices grounded in improvisation bring to the ongoing social and political struggles? (We conceive of music, protest and community very widely, and accordingly think of this event as a meeting point for artists, activists and researchers to reflect and share perspectives on these issues.)


We will have the pleasure to welcome Dont Rhine, co-founder of the international sound art and social intervention collective Ultra-red, as keynote speaker. Confirmed performers for the November 19 evening include Marilou Craft & Elyze Venne Deshaies, Joseph Bohigian and Geoff Mitchell & Kevin McNeilly, among others.


Please find attached the schedule for the event. For more infos: https://www.facebook.com/events/997286244181987


We acknowledge that this event will be held on an unceded territory which is used as a place of encounter and exchange between many First Nations, including the Kanien'kehá:ka, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki and Anishinabeeg. 


 


Journal of Sonic Studies - Call for Papers: Sound in the (Post-)Soviet Realm

 

When an empire falls, does it make a sound? And who is there to hear it?

 

The sonic history of the USSR and the Post-Soviet realm that succeeded it, is rich and turbulent. The 2013 book Sound in Z by Andrey Smirnov introduced the world to the daring sound experiments of the Soviet avant-gardists of the 1920s. From the city-wide noise symphonies of Arseny Avraamov to the first electronic instruments of Leon Theremin to experiments with sounds drawn on paper or film, the futuristic optimism of the first decade following the revolution unleashed an explosion of sonic artistry. While the strict censorship and state control over the arts forced sound artists underground or into applied work, the Soviet sonic creativity persisted on the margins, or even wholly outside, of the state-controlled art world: in the kinetic sound sculptures of the Dvizhenie art group, the explorations of light and sound by the researchers of the Prometheus Institute, or the extravagant performances of the Pop-Mechanics movement, for example.

 

However, the familiar history of the Soviet culture being shaped by the antagonism between official state-sanctioned art institutions and underground art communities conceals a different, colonial narrative. In the colonial structures of the contemporary world, the position of the Post-Soviet realm remains ambiguous: not quite part of the Global North, yet not fully in the Global South. Decolonial scholars investigating the Post-Soviet have called Russia/USSR a subaltern empire” (Morozov 2015) or poor North” (Tlostanova 2011), shedding light on the double oppression of its colonies: the South of the poor North.” While sound art from the Russian capitals of Moscow and St. Petersburg/Leningrad is slowly being integrated into global sound histories, much less is known about the sound cultures and art of the Russian and Soviet colonies, both former – such as Kazakhstan or Georgia – and extant – the lands of Siberia and the Russian Far East.

 

In this issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies we will explore how these entanglements of coloniality, ideology, creativity, and resistance are reflected in the sound culture and art from the Soviet and Post-Soviet realm. We welcome article proposals related to, but not limited to, the following topics:

 

      Sound art and sound poetry from the USSR and Post-Soviet territories

      Soviet and Post-Soviet soundscapes, between megacities and tundras

      Indigenous sound cultures of Siberia, (Post-)Soviet Asia and the Caucasus

      Sound cultures of ethnic groups in USSR and contemporary Russia

      Sound and music of the Soviet Underground in capitals, provinces, and national republics

      Sound design in Soviet and Post-Soviet cinema

      Soviet instrumental inventions: from the ANS synthesizer to the electronic bayan Topaz

      Soundscapes of military aggression and resistance in the Post-Soviet realm: in Donbass, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh, for example

      Ideological implications of indoor and outdoor sonic practices

      Sound in Soviet and Post-Soviet architecture and urban planning

      Sacred and secular sounds in Soviet and Post-Soviet environments

      Sound, music, and politics in the USSR and Post-Soviet countries

      Sound in Soviet and Post-Soviet academic communities

 

 

Please send your abstract (300 words) and short contributor biography (100 words) to Vadim Keylin vadim.keylin@uni-hamburg.de and Ksenia Mayorova kmayorova@hse.ru by 15.01.2022


 


Rotting sounds symposium, September 23+24, 2021


 

Since 2018, the project of artistic research Rotting sounds – Embracing the temporal deterioration of digital audio has been researching transformation processes pertaining to the diverse interrelations of digitally encoded information in the audio domain, its material properties and (human) interpretation within a sociocultural context. This symposium shall provide a room for reflection on the acquired experiences in the course of the project, bring in external viewpoints on the relevant topics and stimulate outlooks beyond the limits of current research.

