AAL Conference 2013 Modern Soundscapes

July 10, 2013 - July 13, 2013
University of New South Wales

Sydney
Australia

Sponsor(s):

  • Australasian Association of Literature
  • Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia

Speakers:

Steven Connor
Cambridge University
Laura Marcus
Oxford University
Garrett Stewart
University of Iowa

Organisers:

Joseph Cummins
(unaffiliated)
Helen Groth
(unaffiliated)
Penny Hone
(unaffiliated)
Julian Murphet
(unaffiliated)

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What is a modern soundscape? 

This conference aims to address this question by drawing together researchers engaged with the history and theory of sound and noise from the fields of literature, film, and media studies, as well as architecture, music and the visual arts to consider the multiple soundscapes that have shaped and continue to shape the history of modernity. Jonathan Sterne contends that dating from around 1725 ‘sound itself’ becomes ‘an object and a domain of thought and practice, where it had previously been conceptualized in terms of particular idealized instances like voice or music’. This historical claim challenges the assumption that modern culture is essentially a visual culture, substituting the ear for the eye, and creating a space for a new sonic history of modernity to be written, theorized and contested.   Thinking through sound has long been a literary preoccupation. Reflecting on the potential of the “auditory imagination” T.S.Eliot wrote, it “is the feeling for syllable and rhythm, penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word; sinking to the primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, seeking the beginning and the end. It works through meanings, certainly, or not without meanings in the ordinary sense, and fuses the old and obliterated and the trite, the current, and the new and surprising, the most ancient and civilized mentality.”  Thinking through the resonant opening created by poetic form Eliot imagines potential creative fusions that cut across space, time, culture and forms. Taking inspiration from Eliot’s expansive vision, we invite papers that engage with sound as a catalyst for thought, critical and creative practice, and historical reconsiderations of modern soundscapes from the eighteenth century to the present.

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