Looking for SEM panel participants
Mack Hagood
Ben Tausig, an active voice on the Sound Studies list, is putting together a panel that will be a little more performative than usual in its use of field recordings. I'm planning to present on my attempts to use fieldwork and field recording as forms of community activism and pedagogical praxis in my upcoming Summer Session I course, "C385 Audio Production as Service: Sounds and Stories in the Path of I-69." (By the way, please spread the word about this class to your students.) However, we could use at least one more panelist. Please read Ben's description below and consider joining us for a fun and innovative panel.
Best,
Mack
Dear friends in the Sound Studies SIG,
I am organizing a panel for this year's SEM conference in Philadelphia that I'm very excited about, and I wanted to extend an invitation to members of this list to consider presenting.
The theme of the panel will be its style of presentation rather than any single discursive emphasis. Each talk will combine - without interruption - standard narrative with original field recordings. The presenter can thus not only address her theme through the language of the paper itself, but can also pull off more creative and performative gestures by inserting sound at crucial moments. For example, a recording of a police whistle might briefly and brusquely interrupt a discussion about the use of sound in law enforcement. A slowly ascending crowd din might come to overwhelm a discussion about the sonic tactics of protesters. The general idea is to do something like a live podcast or radio program. I've experimented with this format a few times, and it's actually quite easy to get the timings right. There is a strong impact when sound emerges, unmediated by button-pushing, at key moments in the talk. It adds an engaging extra layer to spoken content, a kind of dialogue between discourse and recording. Finally, the format does not require the paper itself to be any less rigorous than it would normally be.
The requirement is that you have field recordings (either music or non-musical sound will work fine) that could complement and illustrate a paper topic. If you have an idea for a paper, or have more questions about how the format works, please email me as soon as possible.
My thanks,
Benjamin Tausig
PhD Candidate, ethnomusicology
New York University
Fulbright Scholar, 2010-2011 (hosted by Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok)