MA Sonic Culture: Sound, arts and media in the digital age
Programme Leader: Steve Goodman
This unique theory/practice MA programme attempts to compensate for the deep rooted visual bias of Western culture, and by implication, the lack of rigorous theoretical analysis of the field of Sonic Culture, the intersection between the soundscape and cybernetic society. With increasing online bandwidth, sound is attaining a more central role in the multimedia environment of contemporary culture. This MA deliberately focuses on the broad theme of Sonic Culture and away from the more limited concerns of the cultural study of music, in order to more insightfully delineate, and provide context to, the profound and unpredictable technological transformations which global music culture is currently undergoing. Digital media have generated an acoustic cyberspace and opened up previously unexplored microsonic dimensions of the audiosphere. A specific range of conceptual tools are required to critically engage and produce in this context. The core programmes of the MA Sonic Cultures are the theoretically oriented Sonic Culture (Semester A), and Audio-Vision which has a theory/practice option (Semester B). Students wishing to follow a practice oriented pathway must also take the Sound Design option in Semester A.
The MA Sonic Cultures takes an interdisciplinary approach, and aims to develop a critical understanding of the role of sound in digital culture, providing a framework and production skills for digital sound design and analysis across a range of traditional and emergent media. Theoretically, the MA explores the emergent space and time of this acoustic cyberspace, and the relevance of concepts such as microsound, sonic affect, the audio-visual contract, the virtual, simulation, synesthesia, afrofuturism, remixology and digital accidents in relation to Sonic Culture in digital capitalism. To do this, we draw material from the histories of recorded sound in 20th century electronic music, theories of film sound, and frameworks from fiction, cultural theory, critical musicology, philosophy, digital aesthetics, cybernetics, acoustics, physiology, psychoacoustics, sciences of complexity and theories of power, gender and diaspora, in order to provide students with a conceptual basis for critical and creative sound analysis and production.
Students following a theory/practice route through the MA in Sonic Culture attain a grounding in recording, sampling, editing, manipulating, sequencing and synthesising sound using various digital audio software packages, encouraging specialisation in any of the following fields of sonic culture: electronic music production, film & video, radio, the Internet, CD-roms, computer games and sound installations. Such students will get the opportunity to develop sound projects and media content in relation to any the key concepts explored in the programme.
Core Modules include Sonic Culture: the soundscape in cybernetic culture in Semester A, and Research Methods (Humanities) and Dissertation in Semester B. Possible optional modules include Audio Vision, Cybernetic Culture, Digital Aesthetics, Digital Cultures, Media Production, Software as Culture, Work Practices in the Media Industries.
