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2019 Grant Awards

Sound Artifacts: The Materiality of Musical Cultures

  • Lauren Flood
  • College of Arts & Sciences
  • First-Year Seminar Grant
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What is the “stuff” of music and sound? In this class, we dig past sound’s ephemeral and ineffable qualities, connecting these to the material culture behind what we hear. Topics will span recording equipment, live performance gear, ancient and modern musical instruments, archaeological artifacts, labor and work songs, artisanship and entrepreneurship, the Maker Movement and DIY cultures, electronic waste and recycled materials, architectural acoustics, ecology and sounds of nature, and “container” technologies like mp3s and rare archival record collections. Looking globally, we will ask: How do non-Western cultures source materials for instruments and conceive of the materiality of music-making? What are the roles of musical materials in times and places characterized by excess or scarcity? How do such materials circulate, and what happens when they can’t (for instance, due to international treaties, war, or power outages)? Occasionally, we will delve deeper into the science and technology that contributes to sound production. Through local field trips, we will also learn how the makers of musical materials work and how they use acoustic cues in their craft.

  • 2019
  • College of Arts & Sciences
  • First-Year Seminar
  • Teaching Art Grant

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The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation

John McInerney (he/him)
Executive Director
215-573-0874
mcinernj@upenn.edu

Chloe Reison (she/her)
Associate Director
215-573-2159
reison@upenn.edu

Elizabeth Shaw (she/her)
Administrative Assistant
215-898-5930
elizshaw@upenn.edu

The Sachs Program for Arts Innovation offices are located at the Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Philadelphia PA

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