 

Rotting sounds is a cooperation between the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, the University of Applied Arts Vienna and the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and is funded by the Austria science fund (FWF project AR445).

 

The symposium will take place in presence at the mdw campus (registration required!) and will also be streamed through http://rottingsounds.org.

 

mdw – University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna
Anton-von-Webern Platz 1
1030 Wien, Austria


 


They, Who Sound

 


SEPTEMBER 20, 2021 7:00 PM - DECEMBER 13, 2021 11:55 PM

 

LAWNDALE ART & PERFORMANCE CENTER

 

Every Monday 

Nameless Sound and Lawndale Art Center join forces to present an evening of experimental sound-making, improvised music, noises, the sounding of art, the performance of art, and more. Two different sets each week showcase a rich and vibrant diversity of international and regional creative offerings, with an emphasis on Houston’s vibrant local scene.

 

Opening night is September 20th 

 

Concerts are held on every Monday at 7:30pm (doors open at 7pm) 
at Lawndale Art Center

4912 Main St. 
Houston, Texas

 

Social distancing is encouraged at this event. Masks are required. Singers and horn players who remove their masks to perform are vaccinated. 

 

They, Who Sound is free of charge. Donations are welcomed. 


 

 

 

Call for Papers: Sound Ecologies - Experiences to sense environments in transformation

 

The second part within FIBER Festival’s Reassemble lab explores the potential of (spatial) sound experiences to investigate and sense ecological processes and landscapes in transformation. With Sound Ecologies we invite artists, designers, musicians, ecologists and scientists who work with, or are interested in, the medium of sound in the broadest sense of the word to conduct artistic and design research. Fieldwork is an important part of this lab. We actively welcome ecologists, anthropologists, biologists, architects or others that work with sound and ecology to this lab as well.

The physcial lab takes place from 25 to 30 October in The Netherlands.

 

Sound Ecologies offers a temporary lab space for collective experimentation, peer-to-peer research and the prototyping of new works; sonic, narrative spaces, performances and (sound) installations. Work sessions will focus on techniques and methods, expanding to experiencing sound as tactile sensations through transducers, or visualizing recorded sounds. The relationships between sound and our material reality are important topics in the lab. Participation is possible through an open call.

 

The temporary Sound Ecologies lab invites artistic creators, researchers and scientists to collaborate in a peer-to-peer setting. You will investigate the possibilities of sonic experiences in relation to the interweaving of anthropocentric and ecological activities. How can we get a better understanding of the functioning and transformation of ecosystems (or parts of them)? How can we map an environment to tell untold stories about it?

 

The aim of the lab is to introduce participants to various artistic and scientific work processes, to explore an environment through sonic mapping and to use these methods to experiment with prototypes for new works.

 

The Reassemble team, in cooperation with external experts, selects a group of participants of diverse composition. The participation fee is € 70. This gives you access to all parts of the lab, all lectures, workshops and mentor feedback. We are aware that in this pandemic reality it is not possible for everyone to pay this amount. If you would like to participate, but are unable to pay the fee, please contact us so we can search for a solution together.

 

Planning Open Call:

  • Relaunch Open Call Sound Ecologies*: Thursday August 5
  • Open Call Closes: Sunday September 5 (23:59)
  • Selection Participants: Friday September 10 (contact by email)
  • Sound Ecologies Lab: Monday 25 to Saturday 30 October

 

Apply here.



 


New book review online

 


Annihilating Noise - Paul Hegarty. New York: Bloomsbury, 2021

 

Reviewed by Ramsey Ronalds


 


