Western cultures are considered to be predominantly visual. Despite the fact that human
beings develop the capacity to hear in the womb before the capacity to see, our
belief in a visually dominated culture prevails. Sounds and orality are often
subjugated to the visual, to images and the written word. Yet the experience of
everyday life is increasingly mediated by a multitude of (mechanically
reproduced) sounds.
Point of departure in this course will be that close attention to aural practices
will provide crucial insights while investigating issues of cultural history
and analysis. People always also relate to each other through the sense of
hearing. Considering the suggested primacy of sound as a modality of knowing
and being in the world, the home territory of Auditory Culture studies will be the space
between the arts, society and science.
In Auditory Culture 1, emphasis will be on sounds in the city. In addition to a
close reading of relevant and recent texts, students are invited on a sound
walk and prompted to invent new soundscapes for their own environment.
Authors discussed: R. Murray Schafer, Karin Bijsterveld, Michael Bull, Jonathan Sterne, Alain Corbin, Les Back, Jean-Paul Tibeaud, Bruce Smith, Caroline Basset, and others.