Sound, Vision, Action puts contemporary art and scholarship in sound studies and visual culture in direct dialogue around questions of power and politics.
Today, we live in an age of unprecedented visual and sonic saturation. Although philosophers, artists, critics and censors have always argued for the power of sounds and images and their attendant senses, the last half-century has seen a major shift in how we talk about them, as scholars have systematically made the case for understanding modern power relations in terms of seeing and hearing, sounds and images. For instance, Michel Foucault鈥檚 figures of the panopticon and the confessional (Foucault 1977, 1978) showed how relations of seeing and being seen, hearing and being heard, were intimately connected to modern forms of power; Laura Mulvey (Mulvey 1975) analyzed the gaze as a way of explaining male domination; and Jacques Derrida鈥檚 concept of the metaphysics of presence (Derrida 1976) put fantasies about the voice and hearing at the very centre of Western thought. Writers and practitioners who followed in their steps developed these questions and extended them to new areas of inquiry, including colonialism (Tomlinson 2007; Mirzoeff 2011), media (Kittler 1985; Crary 2001), science and technology (Galison 1994; Canales 2009), historiography (Smith 2008), and performance (Carter 1992; Auslander 1999). They also coined new terms, like 鈥渧isuality鈥� and 鈥渧isual culture,鈥� to describe at once the systems of seeing and being seen, images and their modes of production and circulation, and the broader fields of relations in which all of these things were embedded (Mirzoeff 2009; Jones 2010; Mirzoeff 2012). Scholars of sound followed suit with terms like 鈥渁urality鈥� and 鈥渟ound culture鈥� (Bull and Back 2003; Hilmes 2005; Pinch and Bijsterveld 2011; Sterne 2012; Born 2013).
Today, it is time to reassess these trends. Where the last generation of philosophers was writing in a context shaped by the various political upheavals around 1968 (Foucault and Deleuze 1977), our conceptions of power must make sense of the various transformations and uprisings of the last decade, associated with the processes of globalization (Hardt and Negri 2005). Where the post-1968 writers conceived of looking and listening in a world filled with televisions, movies, records and newspapers (Hall 1980), we confront an unprecedented torrent of images and sounds from all directions. Where they lived in a world where images and sounds were produced in radically different contexts and with radically different skill sets, we live in a world of convergence and aesthetic cross-fertilization. Where they worried about access to the means of media production, today we assume broad access to the means of production, and must account for the blurring of boundaries between production, circulation and consumption. Now, we worry about access to and the consequences of the means of circulation鈥攆rom the use of social media by governments and activists alike; to the widespread appropriation and recirculation of existing images and sounds; scholars鈥� newfound ability to produce and disseminate visually and sonically rich scholarship; and new machinic forms of hearing and seeing (Terranova 2004; Sinnreich 2010; Svensson 2012; boyd and Crawford 2012).
Following their philosophical forbearers, sound studies and visual culture have honed in on a single modality鈥攙isuality, aurality鈥攁s a pathway to cultural analysis. In recent years, scholarship on visuality and aurality has had very fertile encounters with trends like the new materialism (Goodman 2010; Chun 2011), and humanists鈥� appropriation of new work in neuroscience (Hansen 2006). While these developments are quite intellectually promising, they tend to sidestep questions of power and politics. We also know of no major conference or collection that puts contemporary scholarship in sound studies and visual culture in direct dialogue. Sound, Vision, Action thus aims to provide a platform to start that discussion, but also aims to bring both fields back to the questions of power that initially oriented them. Against the background of new political, technical, mediatic and cultural realities, Sound, Vision, Action interrogates the very meaning of our most saturated senses, from live performances and face-to-face encounters, to shared experience at a distance, to machinic practices to which users delegate their senses.
Consistent with Media@不良研究所鈥檚 focus on 鈥淢edia, the Senses and Sensibilities鈥� in 2014-2015, the Sound, Vision, Action colloquium addresses the history, problems and possibilities of sound and images: for instance, how the circulation of images and sounds from distant places may foster connections between people or stir up conflict; how hearing and seeing are implicated in surveillance and softer forms of power; and how new developments in art, activism, computer science, music, performance, and historical practice might help to transform our sonic and visual cultures in new and productive ways.
By bringing together interdisciplinary practices in visual culture and sound studies, and situating them in relationship to fields like science and technology studies, history, literature, music, art, and media studies, Sound, Vision, Action examines the relationships between diverse technologies and techniques that shape the torrent of images and sounds that surround us, and the everyday practices of hearing and seeing through which people engage with the world.
Auslander, Philip. 1999. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. New York: Routledge.
