cfp.english.upenn.edu

Acousticity: A Symposium on Sound, Space, and Practice

Call for Papers
International Vocal Arts Workshop, Jeunesses Musicales Croatia
June 13, 2010: Grožnjan, Croatia

Submit abstracts of 300 words or less to acousticity.symposium@gmail.com, by May 3, 2010.

“There is no such thing as an empty space, or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear.” (John Cage, “Experimental Music”)

Music takes place in the body, in the mind, in performance halls, in villages, in nations: Music takes place in spaces. This symposium invites participants to consider the spaces where we sing, play, and listen to music. We will explore the ways music occupies space, and the ways space changes and shapes music. During the International Vocal Arts Workshop, musicians grapple concretely with issues of music and space—experimenting with voice production, staging street theatre, and occupying various rehearsal and performance venues throughout Grožnjan. The symposium will provide a forum to reflect, theorize, and describe these and other musical activities. We welcome papers from a variety of disciplines including Musicology, Ethnomusicology, Theatre, Performance Studies, Anthropology, Literature, History, Sociology, Psychology, Cognitive Science, Physics, Anatomy. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Body, voice production and instrument-making
Movement of music, music in exile
Musical spaces (concert halls, recording studios, public space)
Imaginary spaces, psychology
Reception of music and voice
Music on the page, on the stage
Disembodied sound, music technologies
Communities, political spaces, gendered spaces
Grožnjan
Spatial metaphors in vocal instruction
Composition practices, structure and form, architecture
Sound waves, circles of fifths, and other shapes in music
Physics of space and sound, acoustics
Music of the spheres
“Balkanization” of sounds
Performance and sexuality, identity, resistance
Soundscapes and musical maps
Silence and anechoic space

Symposium Coordinator: Anne Donlon (Graduate Center & John Jay College, City University of New York)
Program Director: Jane McMahan (Barnard College, Columbia University)