****Forwarded message from Henry Stobart <[log in to unmask]>****

Wheatsheaf Lectures – New Ecologies of Sound

In the first three months of 2011 a series of four talks will explore the nexus of ‘sound’, ‘noise’ and ‘music’ from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. In the context of a bourgeoning sensitivity to the auditory across a range of disciplines, these talks will consider how particular formulations of these interdependent notions transform ‘sound’ from an isolated attribute of sensory experience into a embedded, ecological means of world-inhabitation.

As has been an ongoing tradition for the London Consortium, the series will be held in the Wheatsheaf pub (25 Rathbone Place, W1T 1DG) – a favourite of 1930s writers such as George Orwell and Dylan Thomas – a venue that will also provide a great opportunity for continuing informal discussion following each paper.

The current series has been organised by London Consortium and Birkbeck College postgraduate students Matt Clements and Jonathan Tee, and is also associated with the London Sound Seminar. It is free and open to all.

If you would like more information about these events please contact: Jonathan Tee (jonathantee [at] cantab [dot] net) or Matt Clements (m.clements [at] bbk [dot] ac [dot] uk).

Wednesday, 19th January, 7pm 
Eric Clarke – Musical Meaning: an Ecological Approach 
Eric Clarke went to the University of Sussex to read for a degree in Neurobiology, and graduated with a degree in Music. In 2007 he was elected to the Heather Professorship of Music at Oxford, and is currently an Associate Director of the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music. For 10 years he was a member of the improvising string quartet The Lapis Quartet. Eric Clarke’s research embraces a number of areas within the psychology of music, music theory, and musical aesthetics/semiotics. He is the author of a recent monograph on listening (Ways of Listening. An Ecological Approach to the Perception of Musical Meaning OUP, 2005) and co-editor of a volume on Empirical Musicology (OUP, 2004). He has also published more than 60 papers and book chapters on music related topics.

Tuesday, 1st February, 7pm 
David Toop – ‘A Sinister Practice: The Uncanny Space Between Improvisation, Composition, Live Performance and the Digital Domain’

David Toop is a composer/musician, author and curator who has worked in many fields of sound art and music, including improvisation, sound installations, field recordings, pop music production, music for television, theatre and dance. He has published five books, including Ocean of Sound, Haunted Weather, and Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listener. He has released eight solo albums, including Screen Ceremonies, Black Chamber and Sound Body, As a critic he has written for many publications, including The Wire, The Face, Leonardo Music Journal and Bookforum. Exhibitions he has curated include Sonic Boom at the Hayward Gallery, London, Playing John Cage at Arnolfini, Bristol, and Blow Up at Flat-Time House, London. Visiting Professor at the University of the Arts London, he is a Senior Research Fellow at London College of Communication.

Wednesday, 16th February, 7pm 
Henry Stobart – ‘Saturating the Soundscape?  
Conceptualizing Sound and Silence in the Andes and Beyond’ 
Henry Stobart is Reader in Music/Ethnomusicology in the Music Department of Royal Holloway, University of London. His research has principally focused on indigenous music of the Bolivian Andes; examined from a wide range of perspectives. His books include the monograph Music and the Poetics of Production in the Bolivian Andes (Ashgate, 2006) and several edited volumes: The New (Ethno)musicologies (Scarecrow, 2008), Knowledge and Learning in the Andes: Ethnographic Perspectives (co-edited with Rosaleen Howard; Liverpool University Press, 2002), and Sound (coedited with Patricia Kruth; Cambridge University Press, 2000). He is currently working on a monograph provisionally entitled Digital Indigeneity and has been invited to write a theoretical volume on ethnomusicological perspectives to Music and Environment.

Tuesday, 1st March, 7pm 
Karin Bijsterveld – Car Sound Ecologies: A History of Listening to and in the Automobile 
Karin Bijsterveld is historian and professor in the Department of Science, Technology and Society Studies, Maastricht University. She is author of Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century (MIT Press 2008), and co-editor (with José van Dijck) of Sound Souvenirs: Audio Technologies, Memory and Cultural Practices (AUP 2009). With Trevor Pinch, she is working on The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies. She has recently been awarded with a NWO-VICI grant for the project Sonic Skills: Sound and Listening in Science, Technology and Medicine, 1920s-now. 

****End of forwarded message**** 

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Dr J. P. E. Harper-Scott
Senior Lecturer
Department of Music
Royal Holloway, University of London
http://jpehs.wordpress.com/profile/
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