If you happen to be in Austin, make sure to visit the exciting–and first ever–Sounding Board collective installation curated by Leonardo Cardoso. The exhibition is the first of its kind for the Society for Ethnomusicology’s annual meeting and features many excellent scholar-artists producing sound-based research.
Thursday-Sunday, December 3-6
3:00 – 8:00 PM
The Companion Gallery
908 E. 5th St., #106
Here is the invitation and exhibition notes:
…a structure behind or over a pulpit, rostrum, or platform to give distinctness and sonority to sound
a device or agency that helps propagate opinions or utterances
a person or group on whom one tries out an idea or opinion as a means of evaluating it…
This collective sound exhibit showcases the creative work of scholars attentive to the spatial, acoustemological, and ethnographic potential of sound. This SEM SOUNDING BOARD aims at operating in the interstices between sound-as-episteme and sound-as-performance, sound-as-symbol and sound-as-affect, sound-as-ethnography and sound-as-art.
The exhibit is an opportunity for sound-minded scholars to:
- explore other avenues to circulate advanced or incipient research projects
- deploy the sound installation as an acoustemological tool to understand unattended research horizons
- reflect on ethnography as a process, for instance by making use of audiovisual material collected during fieldwork
- collaborate with other sound-minded people, such as ethnographic collaborators and scholars working on similar topics or places
- stimulate dialogue between ethnomusicology and other academic fields such as sound studies, sound art, ecomusicology, anthropology, and media studies
- establish a point of contact between SEM and the local community during the annual meeting
The first edition of SEM SOUNDING BOARD displays nine sound works that probe into sonic in-placements (water and wind), sonic displacements (the telephone, the radio, and the microphone), sonic emplacements (the acoustic territories of urban Taiwan, the Brazilian hinterlands, and West Texas), and sonic mix-placements (in Mexico City and Havana).
This is a grassroots initiative built on the genuine interest and voluntary work of scholars and the local community. I appreciate your support and hope to see you at the next SEM SOUNDING BOARD.
Leonardo Cardoso
1st SEM SOUNDING BOARD Curator and Co-chair, Sound Studies Special Interest Group, Society for Ethnomusicology
