Columbia University
Anthropology and American Studies
Spring 2007
Course Requirements
1. Regular attendance and participation at the seminar
2. Two or three class presentations based on papers of approximately 5 pages
3. A term paper of approximately 15-20 pages due on April 24
REQUIRED READING
Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner, eds. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. NY, 2004
Mark Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. Berkeley, 2004 (with CD)
Michel Chion, Audio Vision
Packet of Readings (All of the required readings, other than the texts listed above, are in the packet)
WEEKLY TOPICS
Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: Noise/Silence vs. Music
Readings:
Rick Altman, "The Material Heterogeneity of Recorded Sound," in Rick Altman, Sound Theory/Sound Practice, 1992.
Murray Schafer, "The Music of the Environment," Cox/Warner, pp. 29-39
John Cage, The Future of Music: Credo," Cox/Warner, pp. 25-9
Eric De Visscher, "'There's No Such Thing As Silence. . .': John Cage's Poetics of Silence," Musicworks 52 (Spring, 1992)
Mark Skoka, "Listening for Silence: Notes on the Aural Life," Cox/Warner, pp. 40-6
Theodore Gracyk, "Pump Up the Volume," from Rhythm and Noise (1996)
"Glossary" and "Chronology," Cox/Warner, pp. 409-418 and pp. 399-408
Week 3: Listening vs. Hearing
Readings:
Steven Connor, "What I Say Goes" [excerpt], in Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism, 2000
Jacques Attali, "Listening" in Noise: The Political Economy of Music, 1985 [1977]
Roland Barthes, "Listening" in The Responsibility of Forms, 1985.
Pierre Schaeffer, "Acousmatics," Cox/Warner, pp. 76-81
Ola Stockfelt, "Adequate Modes of Listening," Cox/Warner, pp. 88-93
Brian Eno, "Ambient Music," Cox/Warner, pp. 94-97
Jonathan Burston, "Theatre Space as Virtual Place: Audio Technology, the Reconfigured Singing Body, and the Megamusical," Popular Music 17, 1998
Recommended Reading:
Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933.
Week 4: Music in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction
Readings:
Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," 1936
Walter Benjamin, "A Small History of Photography," 1931
Michael Taussig, "The Talking Machine" in Mimesis and Alterity, 1993
Theodor W. Adorno, "The Form of the Phonograph Record," [1934] in October 55, Winter, 1990
Recommended Reading:
Jeffrey Sconce, Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television, 2000)
Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines, 1999
Allen S. Weiss, Breathless: Sound Recording, Disembodiment, and the Transformation of Lyrical Nostalgia, 2002
Theodor Adorno, "The Curve of the Needle" and "Opera and the Long-Playing Record" in October 55, winter, 1990)
John Alderman, Sonic Boom: Napster, MP3, and the New Pioneers of Music.Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2001
Week 5: The Technology of Sound Recording
Readings:
Simon Frith, "Technology and Authority" in Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music, 1996
Glen Gould, "The Prospects of Recording," Cox/Warner, pp. 115-126
Brian Eno, "The Studio as Compositional Tool," Cox/Warmer, pp. 127-130
Recommended Reading:
Philip Auslander, Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture,1999
Weeks 6 & 7: Music As Industrial/Artistic Product
Readings:
Mark Katz, Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music. 2004
Paul Théberge, "Toward a New Model of Musical Production and Consumption," Any Sound You Can Imagine, 1997
Sample the readings in Cox/Warner in the sections on "The Open Work," "Experimental Musics," "Improvised Musics," and "Minimalisms."
Recommended Reading:
Evan Eisenberg, "Phonography," in The Recording Angel, 1987
William Howland Kenney, Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory 1890-1945, 1999
Geoffrey O'Brien, Sonata For Jukebox: Pop Music, Memory, and the Imagined Life.
