The course focuses on field recording as an artistic practice and as a subject for critical academic inquiry. We will question field recordings as a practice of capture: how are they entangled with extractivist logics old and new, with binary epistemologies of ‘Nature’ and ‘Culture,’ with gendered and racialized structures and dynamics of power?

You will be able to approach these questions in practice (by way of recording/producing sound) and theory (by way of reading, listening to lectures and discussing). Over the course of the term, you will be producing an audio paper that you’ll present at a show at AIL and also have the chance to air as a radio broadcast if you choose to do so.

Most of the seminar will be blocked. We kick off November 3 with an audio paper listening session and orientation hour. We will follow with a theory reading session on November 10. For this session, I will assign two texts in October (per mail), which I will ask you to read before our theory class. The practice part of the seminar takes place from November 12-17, where you will be working with Karl Salzmann and Moritz Haberkorn of ÆSR Lab, with Julia Grillmayr and Christina Gruber of Lobau Listening Comprehensions (Vienna), and Yuri Tuma of the Institute for Postnatural Studies (Barcelona). During two studio days at ÆSR Lab (November 12 and 13), you will acquire basic skills to handle the field recording equipment available at Angewandte, and to make your own recordings. In one workshop day with Julia Grillmayr and Christina Gruber (November 14), you will work with your own recordings critically. On November 17, you will have a four hour crit session with Yuri Tuma to further develop your audio papers.

You then have eight weeks to work on your end of term projects: audio papers for which you’ll use the sounds you have recorded in November. You will present your audio papers in a closing show at AIL, where the Viennese musician Conny Frischauf will also play a concert (January 15). You will also be able to broadcast your audio papers on Radio Orange (more details TBA).

During the term: Attendance, reading the assigned literature, active participation in class (during workshops, group work, discussions) and at the closing show in January.

End of term: Your end of term project will be an audio paper, due and to be presented in the closing show on January 15.

Classroom languages will be English and German. The texts you'll read in preparation and the workshops will be in English.

This course cooperates with ÆSR Lab - Applied/Experimental Sound Research Laboratory. ÆSR Lab is a project of cooperation between University of Applied Arts Vienna, Artistic Research Center (ARC) of Vienna University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, and Phonogrammarchiv  of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). ÆSR Lab is funded by BMBWF and  the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).