ARTH 348 Special Topics in Art and Film: Sound / Art / Consciousness
- Tuesdays 8:45 am-12:45 pm
- Instructors: Randolph Jordan
This course examines the role of sound in the “visual arts.” Western art history and film studies have shared an occularcentric approach to investigating the products of creative expression, focusing on visual modes of representation as driven by a broader culture that privileges the sense of sight over all others. Yet the human body is multisensorial, and human consciousness provides experiences of the world that transcend the boundary lines between the individual senses. How might attention to senses other than sight reveal aspects of the visual arts otherwise left unseen? We will investigate this question with a focus on one of the other senses, hearing, as a means of understanding the transsensorial nature of all art, and of human consciousness itself. We will make use of the fully equipped cinema classroom at our disposal to engage with weekly screenings of films that explore various facets of the intersection between light and sound, seeing and hearing, looking, and listening. Screenings will provide points of reference to explore a variety of topic areas, including: the role of art in modeling different concepts of human consciousness; Indigenous and non-Western perspectives on the relationship between sound, culture, and knowledge; the multi-modal genre of visual music; art as vehicle for both representing and generating altered states of consciousness; the marginalization of neurodiversity and sensory disability; debates about the nature of non-human consciousness; and how the field of sound ecology can help us rethink the visually-oriented environments in which we spend our lives. Assignments will require students to apply interdisciplinary methods that draw from the interlinked histories, theories, approaches, and current debates of art history and film studies. Students will come away from the course with an enhanced skillset for thinking critically about the ways in which visual bias has informed our understanding of art and culture, and new strategies for charting alternative pathways through the intersection of art and consciousness.
*This course is cross-listed with FMST 348*