Music

This course deals with the concept of soundscape and the practices of sound art. Soundscape is a mental tool to listen to and to understand environment; it is also an engaging dialogue with our “umwelt.” Sound art is an array of actions and interventions to enhance and distort perception of sounds. This course includes presentations of research and artwork dealing with these topics; video documentation, attentive listening, explanation of the background of the artists and discussion about the aesthetic questions that they raise; practical processes; assemblage, a collective creation; production of a flow of small-scale creations that are progressively gathered into a publication; some outdoor sessions, some of the class happen in various urban or semi-urban environment to be able to discuss about field practices and in-site artworks where it happens. Assessment: participation, assignements, final project.

This course discusses the organization and planning of musical activities, considering aspects such as spaces, institutions, public, financing, and copyright. 

There is hardly any musical style, genre, or context which has not been significantly affected by the pervasive digitalization of recent decades. From digital audio workstations to computer-generated music, from laptop performances to fan remixes, from cloud computing to commercial distribution channels – digital technology has profoundly changed the ways in which music is produced, performed, disseminated, and consumed. This course examines the nature of these shifts and samples salient and productive intersections of music and technology. Through specific case studies, the course tackles the following questions: How have digital technologies enabled unprecedented modes of making, using and perceiving music? In what ways has digital mediatization shaped our experiences with musical content and style? And how do we reconcile the long-established connections between music, performance and liveness in an era when the paradigm of reproduction seems to be omnipresent? In the first five sessions the course considers the impact of digital technologies on the production of music. After an introducing outline of basic shifts in music and musicianship caused by digitalization and the computer, the course looks at concrete musical examples in order to understand the influence of digital technologies both on the creative process of music making and on the aesthetic reflection on it. The second half of the course starts with exemplary examinations of digital music technologies in music-related genres and domains, such as film, video games, or sound art. At the end of the semester the course extends the scope and considers cultural issues that are entailed by digital possibilities of sharing, disseminating, and consuming music. In particular, we discuss the intertwining of digitization and commodification as well as its impact on the experience of music in everyday life.