Critical Listening Strategies: Lessons from Sound Art

3.0 credits · Graduate

What can sound tell us about culture, power, and ideology? Does it echo the information given to us by images? Does the information translate across media? Or does sonic information speak in a fundamentally different way? Does it tell us about other subjects or does it tell us information that contradicts what vision describes? What do we have to gain when we sharpen our critical tools for interpreting the work of sound or recognizing the cultural values inherent in sonic communication? Critical Listening Strategies answers that last question with a necessarily interdisciplinary approach. We will familiarize ourselves with critical listening strategies offered by sound artists and sound theorists to identify strategies for listening. We will develop new practices of listening critically and creatively as a foundation for further analysis and action.