Sounding Out - extended deadline

From: email suppressed
Date: Fri Mar 21 2008 - 12:37:01 PDT


CALL FOR PAPERS and PRESENTATIONS EXTENDED TO 30th APRIL 2008contact (address suppressed) for Papers & Presentations (deadline: 14th March 2008)SOUNDING OUT 4 - An International Symposium on Sound in the Media4-6 September, 2008 – University of SunderlandSounding Out will return to the University of Sunderland’s Media Centrein September 2008, hosted by the Centre for Research in Media & CulturalStudies. The conference aims to promote links and dialogue betweenpractitioners, students and academics concerned with SOUND ascommunication, entertainment and creative practice across various media:including film, radio, television, video, audio-books, electro-acousticmusic, sonic art, new digital media and computer games. Sounding Out 4is particularly interested in the twin themes of sound and memory, soundand history but these are by no means exclusive and the debate isexpected to be as wide-ranging and forward-looking as on previousoccasions. The conference will include a selection of keynote speakersdrawn from a variety of media (theory and practice), presentations ofaudio and audio-visual work, plus 14 panels of papers by delegates (atotal of 40 papers).Keynote presentations will be given by:Simo AlitaloFinnish Sound SculptorIra BhaskarAssociate Professor of Cinema Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India.Neil BrandPlaywright, radio dramatist, author, silent film accompanist & filmmusic composer.Richard DyerProfessor of Film, Kings College London. His books include Stars (1979),Now You See It (1990), Only Entertainment (1992), White (1997) andPastiche (2007).Sean StreetProfessor of Radio, Bournemouth University, radio poet & producer,author of A Concise History of British Radio (2002).Hildegard WesterkampVancouver-based composer and sound ecologist, a key member of the WorldSoundscape Project in the mid-seventies, a founder member of the WorldForum for Acoustic Ecology (WFAE), and co-editor of Soundscape – TheJournal of Acoustic Ecology.Proposals are invited for illustrated presentations of not more than 20minutes, which may include 5 minutes of audio or audio-visual material.For more information on this and the previous conferences, please visitour website at: http://www.soundingout.sunderland.ac.uk/Please send your abstract of no more than 150 words by 14th March toMartin Shingler, SOUNDING OUT 4, The Media Centre, Sir Tom Cowie Campusat St Peter’s,St Peter’s Way, Sunderland, SR6 ODD, United KingdomOr email (address suppressed) Sounding OutThe original Sounding Out symposium at Staffordshire University in July2002 was designed to stake out a new territory for Film Studies byraising the profile of sound within the image-sound relationship, whilstcontributing significantly to the newly emerging area of sound studies.It aimed to bring theorists into contact with a range of soundpractitioners and also to bring together (and into dialogue) a range ofscholars already working on different aspects of sound, e.g., radio,video, sonic arts and electro-acoustic music. Keynote speakers andperformers were chosen to represent these different areas of scholarshipand practice. The event also aimed to bring scholars and practitionerstogether from around the world in order to identify practices andscholarship not just in the UK but also USA, Australia, Europe andIndia, reflecting contemporary interest in globalisation. Key themesemerged around issues such as:• New technologies of sound• Impacts and effects of media convergence• Writing and performance for sound• Voice (both media practices of recording/reproduction and its culturalsignificance)• Phenomenology of sound (e.g. the hierarchy of the human senses,perceptions of hearing, etc.)• The work, role and status of sound designers in the commercial filmindustry (mainly Hollywood) including aesthetics, narratologicalconventions, effects and affects.• Practices and techniques of radio drama, aesthetics and productioncontexts• Experimental sound practices (e.g., soundscapes, live mixing)A subsequent event, Sounding Out 2 at the University of Nottingham inJuly 2004, was organised to maintain this intellectual exchange anddialogue, broadening the debate out to areas such as computer gamesdesign, audiobooks, personal stereos and ipods. Papers were invited aswell as keynote speakers to address three specific sets if issues (orinter-related strands): (a) The Voice, (b) Audiences, and (c) CulturalIdentities. The Voice strand raised issues of the human, bodily elementof speech, how listeners respond and how performers, writers andproducers use these as expressive techniques. The Audiences strandexamined the ways listeners used various sound media and explored thecontexts and conditions of listening. The Cultural Identities strandinvestigated a variety of issues around gender, class, race, ethnicity,age and sub-cultural identities/groups. Key themes emerged around issuessuch as:• Vocabularies and methodologies scholars use to identify, describe,conceptualise and make sense of sound• Impact of Dolby stereo on recent and contemporary mainstream filmproduction and exhibition• Sound space and proxemics (e.g., hearing and analysing spatialqualities of sound)• Silence: aesthetics and affect• Film music: aesthetics and affect• Voice-over narration in fiction films and documentaries• Listening spaces and environments• Issues regarding audience research, methodologies and interpretation• New forms and contexts of experimental radio broadcastingA third event, Sounding Out 3 at University of Sunderland in September2006, is being planned to build upon and extend research in those areaswhich emerged as key issues at the previous two events. This event aims to:• Maintain and extend the dialogue between theorists and practitioners,promoting new research collaborations and sustaining emergingcollaborations between practitioners, writers, performers, theorists andhistorians.• Identify, exchange and promote international perspectives andpractices of sound.• Extend knowledge of sound practices (including consumption) to new andemerging technologies (e.g., pod-casting)• Consider the on-going effects of media convergence and to understandthese in relation to the historical development of communication and theelectronic mass media• Promote new and emerging scholarship on sound practices, technologies,aesthetics, perception, affect, writing and performance• Reconsider the relationship of sound and image, hearing and vision.Having formerly promoted attention to sound as a distinct medium, onemotive for this third event is to refocus questions of the diverse wayssound and image interact. In Film Studies a new interdisciplinaryapproach to early cinema is making increasing use of the concept of‘inter-mediality’ in order to foreground the relations between film andother media (theatre, music-hall, radio, etc.) thus adding a historicaldimension. In Radio Studies, scholars are reframing perceptions of radioand ‘radiobility’ in response to the text and images of digital and webradio. This would seem an appropriate time to investigate therelationship of sound and image, hearing and vision in the electronic media.• Dissemination of new research on sound in the mass media through thepublication of an anthology of papers from all three Sounding Out events.Nick CopeSenior LecturerVideo and New Media ProductionRoom 008, The Media Centre,University of Sunderland,St Peter's Campus,Sunderland

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