Introduction to Sound Creations: Sonic Interventions and Immersive Acoustic Environments (Spring 2021)

Instructor

Rasa Smite & Raitis Smits

Units

u 3-3-6, g 3-3-3 or 3-3-6

Credit

u/g

Schedule

MW 9-12

Location

Virtual

Develops a critical awareness of how sound art as a field for artistic exploration is performed, produced, and distributed. Explores contemporary and historical practices that emerge outside of purely musical environments and investigates specific compositional developments of post-war modernity and electro-acoustic music, as well as non-musical disciplines related to the psychophysics of hearing and listening.

Sound is a powerful force in organizing space; it is sound not visuals that mark dramatic shifts from one world to another. Technologies for sound creation have changed over time from analogue to digital, from waves to data, but the physical acoustic properties remain the same. What we hear can be very different from what we see. Sound is capable of simultaneity and non-linearity. It surrounds and immerses us, but above all, it resonates, allowing things to respond to each other in non-linear ways. Acoustic vibrations resonate inside the body, creating different emotions, pleasure, or fears. Sound helps to expand our external world too – the urban environment, nature, outer space. Scientists and artists listen to the universe, and radio signals radiate far beyond our planet after transmission.

Lectures, screenings, readings, and discussions with guests and faculty contribute to the development of group and individual projects. Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.

Limited to 20.