A Joyful Noise: Music, Photography, Dissonance

Catalog description

A Joyful Noise is an experiential art history and studio course that engages students of all sensibilities and skills in hands-on postmodern thought, music appreciation and art making practices. A Joyful Noise is about the relationship between photography and music, catalyzed by their dependence on recording, copies, and mechanical reproduction. The class will engage a wide range of musical and photographic movements from across the 20th Century to the present with special attention paid to noise, sound and dissonance. We will see and hear how the two mediums have influenced each other from concrete Futurist music, to the silence of John Cage, the roar of No Wave and the primal collage of the present, including the ways in which the photographic image has played an important role in contextualizing music through album covers, documentary work, and videos. Finally, we will examine the physicality of recorded music and light by comparing the photographic negative to the grooves of vinyl records or magnetic recording tape. Artists, musicians and movements that will be discussed will include: the Futurists, Erik Satie, John Cage, Yoko Ono, No Wave, Sun Ra, Alice & John Coltrane, Julius Eastman, Brian Eno, and Black Dice, amongst many more. Readings include texts by: Theodor Adorno, Amiri Baraka, and Jacques Attali amongst others. Learning formats include lecture, discussion, art making and art critique.