FA281: Project in Sound Art

Disability Accommodations

The Cooper Union will make reasonable accommodations for persons with documented disabilities. Students with disabilities who are seeking accommodations because of their disability must contact the Dean of Students at chamber@cooper.edu. The Dean of Students will evaluate your documentation and issue you a letter informing you of the accommodations you are eligible to receive. Disability accommodation services are available only to students who are registered with the Dean of Students and submit appropriate documentation.

Students who register for disability accommodations will receive a detailed letter from the Dean of Students. Students are responsible for reading the letter provided by the Dean of Students and following all instructions.

Students with disability accommodations are encouraged to speak with the Dean of Students as soon as possible.

Additional information can be found online at http://cooper.edu/students/student-affairs/disability.

Sexual Misconduct & Discrimination Reporting Requirements

While I want you to feel comfortable coming to me with issues you may be struggling with or concerns you may be having, please be aware that I have some reporting requirements that are part of my responsibilities as a member of the faculty. If you inform me of an issue of sexual harassment, sexual assault, or discrimination, I will keep the information as private as I can, but I am required to report the basic facts of the incident to Cooper’s Title IX Coordinator, Grace Kendall. If you would like to speak to the the Coordinator directly, she can be reached at gkendall@cooper.edu, 212-353-4053, or in person on the 3rd floor of the residence hall (29 3rd Avenue). The Title IX Coordinator will be able to assist you in understanding all of your options and in connecting you to available resources on- and off-campus. Speaking with the Title IX Coordinator does not obligate you to file a complaint or participate in an investigation unless you choose to do so.

To speak with someone CONFIDENTIALLY about issues of sexual misconduct, you may contact the Student Care Coordinator and Counselor, Cassandra Jolicoeur at jolicoeu@cooper.edu, 212-353-4006, or in person on the 3rd floor of the residence hall (29 3rd Avenue). Off-campus CONFIDENTIAL support for sexual violence is available through the Safe Horizon Crisis Center (212-577-7700) or the RAINN hotline (877-995-5247) or can be found in the Cooper Union Sexual Misconduct Policy (https://cooper.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/assets/site/files/2015/2015-Unified-Nondiscrimination-policy-Final.pdf).

Counseling & Mental Health Support

Counseling Services at The Cooper Union are coordinated through the Office of Student Affairs. Our Student Care Coordinator and Counselor, Cassandra Jolicoeur, is here to meet with students to provide support and to discuss mental health and counseling needs. Cassandra can be reached at jolicoeu@cooper.edu or at 212.353.4006. Cassandra will work with each student on an individual basis to connect them to the necessary care and supportive services. Additional information can be found here: http://cooper.edu/students/student-affairs/health/counseling/services. General health and wellbeing resources can be found here: http://cooper.edu/students/student-affairs/health.

Readings, Discussion, & Following Directions

• This class has weekly readings and occasional discussion. If most students aren’t reading, I will assign weekly response-papers or quizzes. (This has happened in the past!)
• There are numerous situations in this class where you will need to follow simple directions.  If you can’t bear the thought of bending your will to someone else’s expectations then this is not the class for you. (See any of the yellow project prompts below.)

Grading

• 20% Reading and Discussion You need to participate in the discussion every week to get a good grade. If you are silent, you can’t get better than a B in this class.
• 20% Exercises These are 2 quick techniques assignments with very rigid guidelines. I may ask you to repeat one until you have mastered the skill.
• 60% Projects The first project is your participation in a class performance. Two self-directed projects follow later in the semester. I give A’s for manifest investment in concept and technique, willingness to take risks, originality, and honesty.

Mobile Phones

• I feel lucky that we can all come together for 4hrs to concentrate without distractions. No answering calls or texting during class. No little glowing screens, period!

Attendance

• If you miss a class, you need to get notes from another student. (This class moves fast. Every missed class is a missed topic.)
• If you miss more than 2 classes, your grade automatically drops one letter-grade.
• If you miss more than 3 classes, you may be asked to withdraw from the course, or risk failure.

Late Work

• Late work will always be downgraded (usually one letter grade). Contact me before it’s due.