Journal of Sonic Studies 21 is Online

The editorial team of The Journal of Sonic Studies (JSS) is happy and proud to announce that JSS21 is online now. Please click here for the Table of  Contents and the links to all articles. JSS21 is edited by Mette Simonsen Abildgaard, Marie Koldkjær Højlund and Sandra Lori Petersen, and the papers and exhibitions in this issue question whether the territory of the home is demarcated by its walls and floors or made up of zones of sounds that might be designed. They question what happens when the workplace is acoustically present in a kitchen as well as how intimacy is distributed throughout the home, for example when private conversations take place on a landline situated in the living room. As we learn from the papers published here, sonic territoriality of the home implies exploring and negotiating what makes up a home as well as the possibility of stretching and rearranging the established order of the home. When headphones are used to accompany the listener through the city, they might be considered a component of a sonic shield of familiarity, with COVID-19 making the notion of the home as a shield especially poignant. When sound becomes transportable through electronic devices, its materiality comes to the fore – the handheld device makes it (almost) tangible; when one’s work is building musical instruments, working from home implies impactful changes in the sounds at home. And when the online meeting platforms that COVID-19 has made us integrate into our working lives filter and configure sound in a certain way, sounds that we might not have noticed before suddenly become remarkable.



World Listening Day 2021: The Unquiet Earth 

 

 

The theme for 2021 “The Unquiet Earth” is an invitation to reflect on and engage with the constant murmur of the Earth, sounds beyond the threshold of human hearing, to remind ourselves that we share this mysterious and awesome planet. Small, hidden, subterranean, aerial, underwater, infra and ultrasonic sounds, inaudible to the naked ear, can bring a new, potentially hopeful, perspective on the future of the planet and humanity. Listening as activism encourages us to question our attitudes as listeners as we aim to construct a more inclusive and empathetic new world. Join the unquiet revolution!

 

Listeners of all kinds are invited to host and participate in three activity types: 

 

  • 24-hour #WLD2021 streamed program hosted by the World Listening Projects. We invite you to submit audio and video works.

 

  • Local events that are self-organized and led by groups or individuals for the public. Soundwalks, installations, workshops are examples. We will help promote and celebrate your activities on our platforms.

 

  • Personal celebrations. We invite you to share media and writing about private responses to the prompt of World Listening Day 2021: The Unquiet Earth.

 

REGISTER HERE.

 

Deadline for 24-hour Steamed event: June 19, 2021. 

Deadline for local and personal events and celebrations: July 17, 2021.


 

 


Call for Papers: Workshop “Historical Traces of European Radio Archives, 1930-1960”


Dates: 28-29 October 2021
Location: University of Amsterdam and / or online
OrganisersCarolyn BirdsallCorinna R. Kaiser and Erica Harrison
Contact: trace@uva.nl
Abstracts: 15 April 2021, no more than 300 words plus short biography
Acceptance: 01 May 2021
Papers: 01 Sep 2021, position papers (2000-4500 words)

 

Bringing critical perspectives to bear on radio archives is the main departure point for this international workshop, which explores broadcasting, archives and the historical data they have co-produced. This two-day workshop brings together interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars and practitioners invested in theoretically-informed, connective histories about radio archives. It takes up a historical-geographical focus on radio archival collections in Europe that were affected by war and political transformations between 1930 and 1960, including case studies for Axis, as well as Allied, countries during and after World War II.


The task of critically analysing the radio archive may involve researching the holdings of a single institution. In the case of European radio archives, however, the scholar is often required to “re-collect” dispersed materials as a result of changed institutional circumstances (Badenoch 2018) or the aftermath of conflict, war or regime change (Birdsall 2018). One strategy for scrutinising such dispersed collections is to elucidate archivist practices in describing and cataloguing radio collections, and reveal “tacit narratives” indicative of past ideologies or political investments in the archive (Ketelaar 2002). Another productive approach may evaluate past choices of particular archival tools or technologies in order to record, copy, store, or preserve radio recordings. 

 

The workshop builds on the growing attention to the significance of archival processes for the scholarly understanding of radio history. Against a long-held tendency to decry the ‘absence’ of sound recordings in the archive, there is a burgeoning interest in the rich potential of the radio archive as an object of study (Dolan 2003, Street 2014) and in constructing “new histories” (VanCour 2016). Recent data-driven approaches to the radio archive have also explored possibilities for ‘big data’ analyses of digitized sources (Hughes et al. 2015, Goodmann et al. 2019), and speech recognition for the purposes of scholarly research (Ordelman and van Hessen 2018). 