Born, Georgina. 2013. Music, Sound and Space: Transformations of Public and Private Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
boyd, danah, and Kate Crawford. 2012. 鈥淐ritical Questions for Big Data.鈥� Information, Communication & Society no. 15 (5): 662-679.
Bull, Michael, and Les Back. 2003. The Auditory Culture Reader. New York: Berg.
Canales, Jimena. 2009. A Tenth of a Second: A History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Carter, Paul. 1992. The Sound In-Between: Voice, Space, Performance. Kensington: New South Wales University Press.
Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2011. Programmed Visions: Software and Memory. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Crary, Jonathan. 2001. Suspensions of Perception: Attention, Spectacle and Modern Culture. Cambridge: October Books.
Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.
鈥斺�斺��. 1978. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books.
Foucault, Michel, and Gilles Deleuze. 1977. 鈥淚ntellectuals and Power: An Interview.鈥� In Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, edited by D.F. Bouchard, 205-217. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Galison, Peter. 1994. 鈥淭he Ontology of the Enemy: Norbert Wiener and the Cybernetic Vision.鈥� Critical Inquiry no. 21 (2):228-266.
Goodman, Steve. 2010. Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect and the Ecology of Fear. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hall, Stuart. 1980. 鈥淓ncoding/Decoding.鈥� In Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies 1972-9, edited by Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Lowe, and Paul Willis, 128-138. London: Hutchinson.
Hansen, Mark B. N. 2006. Bodies in Code: Interfaces with Digital Media. New York: Routledge.
Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. 2005. Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire. New York: Penguin Books.
Hilmes, Michelle. 2005. 鈥淚s There a Field Called Sound Culture Studies? And Does It Matter?鈥� American Quarterly no. 57 (1):249-259.
Jones, Amelia. 2010. The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge.
Kittler, Friedrich. 1985. Discourse Networks, 1800/1900. Translated by Michael Metteer and Cris Cullens. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Mirzoeff, Nicholas. 2009. An Introduction to Visual Culture. New York: Routledge.
鈥斺�斺��. 2011. The Right To Look: A Counterhistory of Visuality. Durham: Duke University Press.
鈥斺�斺��. 2012. The Visual Culture Reader. New York: Routledge.
Mulvey, Laura. 1975. 鈥淰isual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.鈥� Screen no. 16 (3):6-18.
Pinch, Trevor, and Karin Bijsterveld. 2011. The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies. New York: Oxford University Press.
Sinnreich, Aram. 2010. Mashed Up: Music, Technology and the Rise of Configurable Culture. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
Sterne, Jonathan. 2012. MP3: The Meaning of a Format. Durham: Duke University Press.
鈥斺�斺��. 2012. The Sound Studies Reader. New York: Routledge.
Svensson, Patrik. 2012. 鈥淓nvisioning the Digital Humanities.鈥� Digital Humanities Quarterly no. 6 (1).
Terranova, Tiziana. 2004. Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age. London: Pluto Press.
Tomlinson, Gary. 2007. The Singing of the New World: Indigenous Voices in the Era of European Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Program
Friday, November 14, 2014
9:15-9:30: Introduction (Sterne, Mirzoeff)
9:30-11:00: Surveillance (Kaplan, Bijsterveld)
11:30-1:00: Performance (Brooks, Jones)
2:30-4:00: Militancy (Casemajor, Ultra-red)
Saturday, November 15, 2014
9:30-11:00: Humanity (Mottahedeh, Hoffman)
11:30-1:00: Capitalism (Curran, Gopinath)
2:30-3:15: Mediation (Bookchin (Born鈥檚 presentation is cancelled))
3:15-4:00: Round-up Panel (Sterne, Mirzoeff)
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Speakers
Karin Bijsterveld听 鈥� 听鈥淗earing and Seeing Voices: Speaker Identification at the Stasi鈥�
Natalie Bookchin听 鈥撎� 鈥淟ong Story Short鈥�
Georgina Born听 鈥撎� 鈥淧ower and the Circulation of Digital Musics鈥�
Daphne Brooks听 鈥� 听鈥淓ngines of Modernity: Black Sonic Women & the Open Road鈥�
Natalie Casemajor听 鈥撎� 鈥淭he Digital Drift of Derivative Artifacts鈥�
Mark Curran听 鈥撎� 鈥淭he Normalization of Deviance and the Construction of THE MARKET鈥�
Sumanth Gopinath听 鈥撎� 鈥淏eep: Listening to the Digital Watch"
Anette Hoffmann听 鈥撎� 鈥淭he Auscultation of Culture: Sound Recordings and Knowledge Production鈥澨�
Amelia Jones听 鈥撎� 鈥淭he Sound of Art鈥�
Caren Kaplan听 鈥撎� 鈥淭he Emotion of Motion: Exceeding the Visual in 鈥楢erostatic Spacing鈥欌�澨�
Negar Mottahedeh听 鈥撎� 鈥淥ne Light: Cinema and Islamic Spirituality鈥澨�
Ultra-red (Dont Rhine & Robert Sember)听 鈥撎� 鈥淲hat did you hear?鈥�
Colloquium committee and organizing team
Prof. Jonathan Sterne
Department of Art History and Communication Studies, 不良研究所
Prof. Nick Mirzoeff
Department of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University
Dr. Tamar Tembeck
Academic Associate, Media@不良研究所, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, 不良研究所