Equipment Access

• This class gives you access to sound recorders and microphones from the Equipment Checkout, as well as the ability to reserve our sound booths and editing computers. To gain access, you must agree to our loan terms (described in detail in class) and return things on time and in good condition.
• Equipment for installations (MP3 players, amps, speakers, mixers, contact-speakers, etc) comes from Dan Porvin in the Editing Lab. They require 1 week advanced notice, via a simple form that you fill out and I sign.

Online Syllabus & Email List

• The class syllabus is online at https://www.zachpoff.com/site/project-in-sound-art/. You are responsible for checking it each week. (My site also includes some free software tools that might come in handy during the semester.)
• After the 2nd class, we will have eachother’s email addresses. Please check your email often, and add me to your address book so my messages stay out of your spam box. I’ll gladly forward any announcements that you want to share with the class.

Libraries and Archives

• UbuWeb
  An amazing archive of streaming / downloadable media art, best described by its curator Kenneth Goldsmith: “But by the time you read this, UbuWeb may be gone. Cobbled together, operating on no money and an all-volunteer staff, UbuWeb has become the unlikely definitive source for all things avant-garde on the internet. Never meant to be a permanent archive, Ubu could vanish for any number of reasons: our ISP pulls the plug, our university support dries up, or we simply grow tired of it. Acquisition by a larger entity is impossible: nothing is for sale. We don’t touch money. In fact, what we host has never made money. Instead, the site is filled with the detritus and ephemera of great artists”
• Monoskop
  A wiki for collaborative studies of the arts, media and humanities. It has an amazing summary of Sound Art resources, including some rare downloadable media.
• NYU Bobst Avery Fisher Center
  NYU’s media library is like Netflix but with stuff that’s actually interesting! You can’t take their CDs and DVDs out of the library but you can spend hours listening and watching stuff that you can’t find anywhere else.
• SONM Archives
  An archive of the CDs, cassettes, vinyl and books collected by sound artist and performer Francisco Lopez. (You need to register to get free streaming access)
• Her Noise
  An archive that brings together women artists who use sound as a medium. Most of the content is from a 2005 exhibit in London. Be sure to check out the video interviews.
• Audible Women
  A listing of contemporary women artists who work with sound, created by Australian sound artist Gail Priest.
• Radio Papesse
  An online audio archive devoted to contemporary art; it is a place for the documentation and the articulation of a critical discourse around the visual arts and at the same time it is a radio project dedicated to sound art production and distribution.
• Radio MACBA
  An internet radio station founded at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in 2006. Initially an extension of the museum’s exhibitions, it has developed into a platform for sonic art programming. They produce long-form audio essays (like Variations, an excellent history of sonic appropriation) as well as artist interviews.
• WOMANPRODUCER
  A multi-platform archive of sonic innovators. The project began as a web-based archive of the history of female, trans and non-binary artists working with the technologies of sound, now expanded to include live events.
• Audio Arts Archive
  In 1973 William Furlong and Barry Barker established Audio Arts as a cassette-based audio magazine. It provided a dedicated space for artists and art-world professionals to speak about their work in a free and unmediated way, often in direct proximity of their creations.
• Women’s Audio Archive
  A series of recordings from 1984-1990, taped by artist Marysia Lewandowska. These recordings document public events, seminars, talks, conferences, and private conversations with Judy Chicago, Mary Kelly, Barbara Kruger, Yvonne Rainer, etc. This 2017 piece from Radio MACBA contains excerpts from the archive with contemporary commentary by Lewandowska herself.

Sound Maps

• The London Sound Survey
  A collection of creative-commons licensed field-recordings from London, organized by Ian Rawes
• Soundcities
  A sound map platform created by UK artist Stanza.
• Radio Aporee Maps
  A flexible global sound mapping platform created by Udo Noll. It’s really easy to upload your own sounds and/or make your own customized maps.
• Locus Sonus Live Map
  A live-streaming sound map from a French research group. Check out some of their other projects here.
• Sound cities
  A sound map of user-contributed field recordings with a twist: Each uploaded sound is paired with a remixed “memory” version.

