Dear list,
In April 2013, The Journal of Sonic Studies will launch a special issue on Sonic Epistemologies. Advanced Research Strategies in Sound. Find below the call for papers.
Sound research has become a quite broad field with more and more funded research projects and an increasing number of research companions, handbooks and readers on the way. Sound Conferences and Workshops are popping up everywhere, too. It might seem as if research in sound poses no challenges anymore: it is commodified and widely accepted - as it might be the case now with other formerly incommensurable and erratic entities in cultural research such as media, the body, or animals.
When it comes to sonic studies - be it in the field of cultural history, cultural theory, in social studies, media studies or music studies, but also in the engineering sciences, natural sciences, and medical science - two, interrelated, questions are pertinent:
(a) How can we approach, analyze and study sound?
(b) How can we make our findings intersubjectively discursive?
Both questions have to do with methodology: the method through which a sonic phenomenon is scrutinized and the method which enables the articulation of this phenomenon. Deciding which method to use to study sound already implies the manner in which the results will be articulated.
Moreover, the selection of methodology is not arbitrary: any such selection relies on an (often implicit) epistemology, a concept of science and humanities, an idea how researchers and artists might be able to generate new and inspiring knowledge on the sonic world.
For the 4th issue of the Journal of Sonic Studies we would like to raise the bar. We intend to push things further in the discourse of sonic studies: Can it really be sufficient just to apply well-known methods - proven in other academic research fields - to the thoroughly specific requirements of auditory perception and the emanations of sonic events? Or do we need new approaches? What hybridizations, what mixtures and innovations, what methodological inventions could then be the new standard of research?
In order to explore this issue, we invite papers that address the issues of epistemologies and methodologies for sound studies. We are inquisitive to receive contributions (e.g. traditional articles, poems, compositions, graphic notations, MAX/MSP-patches, recorded audiovisual performances, pieces of fiction) that do review and further develop well-known historical approaches such as Soundscape Studies, Acoustemology, Deep Listening, Human Echolocation, etc.. However, we are even more interested to receive contributions that do invent, compose and synthesize completely new, surprising and even irritating approaches to explore sound. Be inventive! Be provocative and surprise us!
Let's dive into our shared sonic fiction - more brilliant than the sun!
Potential contributors are invited to submit completed essays by January 6, 2013.
For more information, or to submit an essay, please contact noise@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Editors of this issue: Holger Schulze, Marcel Cobussen, Vincent Meelberg
Dr. Marcel Cobussen
Leiden University
Faculty of Humanities
Academy of Creative and Performing Arts
P.O. Box 9500
Leiden - 2300 RA
The Netherlands
http://www.cobussen.com
http://www.sonicstudies.org