SYMPOSIUM REVIEW

Written by Ann Finegan

I Want a Degree in the Department of Sound.

"Music.Sound.Design Symposium." UTS 13-15 February 2008. Yasunao Tone, Julian Knowles, Robin Fox, Caleb Kelley, Philip Samartzis, Peter Blamey, Mitchell Whitelaw, Julian Knowles, Damian Castaldi, Ian Andrews, Darrin Verhagen, Tom Ellard. Organised with the assistance of Ben Byrne.

Renowned Japanese noise artist and composer Yasunao Tone headed this three days of performances, installation and symposium of local and international sound theorists and practitioners. Ostensibly, the brief was to survey current sound-related practices with a view to the setting up of a new department of Sound at UTS (various modalities of the naming game were debated with Department of Sound appearing to win out). As anyone attending the festivals of TINA (This Is Not Art)/Electrofinge, Liquid Architecture, Impermanent Audio, PELT and What Is Music? can attest there has been an explosion of contemporary sound related practices over the last ten years and further back, and the vitality of current sound culture was reconfirmed at this event with an impressive sound/laser installation by Robin Fox and performances by Tone, Kees Tazelaar, Philip Samartzis, Julian Knowles, Donna Hewitt, Peter Blamey, and Darrin Verhagen.

Where Sound really felt as it had come of age as an academic discipline was in the quality of research papers, notably the Blamey-Kelly-Whitelaw session. Blamey is currently completing a doctorate on sine wave phenomena and practices, Kelly delivered a discussion on cracked media (look out for the forthcoming book from MIT press - based on his recent doctorate) and Whitelaw explored Gumbrecht's Heideggerian applications to sound theory. What emerged from these papers in particular was that there was already a dynamic, engaging philosophical/theoretical foundation for Sound as a discipline, driven by current research. Sound is no longer a subchapter in someone else's discipline but will clearly be able to hold its own over three years of undergraduate theory courses and honors, not only in practice (there is a wealth of creative young local talent including Peter Newman, Jon Hunter, Ivan Lisyak, Andrew Gadow, Alex White and Emily Morandini to complement Damian Castaldi, currently at UTS), but also in theory. Beginning with Edison, Rossolo and the Futurists, music concrete, and moving through Cage, Lucier, drone, etc. to contemporary concerns, there is a century’s worth of solid sound theory to teach, and demonstrably a team able to teach and extend it. The Blamey-Kelly-Whitelaw session was already proof-of-the-pudding for UTS Professor Ernest Edmonds' suggestion that any new department needed to be developed through the trickle-down effect of ph d research. (I note that Douglas Khan, wroteNoise Water Meat, one of the most comprehensive sound histories of the first half of the twentieth century, in his stint at UTS).

Bert Bongers, formerly of ZKM, was a core facilitator of discussions. A lively paper from Kees Tazelaar on electronic tape music composition and spatialization confirmed that sound had its own practice-based system of notation independent of classical western systems taught in music departments and conservatoriums. To cite from the program notes, "the act of instrumental composition concentrates on symbolic notation of known timbres from known musical instruments, but composing electronic music means composing the timbral flow itself." In contemporary terms, twiddling knobs and manipulating feedback is "composing parameters," with "flow" the result of transformations of sound material. His position was, in turn, supported by Julian Knowles' delivery of "Music in the University of the 21st Century: A Manifesto." Knowles also recognized the input of turntablist and remix cultures.

Tone delivered the meeting of high theory and practice in a lecture interpreting his performances through Derrida's Speech and Phenomena and Of Grammatology. This was followed through in his performance session in which live writing-as-representation-of-presence was invaded by the archetrace of noise-as-writing. Using a graphic interface to project his live drawing of the characters of a traditional Japanese poem on screen, the classical ontology of 'live' representation was increasingly overturned by the accompanying noise: the drawing was no longer the representation of the sound, and, vice versa, the sound was no longer represented by the drawing. Instead noise "invaded presence from within" foregrounded itself as a kind of sound of the unconscious force of the poem. As highlighted by a comment from the symposium audience, deconstruction as a productive practice was manifested in this Derridean tour de force.