 

In response, this workshop focuses on connections between radio broadcasting, archival collections, and European history, thereby seeking to intervene in the fields of media history and sound studies that have rarely treated this interrelation. Thus, we ask:

 

  • How were archival collections established in radio broadcasting from around 1930 onwards?
  • In what ways were particular historical processes (e.g. war, conflict, regime change) significant in the life cycles of radio archival materials?
  • How have particular actors (e.g. archivists) or institutional frameworks impacted radio archival collections?
  • In what ways can the study of radio archival collections benefit from drawing on recent approaches developed in fields such as sound studies, digital history or computer science?
  •  

With the workshop, we seek to facilitate a conversation with specialists concerned with the complex histories of radio archival collections and the methodological possibilities for studying them today. The workshop sessions will revolve around panels with short presentations/discussions of ‘position papers’ (pre-circulated prior to the workshop).

 

Topics may include but are not limited to:

  • Media history approaches to the radio archive (e.g. transnational/entangled media history)
  • Impact of war, conflict or political change on radio archival collections
  • Provenance research and the looting of radio archives
  • Professional practices of radio archiving (e.g. catalogue description, metadata enrichment, selection and deaccessioning), and archivists as data/information specialists
  • Technologies of the archive (e.g. index cards, finding aids)
  • Materiality of archival records (e.g. recorded sound, paper/photographic documentation)
  • Archival uses of particular sound media and recording technologies (e.g. disc/tape recording)
  • The effects of decay, neglect or technological obsolescence on radio archival collections
  • Various collection types (e.g. off-air radio recordings, sound libraries, commercial music collections)
  • Computational humanities and the radio archive, including data visualisation
  •  

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a short biography to trace@uva.nl by 15 April 2021.

 

The authors of accepted proposals will be notified by 1 May 2021, and the ‘position papers’ (2000-4500 words) will be expected by 1 September 2021. Further information will follow on the conference format, but it is certain that online participation will be possible, and a special issue publication, with selected papers, is planned.

 

The workshop is hosted by the research project TRACE (Tracking Radio Archival Collections in Europe, 1930-1960), which is funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and supported by the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (AHM) and Department of Media StudiesUniversity of Amsterdam.


 

New book review online

 


The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art - Sanne Krogh Groth & Holger Schulze (eds.). New York: Bloomsbury, 2020

 

Reviewed by Jordan Lacey


 


 

New book review online

Eavesdropping: A Reader - James Parker and Joel Stern (eds.). Melbourne: Permiter, 2018

Reviewed by Tyler Shoemaker


 


CRESSON winter school: Vulnerabilities and sounds, the listening experience

In a world where the immediacy of information as well as the quickness of actions have become the rule, it seems more and more challenging to take the time. The acceleration of lifestyles and ways of thinking has become a prerequisite for success. Nevertheless, in parallel with this fast-moving world, long-term issues are being increasingly neglected, creating social, environmental and spatial "vulnerabilities". It is precisely at the intersection of these stakes that the question of ambiances and more particularly of sounds can appear as a catch.  

 

Listening to the environment, a gesture that may seem simple and insignificant, becomes a powerful tool for considering places and words at scales and temporalities that are difficult to reach with the visual.

 

Sound is a medium intrinsically related to time, but also very capable of questioning scales that are often "left aside" because they appear to be too obvious, too small or on the other hand too large. Therefore, sound could be considered as a lever for considering, questioning or reframing these issues.

 

The program of the week will articulate training times and theoretical speech to a workshop on the "material" sound whose objective will be to achieve a production over the week resonating with the topic. The workshop will thus be an opportunity to question sound as a way of entering or projecting on issues that today appear to be more and more important, but less and less in phase with the trends and mediums of our contemporary world.

 

The Winter School will be held this year both in Grenoble (École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Grenoble) and in Volos, Greece (Department of Architecture, University of Thessaly). This event is funded by the "B-AIR Art Infinity Radio" project, one of the winning projects of the European call of the Culture Program of the European Agency for Culture, Education and Creation (EACEA). 

 

This international rapprochement will allow time for exchanges between participants and speakers in order to promote the sharing of knowledge, tools and methods, but also the reflections and productions that will result from the workshop.

 

In addition to this particular attention, the sound focus largely mobilizes digital tools (listening, capture or creation devices). As the current sanitary situation is uncertain, it is mainly through this medium that the CRESSON winter school will take place, hoping nevertheless to be able to welcome the workshops in presence.

