Listening
ANNENBERG SCHOOL FOR COMMUNICATION & JOURNALISM: COMM440--“For twenty-five centuries,” the French economist Jacques Attali declared in 1985, “Western knowledge has tried to look upon the world. It has failed to understand that the world is not for the beholding. It is for hearing.” What does it mean to listen to the world? What does it mean that the world sounds differently than it looks? This seminar is designed to take up Attali’s challenge and explore the role of hearing and listening as critical acts crucial to the formation of knowledge, meaning, culture, and communication. As central as sound and audio are to communication, they are rarely taken seriously as objects of study and analysis. In this class, we will learn to think with our ears, tuning into the world as a vast, dynamic, and ever-changing soundscape. To do so, we will visit some of the greatest hits of sound and audio theory and history, and consider everything from “acoustic communication” and the differences between sound and noise, to the world of sound art and the relationship between sound and cities. The second half of the course will take up listening to music specifically, mostly focusing on music and technology, from the phonograph to mp3s, from ProTools to ringtones and iPods. Students will be asked to engage with the material through a variety of creative projects: you will keep a sound diary, create a sonic self-portrait, and complete a final research project based on the sonic and musical spaces of Los Angeles. By the end of the course, my hope is that not only will we be better listeners, but we will have learned to understand social and cultural experience with more depth and diversity than ever before.
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