Liberation of Sound					

Liberation of Sound looks at non- or extra musical traditions in audio since roughly the beginning of the 20th century. Spurred by adventurous literature, artistic liberation and technological advancements more and more people not formally trained in music have made audio work. A rough timeline goes from Futurism (art of noise and sound poetry) to Dada (chance), Surrealism (Artaud), Musique Concrete, John Cage, Electronic Music, Fluxus, W.S.Burroughs, Conceptual/ Structural work (Lucier/ early Reich) to non- academic work (home tapers, tape collage, noise), sound installation, and the laptopers of today.   Grades will be based on class participation, class presentation(s) and a final paper.

There is no text book for this class, but I do suggest purchasing Wireless Imagination: Sound Radio and the Avant-Garde edited by Douglas Kahn and Gregory Whitehead, published by MIT in 1992 as we will be reading several articles from it and it is just a good collection. Additional readings, listenings or viewing assignments may be added.

Weekly breakdown (subject to change)

1) Introduction
	
2) Futurism
	read: Art of Noise Russolo, Manifesto of Futurist Musicians Pratella, Abstract Cinema- Chromatic Music Corra

3) Dada and Surrealism
	read: Marcel Duchamp’s Gap Music, Operations in the space between Art and Noise Craig Addock,  Banging on the Windowpane; sound in Early Surrealism Christopher Schiff, To have done with judgment from God Antonin Artaud

4) Musique Concrete/ Electronic music
	read: Acousmatics Pierre Schaeffer, Musique Concrete and the Ancient art of tape composition Thom Holmes

5) John Cage
	read: The Future of Music; A Credo John Cage, The Ear that would hear sounds in themselves; John Cage 1935-1965 Frances Dyson The Three Listening Modes Michel Chion, Introduction from Sound by Artists Dan Lander

6) Fluxus
	read: Chance Imagery George Brecht, The Latest: Fluxus and Music Douglas Kahn

7) from the literary direction: W.S. Burroughs, Samuel Becket, etc.
	read: Sound Identity Fading Out; William Burroughs’ Taper Experiments Robin Lydenberg,  Krapps’ Last Tape Samuel Beckett, Programming Paradise; Haraldo de Campos, concrete poetry and the postmodern multimedia avant-guarde Nicholas Zurbrugg

8) conceptual/ structural approaches
	read Process Music Tom Holmes, Music as a gradual process Steve Reich, I am Sitting in a room Alvin Lucier 

9) installation 
	read Visual and Acoustic Space Marshall McLuhan, About my installations Christina Kubisch

10) creative radio
	read: Radio as global tribal drum Marshall McLuhan, Lost Tongues and Disarticulated Voices; Gregory Whitehead’s Pressures of the Unspeakable Allen Weiss, Radio as Music; Glen Gould in conversation with John Jessop

11) industrial music, cassette culture, anti-copy write, appropriation  
	read: No More Masterpieces Manifesto Lazlo Toth, Plunderphonia Chris Cutler

12) laptop
	The Aesthetics of Failure:  Post digital tendencies in contemporary computer music Kim Cascone, Record, CD, Analog, Digital Christian Marclay & Yasunao Tone

13) final presentations
14) final presentations