Radio, Podcasts & Record Labels

• Framework Radio
  Weekly radio show (+ podcast) dedicated to field recording, where you can hear long-form work and excerpts, sometimes curated thematically. A great cross-section of work from all over the globe. (Submissions accepted.)
• Sound Matters podcast
  Sound Matters investigates our noisy cosmos, how we listen to sounds, the stories we tell about them, and all the ideas, inventions, discoveries, possibilities and ideas that live in the realm of the audible.
• Phantom Power podcast
  A podcast on the sonic arts and humanities. Interviews with contemporary scholars and artists, topical sound essays. Good stuff!
• Sonic Field Radio podcast
  Podcast series from Sonic Field, a community driven, inter-disciplinary vault for research on sound in multiple angles, openly exploring arts, sciences and philosophies of the paradigm we use to call sound.
• The Dominant Eye podcast
  Responding to the overload of visual media dominating our contemporary senses, Siân Lyn Hutchings and The Noematic Collective will develop a series of interconnected projects that foreground the use of sonic interpretation on site: a series of live weekly podcasts, a tailored programme of sonic workshops and, installed permanently in the Bold Tendencies Auditorium, a sonic library of the site’s ongoing and evolving aural history.
• Earlid
  An online gallery of evolving exhibits of sound art. It’s like a museum. It’s also like a radio program with occasional practitioner interviews transformed by Earlid’s radiophilic curator, Joan Schuman.
• Radia.fm
  An international collective of radio artists. They take turns producing a 28 minute show each week. (info on Wikipedia, listen on Archive.org)
• Radio MACBA
  An internet radio station founded at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona in 2006. Initially an extension of the museum’s exhibitions, it has developed into a platform for sonic art programming. They produce long-form audio essays (like Variations, an excellent history of sonic appropriation) as well as artist interviews.
• Wave Farm (WGXC)
  An upstate NY community FM station & arts organization. (Check out their Saturday schedule for the avant-garde stuff.)
• Resonance FM
  A London FM station dedicated to radio art
• Radius
  An experimental radio broadcast platform located in Chicago, IL that features a new project monthly with statements by artists who use radio as a primary element in their work. Radius provides artists with live and experimental formats in radio programming.
• Clocktower Radio
  Founded in 1972 in Lower Manhattan by MoMA PS1 Founder Alanna Heiss, Clocktower is the oldest alternative art project in New York, and its radio station, Clocktower Radio, was founded in 2003 as one of the first all-art online museum radio stations in the world.
• Kunstradio (Austria)
  A weekly program on Oesterreich 1 (the cultural channel of Austrian National Radio). Founded in 1987 as a space for radio art – i.e. an art that reflects the radio medium itself.
• WFMU
  OK it’s not really sound art, but WFMU is an amazing local freeform radio station
• NTS Radio
  An online freeform radio station with a studio in London but contributors from around the world. (Like WFMU but international!)
• Sonic Terrain
  A free net.label dedicated to field recording (now transformed into Sonic Field below)
• Touch Music
  Publisher of music and other things. (including Chris Watson’s field-recordings)
• Gruenrekorder
  Prolific record label dedicated to field recording releases
• and/OAR
  “environmental recordings and more”
• LOM
  Record label in Slovakia run by field-recordist Jonas Gruska (also sells interesting microphones)
• Very Quiet Records
  “The idea is simple. We release recordings of quiet places or situations from sound artists and field recordists from around the world.”
• Artkillart
  Artkillart is a label based in Paris and Berlin, created in 2007. Its purpose is to promote experimental audiovisual and sound art. In reaction to dematerialized music, the artists of the label refocus on material objects.

Calendars & Interesting Links

• Everyday Listening
  collects inspiring and remarkable sound art and creative sound design projects, installations, etc
• Create Digital Music
  CDM is generally focused on the tools of electronic music but it’s worth a look for sound art too
• Rhizome
  It’s the place to go for net art and new media

Magazines, Criticism, Interviews & Essays

• The Wire
  A UK avant-garde music magazine that covers sound art too
• Ear Room
  Great interviews with contemporary sound artists
• sound-art-text.com
  An informal space maintained by Hannah Kemp-Welch, dedicated to sound, and its creative and artistic uses
• Sounding Out
  A scholarly blog that analyzes sound’s role in constructing social difference, identity & power
• Sonic Field
  As the result of merging David Vélez’s “The Field Reporter” and Miguel Isaza’s “Sonic Terrain” (created along with Nathan Moody) and “infinite grain”, this site arises as a community driven, inter-disciplinary vault for research on sound in multiple angles, openly exploring arts, sciences and philosophies of the paradigm we use to call sound.
• Reflections on Process in Sound is a free online journal with the aim to provide a forum where artists can engage in discussions about how they create the work they do, what their practices are influenced by and how their ideas manifest themselves within the final artwork. In short, it puts the spotlight onto process in sound arts practice, from the practitioner’s point of view.

Field-Recording & Sound Experimentation Blogs

• The Music of Sound
  occasional posts from a sound designer and recordist
• Sounds Like Noise
  Field-recordings and thoughts by Australian artist Jay-Dea Lopez

Forums / Email Lists / Facebook Groups

• naturerecordists on groups.io
  An active group dedicated to field-recording, acoustic ecology, and bioacoustics (Formerly on Yahoo Groups)
• micbuilders on groups,io
  Anything for the mic do-it-yourselfer. Ideas, advice, inventions, images. (Formerly on Yahoo Groups)
• World Forum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE) Mailing List
  Announcements and discussions related to Acoustic Ecology, soundscape composition, noise pollution, and aural literacy in general. Lots of smart people there!
• JWSOUND
  A forum mostly populated by film sound production folks. Lots of practical discussions about field-recording technique and equipment within that context.
• Field Recording subreddit
• Several Facebook groups are dedicated to field recording: “Field recordings” (public) and “Field Recording” (private).

Books: Sound In Context

• Audio-Vision by Michel Chion (1994)
  This book deconstructs the image/sound relationships in cinema, with one foot in the theories of Musique Concrete pioneer Pierre Schaeffer. Intended for film studies but a pretty amazing read for anybody working with sound.
• The Sound Studies Reader edited by Jonathan Sterne (2012)
  This is a collection of essays that situate sound and listening in the academic context of social science, compiled by my absolute favorite public academic. (Also see Sterne’s excellent books The Audible Past and MP3: The Meaning of a Format. His prose is as generous and comprehendable as his theories are rigorous.)
• Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music edited by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner (2004)
  This collection of essays by artists, composers and theorists traces the genealogy of the issues that surround avant-garde music (and by extension sound art).
• On Listening edited by Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle (2013)
  For this book Lane and Carlyle commissioned 40 short essays about listening from experts in fields like art, anthropology, science & activism.
• The Soundscape of Modernity by Emily Thompson (2002)
  Thompson reflects on the transformation of the culture of listening as architecture and interior acoustics changed throughout the 20th century.
• Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds is an “alphabetical sourcebook of eighty sonic/auditory effects” compiled by Centre for Research on Sonic Space and the Urban Environment (CRESSON) in Grenoble, France. Their accounts of sonic effects such as echo, anticipation, vibrato, and wha-wha integrate information about the objective physical spaces in which sounds occur with cultural contexts and individual auditory experience.
• Errant Bodies Press has been developing publishing projects since 1995. Since this time, it has been dedicated to supporting diverse discourses and projects in the fields of sonic and spatial practices, auditory culture and performativity, experimental writing and political thought. Errant Bodies further aims to consider the specifics of location, media, and modes of address, and the co-productive narratives generated from cultural work and its place, through site-based research, collective actions, and collaborative projects.

Books: Autobiographies, Manifestos, Interviews, Catalogs

• In the Field edited by Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle (2013)
  Interviews with contemporary sound artists, field-recordists, and experimental musicians. It’s an inspiring resource for understanding how other artists approach their practice and connect to others within and outside their fields.
• Pink Noises : Women On Electronic Music And Sound edited by Tara Rodgers (2010)
  Interviews with women DJs, artists and musicians about their practice. It’s an extension of the now-defunct pinknoises.com, a 2000-era website dedicated to making electronic music more accessible for women and girls.
• The Soundscape by R. Murray Schafer (1977)
  From the Canadian Acoustic Ecology pioneer who coined the term “soundscape”. This book changed the way people listen to natural and built environments.
• Reflections by Alvin Lucier (1995)
  Interviews, scores, and writings from one of the smartest and most accessible American composers of experimental music and sound
• Silence by John Cage (1961)
  Essays & lectures to contextualize Cage’s music and philosophy. Like his sound work, many of the texts are structured via chance operations.
• SFMoMA Soundtracks (2017)
  Thorough online exhibition catalog featuring the work of Guy Ben Ner, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot, Paul DeMarinis, Brian Eno, Bill Fontana, Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon, Chris Kallmyer and Mark Allen, Christine Sun Kim and Thomas Mader, Ragnar Kjartansson, Christina Kubisch, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Amor Muñoz, Camille Norment, O Grivo, Susan Philipsz, Amalia Pica, Anri Sala, Sergei Tcherepnin, Richard T. Walker, & Lyota Yagi.

Books: Histories of Sound Art

• Earth Sound Earth Signal by Douglas Kahn (2013)
  A study of energies in aesthetics and the arts, from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Kahn Evokes the Aeolian sphere music that Henry David Thoreau heard blowing along telegraph lines and the Aelectrosonic sounds of natural radio that Thomas Watson heard through the first telephone; he then traces the histories of science, media, music, and the arts to the 1960s and beyond.
• Noise Water Meat by Douglas Kahn (2001)
  This wide-ranging book traces the (mostly) unwritten history of sound-making and aurality as it intertwines with the dominant movements in 20th century art.
• Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art by Brandon LaBelle (2007)
  One history of sound art, largely concerned with the relationship between sound and place. LaBelle argues that sound is a relational actor: defining and violating territories, constructing and challenging identity.
• In The Blink Of An Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art by Seth Kim-Cohen (2009)
  Kim-Cohen asks why writing about sound art has tended towards phenomenology. He cites the ascendancy of conceptualism in visual art decades ago and proposes a revision of the young history of sound art and a refocusing of attention on the “non-cochlear” qualities of current and future sonic practice.

Books: How To Make Things

• Handmade Electronic Music by Nic Collins (2006, 2009)
  The only book that blends audio electronics tutorials with historical context and a DVD featuring examples of contemporary artists who build their own gear. Go buy it now! (this link points to the first edition. If possible try to get the newer edition from 2009)

NYC Venues & Organizations

• Experimental Intermedia
  Performance space run by composer Phil Niblock
• Harvestworks
  A center for digital arts, sound and music. They have workshops, performances, residencies, etc.
• Hans Tammen
  A composer/performer/teacher. He is involved in multiple ensembles, so his email list often alerts me to things happening around town that I would otherwise miss.
• Fridman Gallery
  Gallery that represents artists in a variety of media, but also puts on amazing live shows. Get on their list ASAP!
• Issue Project Room
  A great venue for performance-based projects in music, sound, dance, and more
• Blank Forms
  A group that organizes avant-garde performances around NYC. Go to their shows!
• The Silent Barn
  A volunteer-run DIY space that books a wide variety of performance-based work. (They lost their space in spring 2018 but will hopefully continue in other ways.)
• Flux Factory
  An incubator for experimentation with collaborative processes showcased in Flux’s 1400 sq ft gallery, which hosts over 75 annual multidisciplinary events – all Flux events are free and artists are compensated for their work. Flux provides affordable space to emerging Artists-in-Residence.
• Knockdown Center
  Art and performance space dedicated to cross-disciplinary projects and collaborations.
• Roulette
  A pretty big venue that mostly books music and dance
• The Stone
  An artist-run performance space for experimental music
• National Sawdust
  An artist-led, non-profit performance space.
• The Kitchen
  One of NYC’s oldest non-profit spaces dedicated to multidisciplinary performance and art
• Eyebeam
  A major center for art and technology, sometimes sound-related.
• Share
  A long-running weekly collaborative jam session: “Participants bring their portable equipment, plug into our system, improvise on each others’ signal and perform live audio and video.”

Residencies and Exhibition Opportunities

(This isn’t an exhaustive list. Note that some residencies aren’t available to students.)

• RESartis
  A worldwide network of artist residencies.
• Sound And Music (Opportunities)
  This UK arts organization mostly supports local composers but they have a database of arts opportunities that are often global.
• Binaura/Nodar
  A sound art residency in rural Portugal
• MoKS
  An arts organization and residency program situated in a small town in southern Estonia (typically open to individual artists but only doing groups in 2015)
• Q-O2
  A residency program in Brussels, focusing on improvised music and sound art. Be sure to check out their publications too, which are mostly downloadable.
• Sonoscopia
  A collective in Porto, Portugal that offers residencies to folks exploring electro-acoustic music and sound art.
• Wikipedia’s List of Sound Art Organizations and Festivals

Other Peoples Links

• acousticecology.org has a great links page: better annotated and exhaustive than this one
• Artist Seth Cluett has an exhaustive list of Sound Art links