If sound has formerly lingered in the margins of arts discourse, the symposium illustrated the Derridean mantra "the margin is the centre" in three days of soundcentric discussion in which the relationship of sound to music and design was revisioned. Re design the material qualities of the sonic were emphasised in the context of ambient computing and its expanded role in information interfaces. Sound would be the driver - or at least a co-partner - rather than an accessory to dominant visual practice (Pelt gallery, Impermanent Audio, What Is Music?, Electrofringe and Demux have, for example, foregrounded contemporary synaesthesic practice). Future students of sound, thoroughly engaged with its histories, theories and practices, would be encouraged to engage in cross-disciplinary projects with design, art, architecture, computer-gaming, anthropology/sociology and environmentalists.

In a nod to Bergson's Matter and Memory Darrin Verhagen (lecturer in Sound Design RMIT) explored the (subconscious) zombie agents who process genre and other data to minimize our cognitive loads: sound in ads and film is often psy ops, "operating in black", manipulating us, often without our conscious awareness, behind the obstensible theme.

Tom Ellard, of Severed Heads fame, connected to the new economy of the pop musician, speculating on the dismal future of royalties in the age of downloads, announcing his avatar would be playing live in gamespaces of the future (following the lead of theorist Mckenzie Wark recently interviewed in avatar form from within Halo. See his Gam3r 7heory online or in print.)

Overall the field of expanded concerns and applications of sound was broad and inspirational in diversity. Nigel Helyer presented projects using GPS in what he termed "location sensitive terrain-based spatial audio research" - using radio and locative technology he went boating on the harbour to test his spatially distributed sonic webs. Kirsten Reese documented the audio-visual activities of nine community spaces annually turned over to a music festival. Recomposing cut-ups of these audio-visual flows she played back to festival audiences the composition of the everyday soundscapes of these halls: basketballers, kids' rehearsals, cow auctions, blood transfusions, cleaner activity, etc (Hallenfelder)

Jim Denley recounted his project of addressing Nature as interlocateur and playing companion, recording his unique style of breathy sax in a hidden valley with marvellous acoustics in the wilderness of Bundawang Mountains. His paper was a plea for further research, not into the sonic qualities of the built environment, or electromagnetic phenomena and equipment, but rather into 'natural acoustics' and Nature as a partner in musical accompaniment. Sick of playing in buildings and dead spaces he was alive to nature not as representation ('picture music') or a source of field recordings to be manipulated in playback, but in an equal partnering of live in situe engagement.

Stephen Barrass (Sonic Interaction Design within the Sonic Communication Research Group, University of Canberra) presented his sonically located invisible kettle (a play on Freud's "kettle logic") and the fluffy sofa which either growled or purred at you, dependent on whether you stroked or ignored it when you sat down. Danielle Wilde presented a range of sonically activated wearables.

Overall, the case was strong. As an avid listener of sound - rap, hip hop, beatbox, drone, noise, mashup, psychedellia, electronica, Hendrix/Ministry feedback, Spector wall of sound, Sun Ra/George Clinton/Bambaata outer space remix - I'd be signing up for a degree in the Department of Sound. I wouldn't have to be a 'trained musician' learned in chords and staves and semi, demi-semi quavers. I'd bring my ears and listen. I might do more of the technical courses, learn to mix, make and loop; I might let my exploration of the sonic qualities of materials take me into partnerships in architecture and design, or even fashion; I might follow the flows and webs of informatics and locative practices; I might just major in the theory strands and become a philosopher of sound, partnering with literatures and histories of popular culture in communications. If I loved sound, in whatever form I found, I'd be able to indulge my passion and go in deep. Where's the course outline and the electives?

For related links please see UTS website at: http://www.hss.uts.edu.au/utsmsd2008/about/index.html