The Sound of Where We Are
One of the things that attracts me to sound as an artist and educator is its fluidity: it seeps between disciplines and provides a kind of wavy conduit through which to travel between them. In many ways it is a medium of uncertainty - it bounces off of objects, it bends around corners, it is a trickster. I have found that my sound classes have translated well in our global remote shift, not solely because sound is something that naturally streams through tubes and wires, but because it allows for discussions of complexity, the analysis of deceptive surfaces, the exploration of metaphor.
The examples that I will share in the conference will focus on the pedagogy of sound, but more pointedly on how remote teaching has changed some of my assumptions about how I teach and where the learning is. I didn’t necessarily see this coming. When the pandemic hit I wondered like many faculty, how can I teach these sound classes if students don’t have access to X recorder, or Y room on campus? While I understand that these technical aspects of learning sound can be important, what excites me is how some of my pandemic-adjustments, affirm the potential of lo-fi or hybrid methods as ways to better connect students to issues of open endedness.
The examples that I will share in the conference will focus on the pedagogy of sound, but more pointedly on how remote teaching has changed some of my assumptions about how I teach and where the learning is. I didn’t necessarily see this coming. When the pandemic hit I wondered like many faculty, how can I teach these sound classes if students don’t have access to X recorder, or Y room on campus? While I understand that these technical aspects of learning sound can be important, what excites me is how some of my pandemic-adjustments, affirm the potential of lo-fi or hybrid methods as ways to better connect students to issues of open endedness.
Sound is intimately tied to our surroundings: wave energy bounces off surfaces, rooms have their own resonance, and our voices respond to the spaces they inhabit. What does it mean then to teach a class about spatial sound phenomena in an online environment? Particularly a class that ends with a site-based sound installation?
In preparation for an online Fall 2020 semester I redesigned an elective course about sound that I have been teaching and evolving for a number of years. My aim was to explore the pedagogical possibilities of a decentralized, online study of sound and place. The experience of teaching this course remotely has forced me to grapple with many of the assumptions I’ve accrued over the years about teaching sound: for example, the importance of consistent class-wide access to tools, or the premise that our physical presence at the site was necessary for the best outcome. I imagined that the turn to remote teaching would alter the final project, a site-specific sound intervention, but I did not foresee the value that a decentralized approach would bring to the development of the work.
My disciplinarily diverse students, who represented 10 of our 12 undergraduate majors, had the opportunity to explore sites geographically close to them, and if desired, connect them to their field of study. This is important, because the course presents sound as a transdisciplinary hub through which various practices can come together. Surprisingly this remote approach enriched the relationship between sound and discipline as well as the connective capacity across disciplines. The depth of student research and exploration was qualitatively enhanced in the online version of the course, and students have developed work that demonstrates a more nuanced engagement with the impacts that sound has on space, place, and ideas. In my presentation will share examples as well as an analysis of how this remote examination of sound and space unfolded.
In preparation for an online Fall 2020 semester I redesigned an elective course about sound that I have been teaching and evolving for a number of years. My aim was to explore the pedagogical possibilities of a decentralized, online study of sound and place. The experience of teaching this course remotely has forced me to grapple with many of the assumptions I’ve accrued over the years about teaching sound: for example, the importance of consistent class-wide access to tools, or the premise that our physical presence at the site was necessary for the best outcome. I imagined that the turn to remote teaching would alter the final project, a site-specific sound intervention, but I did not foresee the value that a decentralized approach would bring to the development of the work.
My disciplinarily diverse students, who represented 10 of our 12 undergraduate majors, had the opportunity to explore sites geographically close to them, and if desired, connect them to their field of study. This is important, because the course presents sound as a transdisciplinary hub through which various practices can come together. Surprisingly this remote approach enriched the relationship between sound and discipline as well as the connective capacity across disciplines. The depth of student research and exploration was qualitatively enhanced in the online version of the course, and students have developed work that demonstrates a more nuanced engagement with the impacts that sound has on space, place, and ideas. In my presentation will share examples as well as an analysis of how this remote examination of sound and space unfolded.