Genealogies of Noise

Catalog description

You can’t look directly at noise. It slips between your fingers. The moment any sense is made of it, maybe even the moment it’s identified, it loses its real noisiness. It’s the underbelly of prediction. Despite its obstinance, it's everywhere: musical/critical theories, medical/military practices, pastoral/urban mythologies, and architectural/neurological frameworks. Thinking with noise draws music history, and history history together, as it exposes the stakes of creative practice. This seminar takes up a theoretical and practical/experimental approach to this din that is the discourse around noise, as participants develop noise methodologies as modes of response. Background in music is not required, but a commitment to experimental practice (writing included) is. Topics: generative AI, fascist propaganda, ecological new materialisms, creolization, urban design, cybernetic theory, and aesthetic theories of the sublime. Overrides given the first day of class.