MUS 318 - Sonic World Building (Music, Sound, Place)

In this survey and studio composition course, students will explore the intersection of music and architecture - activating architectural spaces acoustically (through resonance), historically (through memory), and considering the spatial and site-specific nature of music-making and place-making in studio practice applied to architecture and spatial considerations that affect narrative, and experience. Students will engage in collecting original field recordings, to source material, and produce final projects culminating in recordings, sound walks, spatialized sound installations, that demonstrate sonic world-building from original recorded media, to create spaces of transport, suspension, and narrative. This course will study the works of sound artists Alvin Lucier, Janet Cardiff, Hildegard Westerkamp, Jana Windren, Christina Kubisch, and others - utilizing specialty microphones to create unique soundscapes and sonic worlds, and ultimately, exploring ways in how architecture serves as an instrument itself.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I
Instructional Method: Studio
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Notes: Enrollment limited to 15.
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.).
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a non-English language, or works of the visual or performing arts.
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a non-English language, or works of the visual or performing arts).