Sophie Toupin
Project Administrator, Media@不良研究所, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, 不良研究所
Mary Chin
Administrative Coordinator, Media@不良研究所, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, 不良研究所
Caitlin Loney
Web Administrator, Media@不良研究所, Department of Art History and Communication Studies, 不良研究所
Mauricio Delfin
Social Media
Casey McCormick
Social Media
Media@不良研究所 Colloquium Partners
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada; McCord Museum; Dean of Arts Development Fund, Canada Research Chair in Technology & Citizenship, Department of Art History and Communication Studies Speaker Series, Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC), Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF), James 不良研究所 Chair in Contemporary Art History, James 不良研究所 Chair in Culture and Technology, Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy, 不良研究所; Media History Research Centre, Concordia University; The International Association for Visual Culture (IAVC); NYU Steinhardt Department of Media, Culture, and Communication
Revision state: Draft
Most recent revision: Yes
Set moderation state:
Moderation state
Media@不良研究所 International Colloquium
Conference videos
November 14-15, 2014
McCord Museum
690 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal (Quebec) Canada
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Conveners:
Jonathan Sterne (不良研究所) and Nicholas Mirzoeff (NYU)
Panels:
Surveillance: Caren Kaplan, Karin Bijsterveld
Performance: Daphne Brooks, Amelia Jones
Militancy: Nathalie Casemajor, Ultra-red (Dont Rhine & Robert Sember)
Humanity: Negar Mottahedeh, Anette Hoffman
Capitalism: Mark Curran, Sumanth Gopinath
Mediation: Natalie Bookchin, Georgina Born
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Sound, Vision, Action puts contemporary art and scholarship in sound studies and visual culture in direct dialogue around questions of power and politics.
Today, we live in an age of unprecedented visual and sonic saturation. Although philosophers, artists, critics and censors have always argued for the power of sounds and images and their attendant senses, the last half-century has seen a major shift in how we talk about them, as scholars have systematically made the case for understanding modern power relations in terms of seeing and hearing, sounds and images. Where the last generation wrote in a context shaped by the various political upheavals around 1968, our conceptions of power must make sense of the various transformations and uprisings of the last decade, associated with the processes of globalization. Where the post-1968 writers conceived of looking and listening in a world filled with televisions, movies, records and newspapers, we confront an unprecedented torrent of images and sounds from all directions. Where they lived in a world where images and sounds were produced in radically different contexts and with radically different skill sets, we live in a world of convergence and aesthetic cross-fertilization. Where they worried about access to the means of media production, today we assume broad access to the means of production, and must account for the blurring of boundaries between production, circulation and consumption.
Against the background of new political, technical, mediatic and cultural realities, Sound, Vision, Action interrogates the very meaning of our most saturated senses, from live performances and face-to-face encounters, to shared experience at a distance, to machinic practices to which users delegate their senses. By bringing together interdisciplinary practices in visual culture and sound studies, and situating them in relationship to fields like science and technology studies, history, literature, music, art, and media studies, Sound, Vision, Action examines the relationships between diverse technologies and techniques that shape the torrent of images and sounds that surround us, and the everyday practices of hearing and seeing through which people engage with the world.
Organization: Jonathan Sterne, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Tamar Tembeck, Media@不良研究所
Information and livestream:
Media@不良研究所 is a hub of research, scholarship and public outreach on issues and controversies in media, technology and culture, housed within the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at 不良研究所:
Media@不良研究所 Colloquium Partners: McCord Museum; Dean of Arts Development Fund, Canada Research Chair in Technology & Citizenship, Department of Art History and Communication Studies Speaker Series, Centre for the Study of Democratic Citizenship (CSDC), Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF), James 不良研究所 Chair in Contemporary Art History, James 不良研究所 Chair in Culture and Technology, Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy, 不良研究所; Media History Research Centre, Concordia University; The International Association for Visual Culture (IAVC); NYU Steinhardt Department of Media, Culture, and Communication.
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