Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Building on Sound Studies I (CMNS 259), this seminar and lab course is designed to support intermediate level project work in the field of sound studies using communications approaches as well as reflexive ethnography. Surveys a wide range of theory and research practices associated with orality and oral communication, auditory perception, systems for measurement and evaluation of sound, soundwalking and sound art practice, audio techniques and formats in music production, sound design, soundmapping hearing prostheses, and data sonification.

COURSE DETAILS:

Overview:

This course is designed in seminar/lab format as an intermediate level work group in the field of sound studies in relation to communication and media studies. The topics to be presented in the seminars will include: soundscape studies, the phenomenology of sound, construction of listening, sound and digital media, issues of noise and urban sound design, mobilities of sound, issues of gender in sound, aural cultures, data and sound, and sonic ethnography. The lab portion of the course will systematically survey a wide range of knowledge associated with auditory perception, systems of measurement and evaluation of sound, audio techniques and formats in music production and sound design, soundmapping and soundwalking, hearing prostheses, and data sonification.

Student work will normally consist of an essay, and a term project on a topic of current relevance in the community, in the field of media, communication, political economy, or socio-cultural issues, applying a sound studies methodology. The essay will involve library or other research, and the project will include applied and/or field-based research. A report on the term project will be expected during the last seminar, which may be part of a public showcase. It is recommended that final projects make use of audio materials as documentation, or in the form of media works created as part of the project. Research undertaken by students in this class is insured under a blanket ethics approval. Examples of general areas in which projects may be based are:

·      Fieldwork in the area of noise pollution, architectural acoustics, or issues in urban sound design.
·      Media soundscape analysis, including aspects of media sound and listening.
·      Fieldwork or documentary research in socio-cultural, gender or other intersectional. approaches to the study of sound and listening.
·      Historical report and socio-cultural analysis of a sonic technology/technique.

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: