Sound for Artists

VISA 3056

Term:  FALL 2022

Course Director          

Marc Couroux
couroux [at] yorku [dot] ca
Course consultation hours: by appointment

Time and Location

Tuesday 2:30 PM – 6:30 PM, 330 Goldfarb Fine Arts

Sound for Artists is dedicated to an exploration of sound art both as a distinct practice and through its interdisciplinary intersections with sculptural, installation, performative, musical, and other time-based visual art practices. The history of sound art will be explored, from the Futurists to John Cage, to Fluxus, soundscape, speech-based and radio art practices, exploring both analog and digital manifestations. Topics covered include: acoustics/psychoacoustics, feedback/delay, collage/edit and studio manipulation, architecture/space and installation, speech/language/sound poetry, technological blind spots, subliminal and lowercase sound, expanded notions of the soundscape, radio art, noise and industrial music, silence, and more.

Students are expected to connect to a virtual classroom via Zoom every week. The course will consist in weekly lectures focused on the presentation of ideas germane to the course, synchronized listening to select sonic and musical works, subject to subsequent discussion, and technical tutorials enabling the student to quickly develop flexibility with select applications as well as with their respective hardware environments. Key materials will be made available on the course website. Select online readings will be assigned during the course and will also be subject to discussion. Once per term, the student and the course director will meet online for a short one-on-one conversation to discuss concerns and brainstorm work-in-progress.

Due to the exceptional online nature of the course, the student will produce sound projects using devices at their individual disposal, including phones (with sound recording software), and prosumer sound recording devices (eg. Zoom, Edirol), and computer-based editing software (at the student’s discretion in consultation with the course director). In addition to small exercises to be completed by the student weekly and presented to the group each class, there will be three major project assignments: a performance involving modes of listening, an expanded field recording, and an experiment investigating the powers of the false. Each of these studio projects will be accompanied by a 1000-word piece of writing that will engage with the specifics of the work, and its placement within a broad range of ideas. Students will upload their work into a Google Drive folder that will be set up at the beginning of the term.