 

* This year, the winterschool will take place exclusively online *

(Attention, registration deadline: Friday, January 15th)

 

All information ( Registration/theme/logistics) can be found on the web page https://ehas.hypotheses.org/4629


 


New book review online

 

 

Being Time: Case Studies in Musical Temporality - Richard Glover, Jennie Gottschalk and Bryn Harrison. New York/London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019

Reviewed by Richard Barrett


 


PRAKSIS online Lectures

PRAKSIS has organized a lecture series about the residency project in Oslo. Access to the lectures is via zoom:

 

18 August: Budha Chattopadhyay 

On decolonisation of sound objects and the sonic cultures of the Global South.

https://www.praksisoslo.org/events-calendar/2020/8/chattopadhyay

 

 

Unrecord: Demodernising and/or Uncolonising Sound Objects — PRAKSIS

www.praksisoslo.org

Sound artist and researcher Budhaditya Chattopadhyay’s talk and listening session focuses on the decolonisation of sound objects and the sonic cultures of the Global South.

 

1 Sept, 18.00 - Mikel R. Nieto

On his project Dark Sound (2016), which looks at noise created by the oil industry in the Ecuadorian rainforest.

https://www.praksisoslo.org/events-calendar/2020/9/darksound

Dark Sound: Oil, ecology, sound, and loss — PRAKSIS

www.praksisoslo.org

Sound artist, Mikel R. Nieto discusses his project Dark Sound, and value and cost, hierarchy and consent in relation to the oil industry.

 

9 Sept, 15.00 - Annea Lockwood and Leah Barclay 

On their work with rivers and ecology. 

https://www.praksisoslo.org/events-calendar/2020/8/listening-to-rivers

Listening to Rivers — PRAKSIS

www.praksisoslo.org

A listening session and talk with sound artists Leah Barclay and Annea Lockwood focusing on the rich, immersive soundscapes of rivers.

 

29 Sep 19.00 - Hildegard Westerkamp

On her shifting relationship to listening, and how her approach to recording has changed since the 60s. 
Info regarding this lecture will be updated here: 

https://www.praksisoslo.org/events-calendar?view=calendar&month=09-2020



Francisco Lopez 
 
 
Since several years, Francisco Lopez is a member of the JSS editorial board. This year marks his 40th anniversary working in experimental music, sound art, and sound studies. 
That is why he has been busy putting together a beasty mega-album that is just out: 


More on Francisco Lopez can be found on his Bandcamp site:
 
 



ARTIST RESIDENCY PROGRAMME 2021: OPEN CALL

 
 

The Artist Residency Programme 2021 at the Spatial Sound Institute in Budapest, Hungary, calls for creators, artists, researchers, and technical developers from a variety of disciplines to submit proposals for the development of new pedagogical approaches that make use of spatial sound technologies and listening-based practices. 

The programme seeks to engage projects that contribute to the following key areas of study:

Sonic Architecture
Physiology and Psychology of Listening
Spatial Memetics
Human Space Interaction Design


The submission deadline is: 
31 August 2020 23:59 PM.

Read more about the call for proposals here.

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Sound Pedagogy and
Sound Based Education

In the residency season 2021, we draw attention to concepts that are aimed to make young people sensitive to ideas through an active participation and activation of sound in space. We welcome specifically those projects that highlight the role of spatial sound in new pedagogical approaches. The questions this brings up, in our view, can only be defined when there is an exchange of knowledge and ideas between a variety of disciplines involved with sound.

The ways in which young people will learn to listen at present, will gravely influence our future ecology, geo-social contexts and the typologies of art to take on new meaning as valid ephemeral artefacts in the larger mediated world in which we live.

Read the preamble to the programme here.

 

We look forward to receiving your applications for our Artist Residency Programme. Please get in touch if you have any questions by emailing info@spatialsoundinstitute.com 


 

 

Call Soundtrackcity

How do you experience a quieter city? (or A Silenced city?)

Cities normally filled with noise. The corona crisis has changed that. Few or no people on the streets, shops closed, much less traffic, hardly any planes coming over. The soundscape of the city has completely changed. Soundtrackcity, the organization behind Urban Sound Lab, therefore makes a worldwide appeal: How does the city sound in times of corona?

