Audio Ethnography

1 Course Unit

This is an intensive, graduate-level, practice-based course in which students will record, edit, and produce anthropologically informed audio works that record and interpret culture and lived experience. Projects in this class will look beyond conventional linguistic or musical codes to sounds whose semiotic or affective value may be less immediately evident. Through the process of making location recordings, analyzing those recordings, composing them into autonomous works, and critiquing every step of the way, this course will engage with questions of ethnographic representation through the medium of sound. In parallel with contextualizing readings and sound projections, throughout the semester students will work intensively on audio projects, receiving training on recording techniques, audio editing, and basic post-production techniques. The course is an opportunity to open up the question of what might constitute 'audio documentary' or 'ethnographic audio'. Presentation strategies for final projects will be discussed and decided on individual bases. Projects will be situated in relationship to cognate fields, including the anthropology of the senses, interdisciplinary sound studies, ethnomusicology, ethnographic cinema, sound art, sound mapping, soundscape composition, and experimental nonfiction media practices which involve location recording. Through weekly sound projections and home listening, students will also gain a familiarity with existing genres and uses of nonfiction audio in anthropology and related fields. Not Offered Every Year 1 Course Unit