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[microsound] MA Cybernetic Culture / MA Sonic Culture: New MA programmes at the University of East London



Apologies for repeat posting. . .
New MA programmes in the School of Cultural & Innovation Studies
University of East London
MA Sonic Culture: Sound, Arts and Media in the Digital Age
MA Cybernetic Culture: Media, Digital Arts, and the Body-machine

MA Sonic Culture: Sound, Arts and Media in the Digital Age
Dr. Steve Goodman - s.goodman@xxxxxxxxx
This new and unique theory/practice MA programme attempts to compensate for
the deep rooted visual bias of Western culture, and by implication, the lack
of rigorous theoretical analysis of the field of Sonic Culture, the
intersection between the soundscape and cybernetic society. With increasing
online bandwidth, sound is attaining a more central role in the multimedia
environment of contemporary culture. This MA deliberately focuses on the
broad theme of Sonic Culture and away from the more limited concerns of the
cultural study of music, in order to more insightfully delineate, and provide
context to, the profound and unpredictable technological transformations
which global music culture is currently undergoing. Digital media have
generated an acoustic cyberspace and opened up previously unexplored
microsonic dimensions of the audiosphere. A specific range of conceptual
tools are required to critically engage and produce in this context. The core
courses of the MA programme, are the theoretically oriented Sonic
Culture(Semester A), and Audio-Vision which has a  theory/practice option
(Semester B). 
The MA Sonic Culture takes an interdisciplinary approach, and aims to develop
a critical understanding of the role of sound in digital culture providing a
framework and production skills for digital sound design and analysis across
a range of traditional and emergent media. Theoretically, the MA explores the
emergent space and time of this acoustic cyberspace, and the relevance of
concepts such as microsound, sonic affect, the audio-visual contract, the
virtual, simulation, synesthesia, afrofuturism, remixology and digital
accidents in relation to Sonic Culture in digital capitalism. To do this, we
draw material from the histories of recorded sound in 20th century electronic
music, theories of film sound, and frameworks from fiction, cultural theory,
critical musicology, philosophy, digital aesthetics, cybernetics, acoustics,
physiology, psychoacoustics, sciences of complexity and theories of power,
gender and diaspora, in order to provide students with a conceptual basis for
critical and creative sound analysis and production.
Students following a theory/practice route through the MA in Sonic Culture
attain a grounding in recording, sampling, editing, manipulating, sequencing
and synthesising sound using various digital audio software packages,
encouraging specialisation in any of the following fields of sonic culture,
including Electronic Music Production, Film & Video, Radio, the Internet,
CD-ROMs, Computer Games and Sound Installations. Such students will get the
opportunity to develop sound projects and media content in relation to any
the key concepts explored in the course.
More Details
<http://www.uel.ac.uk/cultural-innovation/teaching/postgrad/sonic_cult.htm> 


MA Cybernetic Culture: Media, Digital Arts, and the Body-machine
Dr. Luciana Parisi - l.parisi@xxxxxxxxx
This MA critically embraces debates about the relationship between culture
and science, the body and the machine, the virtual and real, the natural and
the artificial, control and power in the cybernetic era. The relevance of
these relationships has become crucial to debates in both human and social
sciences, in physics and philosophy, in biology and critical theory. It has
had enormous resonance in the critical analysis of contemporary culture
(Donna Haraway's Cyborg) by providing new conceptual tools to study the
cybernetic reconfiguration of the body in information science, digital arts
and media. This MA draws on these debates to map the socio-cultural,
desiring, economic and political changes that define the historical emergence
and diffusion of cybernetics across disciplines - philosophy and physics,
sociology and biology, economics and science, the arts and technologies of
communication (from analogue to digital media) and reproduction (from
prosthetics to cloning and artificial life). The MA applies an
interdisciplinary method to engage with the themes of non linear time and
space, simulation, affect and virtuality, viral culture and politics, the
kinaesthetic body and digital perception, digital capitalism, artificial
nature, collective intelligence, cybersex and prosthetic skin. The MA brings
together critical insights from Critical Theory, Cybernetic Theory, Cultural
and Media Studies, Philosophy, Theory of Complexity, Human Computer
Interaction, Feminist Theory, Film Theory, Theories of Evolution, Theories of
Diaspora, Aesthetics, Theories of perception and memory. The MA also provides
an option for students to combine this material with the development of
critical skills for the production of digital video and sound, digital
photography and film, CD-ROMs and Web sites.
More Details
<http://www.uel.ac.uk/cultural-innovation/teaching/postgrad/cybernetic_cult.h
tm>

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