Sound Analysis Seminar at SAVAIL

[mack]

Sorry if this turns out to be a duplicate message. Maria Kennedy
forwarded me this sound-related event coming soon at SAVAIL:

We would like to announce a seminar in sound analysis that may be of
interest to your students and faculty. It will be held at the Sound
and Video Analysis Instructional Lab (SAVAIL) Conference Room, E172
Wells Library, on March 7, 2011 from 3:30-5:00pm.

Many fields of the humanities and social sciences are concerned with
sound – as a medium of communication or a form of data, as a stimulus
that elicits variable response, as a cultural object, as a consumable
commodity, as a symptom of historical change, as a catalyst to virtual
realism, as a product of technology, and on and on.

But sound is notoriously difficult to describe in both its acoustic
and auditory forms, and even more difficult to dissect and evaluate as
it changes through space and time.

Sound analysis is a method of examining the details of sound that pass
by too quickly to identify by ear, and it suggests a vocabulary to
label those details. Projects carried out at SAVAIL have included
comparisons of tones produced by baroque versus modern cellos,
identification of phonetic features distinguishing political speech
making from conversation of political issues, analysis of acoustic
details conveying “nurseness” in commercial advertisements for
laxatives, and the isolation of sonic elements contributing to the
soundscape of an ethnographic field tape.

This seminar will present the results of several projects completed or
under way in SAVAIL. It will also solicit from attendees a description
of their specific interests in order to discuss ways in which sound
analysis might be useful.

We are attaching a poster announcing the Seminar, and would be
grateful if it could be posted in your department. Please forward this
invitation to your students, and to any colleagues that would be
interested in this topic.

Sincerely,

Nina Fales and Dot Porter, SAVAIL