Week 8: Audio Ethnography: Early field recording, Works Progress Administration, Commercial Recordings of Ethnic Music, World Music; Surveillance and Domestic Espionage, Audio Imperialism, Terrorism and Revolution
Readings:
Erika Brady, "Collectors and the Phonograph" in A Spiral Way: How the Phonograph Changed Ethnography, 1999
Andrew Goodwin and Joe Gore, "World Beat and the Cultural Imperialism Debate," Socialist Review, No. 3, 1990
Paul Fleischman, "Swat Radio," The New Yorker, December, 1997
Recommended Reading:
John Tomlinson, Cultural Imperialism, 1991
Erika Brady, A Spiral Way: How the Phonograph Changed Ethnography, 1999
Peter D. Goldsmith, Making People's Music: Moe Asch and Folkways Records, 1998
William Howland Kenney, Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory 1890-1945, 1999
Stephen Paul Miller, The Seventies Now: Culture as Surveillance, 1999 - see "tape" in the index for its use by Nixon and Warhol
Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, 1975; A: A Novel by Andy Warhol, 1968
Weeks 9 & 10: Originality, Plagiarism, and Copyright: Covers, Answer Backs, Bootlegging & Piracy, Sampling, Multi-tracking, Synthesizers, Drum Machines, DJ-ing
Readings:
David Sanjek, "'Don't Have to DJ No More': Sampling and the ‘Autonomous' Creator," Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal, 10 (1992), 607-624
Thomas G. Schumacher, "'This is a Sampling Sport': Digital Sampling, Rap Music and the Law in Cultural Production," Media, Culture & Society 17 (1995), 253-273
Colin Hinz, "Plagiarism: A Collective Vision. A Few Thoughts on Sampling, Originality, and Ownership," Gray Areas, Fall, 1993
Joost Smiers, "Copyright is Wrong," Le Monde Diplomatique, September, 2001
John Oswald, "Battered By the Borrower," Cox/Warner, pp. 131-137
Chris Cutler, "Plunderphonia," Cox/Warner, 138-156
Kodwo Eshun, "Operating System for the Redesign of Sonic Reality," Cox/Warner, pp. 157-59
Recommended Reading:
Jeremy J. Beadle, Will Pop Eat Itself? Pop Music in the Soundbite Era, 1993
Jane Gaines, "'These Boots Are Made For Walkin': Nancy Sinatra and the Goodyear Tire Sound-Alike," in Contested Culture, 1991
Weeks11 & 12: The Art of Noise
Readings:
Luigi Russolo, "The Art of Noises: Futurist Manifesto," Cox/Warner, pp.10-4
Mary Russo & Daniel Warner, "Rough Music, Futurism, and Postpunk Industrial Noise Bands," Cox/Warner, pp. 47-54
Simon Reynolds, "Noise," in Cox/Warner, pp. 55-8
"The Beauty of Noise: An Interview With Masami Akita of Merzbow," Cox/Warner, pp. 59-61
Douglas Kahn, "Histories of Sound Once Removed" in Douglas Kahn and Gregory Whitehead, eds., Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio and the Avant-Garde, 1992
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, "Production-Reproduction: Potentialities of the Phonograph," Cox/Warner, pp. 331-33
William S. Burroughs, "The Invisible Generation," Cox/Warner, pp. 334-40
Christian Marclay & Yasunao Tone, "Record, DC, Analog, Digital," Cox/Warner, pp. 341-47
Paul D, Miller, "Algorithms: Erasures and the Art of Memory," Cox/Warner, pp. 348-53
David Toop, "Replicant: On Dub," Cox/Warner, pp. 355-57
Simon Reynolds, "Post-Rock" Cox/Warner, pp. 358-61
Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Electronic and Instrumental Music," Cox/Warner, pp. 370-80
Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Stockhausen vs the "Technocrats," Cox/Earner, pp. 381-385
Screening: excerpts from Modulations, Scratch, and Ohm
Recommended Reading:
Ulf Poschardt, DJ Culture, 1995
Week 13: Sound and Vision: The Relation of Sound to Image (soundtracks & voice-overs, soundies, music videos, internet, CD-Rom, etc.)
Reading:
Michel Chion, Audio Vision
Recommended Reading:
Jeff Smith, The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music
Robert Hershon, "They're Playing Your Song: The Role of the Music Supervisor," Cineaste, Summer, 2001, pp. 24-26, 55
Michael Ondaatje, The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing (2002)