MUSIC 7323

History of Sound Art

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2020-2021.

Practices associated with sound art can be found throughout the global twentieth century, but it emerged as a curatorial and discursive concept around 1980. In this seminar, we will trace the genealogy of this moment, comparing sound art's uneven historical development with various attempts at definition that have appeared in scholarship of the last fifteen years. Although many commentators have advanced an ontological definition of sound art, we will note the concept's instability and adopt a historiographical perspective on this ambiguity. We will pay particular attention to the anxiety that shadows the line between sound art and music, and we will compare sound art with other new curatorial concepts of the 1970s, such as video and performance.

When Offered Fall.

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