 

Share your sound impression with Soundtrackcity

How do you experience the quieter city? What do you hear? We’re curious – because not everyone hears the same. Share a description of what you hear in an email to info@urbansoundlab.nl. You can make it as long or short as you like.

 

We ask you to write something about the effects of the new soundscape on your wellbeing, on your health, on your mood, on your social life. What has changed? How does it feel? What is pleasant / unpleasant? What sounds are you missing? And: How should the city sound in the future?

 

Response and context of the call

Why is Soundtrackcity making this call? Right at the start of the crisis, we at Soundtrackcity realized that it is valuable to collect material that represents this unusual time. We decided not only to register current urban sound by making audio recordings but also and foremost to collect the impressions that the acutely changed soundscape has on the inhabitants of cities.

 

This call from Soundtrackcity is an encouragement to listen attentively to the urban environment now and to see what new insights this gives us. Insights that can lead to building a more just city. The more people listen the better, feel free to send the link to this call to your friends and acquaintances.

 

Every week we place an anthology of the entries in our Urban Sound Lab.

https://urbansoundlab.nl/oproep-hoe-klinkt-de-stad-in-tijden-van-corona/


 

 

How a city sounds is important as well (in Dutch)

 

Artist impressions tonen hoe een project eruitziet, plannen maken duidelijk wat de afmetingen zijn. Maar waarom houden we zo weinig rekening met hoe een gebiedsontwikkeling gaat klinken? Marcel Cobussen (hoogleraar auditieve cultuur, muziekfilosofie aan de Universiteit Leiden en founding editor van JSS) en Irene van Kamp (RIVM-onderzoeker omgevingsgeluid en gezondheid) bespreken de kansen die juist Nederlandse steden op dat vlak laten liggen.

https://www.gebiedsontwikkeling.nu/artikelen/hoe-een-stad-klinkt-%C3%B3%C3%B3k-belangrijk/

 


 


New book review online


 

 

Immanence and Immersion: On the Acoustic Condition in Contemporary Art - Will Schrimshaw. New York: Bloomsbury, 2017

 

reviewed by Jordan Lacey


 

Open Call | Netherlands Field Recordings during Corona Crisis

 

 

Currently around the world, life has changed significantly. Due to the Covid-19 virus pandemic, daily life as we knew it has grinded to a near halt. Billions are in quarantine, advised or unallowed to leave their homes except when absolutely necessary. This limited mobility has caused dramatic shifts from limiting pollution to record surges in internet traffic. Discourse around the world has become solely focused on one topic and similarly, although you might not be aware, we are all united around the world as this pandemic has left no corner of our continent untouched sans Antarctica.

 

Another effect this pandemic has had on the world is how it sounds. Here in The Netherlands, Schiphol Airport has ceased nearly all  flights, trains are running more infrequently, car traffic is minimal, tourists are non-existent and mid-day, rush-hour streets are quieter than they are in the early morning hours. Our world sounds different and that’s important to recognize and remember. Therefore, The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision would like to encourage field recordists whether professional, hobbyist, beginner or experts around The Netherlands to take the time to record the world around them. It could be sounds captured while on walk (while maintaining social distancing), the sounds from your balcony, roof, garden or even just the sounds from inside your home.

 

Sound and Vision will begin taking in field recordings for preservation purposes over the coming months. We will also encourage that these sounds be made available for free re-use by artists, researchers and more just like our previous online exhibition, The Sound of The Netherlands did. The long-term preservation of these sounds will accompany other Covid-19 related preservation efforts being taken by Sound and Vision so that for years to come we’ll be able to comprehensively and thoroughly present this period to society. 

 

Over the coming weeks Sound and Vision will present a method for users to deliver their sounds in a structured manner. 

 

Sound and Vision will further collaborate on this topic with Rewire Festival and FIBER Festival for artistic presentations of new works related to these sounds as well as Soundtrackcity and members from the University of Amsterdam and Leiden University for matters related to academic research. 

 

If you are a field recordist and would like to get in touch and would consider sharing your collection with the institute please contact gmarkus@beeldengeluid.nl or begin sharing your sounds via: https://forms.gle/81DmLYVLw4sF2h3s8