SpokenWeb Symposium 2019
Call for Papers: Resonant Practices in Communities of Sound
SFU Harbour Centre (Vancouver, BC) || May 30-31, 2019
The first in a series of annual Sound Symposia hosted by SpokenWeb, Resonant Practices in Communities of Sound asks presenters to think through the articulation of its three operative terms: sound, practice, and community. Sound and resonance invite us to consider questions of materiality—that is, the experience of sound waves and their visualization; the interactions of sound with the human body and physical space; and the material objects upon which sound is recorded. Practice implies not only the methods by which we preserve,collect, circulate, and interpret audio artifacts, but also points to an emergent history of creation, rehearsal and performance. We can also read practice in terms of standards and best practices that are rooted in failure and iterative revision. Finally, sound functions as an expression of community:on the one hand, of the historical communities that produced sonic artifacts,and on the other, of contemporary communities of reception, interpretation, and care. The archive operates at the intersection of ongoing and historic communities, framing our engagement with historical materials in the present,while accumulating contemporary material alongside, or in relation to, the historical. In thinking through the interplay of these terms, we ask: what criteria determine inclusion and exclusion in community-based and institutional sound archives beyond the merely aesthetic—considering social formations such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and ability? What listening and interpretive methods are needed to meaningfully engage with sonic artifacts, and what are the political and ethical demands of those methods? Can shifting to auditory media remap the lay of cultural history as it is inscribed in print-based forms? How do we visualize the contents of sonic archives, whether as representations of audio signals or expressions of community networks? How do audio recordings reproduce and/or intervene in notions of literary value,exploding conceptions of the popular, the esoteric, the mundane, and the difficult?
Possible topics include:
- Cultures, communities and networks of sound
- The politics and ethics of the audio archive
- Sound poetics / the poiesis of sound
- Histories and aesthetics of performance and sound
- Sound pedagogy
- Methodologies of sound
- The transmission and sharing of Oral Culture
- Oral history and storytelling
- The materiality of sound
- Indigenous sound communities/practices/histories
- Sound in relation to disability studies
- Descriptive vocabularies of sound
- Sonic media and technologies
- Mediation and remediation
- Sonic events and situations
We invite contributions in a wide array of formats:
- 15-20 minute papers;
- 4-5 minute lightning talks;
- Panels of 3-4 papers (three 20-minute or four 15-minute papers) on a shared theme;
- Roundtables of 5-6 participants (5 participants speaking for 12 minutes or 6 speaking for 10 minutes);
- Hands-on workshops;
- Creative presentations and performances.
Paper proposals should include an abstract (300 words) and a bio (75 words). Panels, roundtables and other presentation formats should include a brief description of the theme of the panel (250 words) in addition to paper abstracts and bios for each presenter.
Proposals are due by February 15, 2019 and can be emailed to Deanna Fong (deannaf@sfu.ca) and Cole Mash (cmash@sfu.ca). Presenters will be notified of acceptance by late February.