Project 1: Emphasis on Music 20%
Project 2: Emphasis on Music and Image 25%
Project 3: Advanced Project: Image, Music and Text 30%

Research Methodology

Week 17: December 15, 2014
Due: Revision of Final Project

Week 16:
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Due: Project 3 Advanced Project: Image, Music and Text | Make necessary changes to turn in final project

Monday, December 8, 2014
Finalize details for final project | Lab Time

Week 15:
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Show preliminary ideas of third and final | Prepare for Third Major Project | Lab Time

Monday, December 1, 2014
Weekly Assignment Critiqued | Discuss Crawford "Following You" | Prepare for second Major Project | Lab Time

Week 14:
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
THANKSGIVING

Monday, November 24 2014
THANKSGIVING

Week 13:
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Weekly Assignment released due on Monday, December 1 | Lab Time
Weekly Assignment due Monday, December 1, 2014: Development of basic barcharts. See Assignment tutorials on Angel for details.

Weekly Assignment due on December 1, 2014:

Develop four designs repurposing the code from your in-class exercise and
the two templates provided to you on Angel. The first two designs will consist of circlecharts and the second two of bar-charts.
You must do the following to complete your assignment successfully:

• Data-mine a text--one of the three you will use for your final assignment. (Check Angel for proper files)
• To get interesting results consider words that are not common but which are frequently used.
• You can data-mine the text by using Voyant: http://voyant-tools.org/
• Search for material you will eventually use to create the text for your final project (think of this weekly exercise as preparation).
• Consider how the search will reveal something about the text. Write down the number of times each word appears and create an array as follows: [4, 10, 150, 16, 20...] Then paste your array as a variable in the four pages of your assignment.
• List each word and the number of times they appeared in the text you data-mined at the bottom of each of your four visualization pages (see templates show where the list should go).
• At the bottom of each page also include what you discovered when you searched for particular words. (The template has a sample statement that suggests how to begin your explanation.)
• Also at the bottom of each page explain how your design extends or represents the work you data-mined.
• For each of your four actual designs:
• Choose two colors at the most and use them for the fill and the edges of the
  circles and rectangles.
  
• The intensity of the colors should vary according to the number value each
  element is assigned.
• Include the numbers in the design as you learned to do in the tutorial and in-class demo.
• Choose a font that best represents the text you data-mined.
• All formal aspects of your four designs must be carefully considered in relation to the text you data-mined: color, size of your objects (circles and rectangles), size of numbers, and typeface for numbers must connote (represent/extend) the aesthetics of the work you analyzed. For instance, if the work is violent or dark, how would you represent this? If the work is funny and playful, how would you represent this? If it's a combination of both, how would you represent this?
• All four designs should be different from each other, use them as means to
  explore the potential of design. You can accomplish this by adjusting the code
  according to the two tutorials on rectangles and circles that accompany this
  assignment.

Monday, November 17, 2014
Weekly assignment critiqued | Discuss Eshun, "Operating System" | Read Kate Crawford, "Following you: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media" in The Sound Studies Reader, pp. 79- 90

Week 12:
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Lecture on image, music text | Weekly Assignment released due on Monday November 17 | Lab Time

Monday, November 10, 2014
Weekly Assignment: go over the texts so far discuss evaluate them to choose three as part of your final project | Discuss Navas "Remix[ing] Theory" | Read Kodwo Eshun "Operating System for the Redesign of Sonic Reality" in The Sound Studies Reader, pp. 449 - 453

weekly Assignment due on Wednesday, November 17, 2014: Develop Basic SVGs, see tutorial available on Angel

Week 11:
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
Weekly assignment released (available on Tuesday, November 4) due on Monday, November 10 | Lab Time

Weekly Assignment: Catch up on Reading, make sure you have read all material up to Derrida "The Voice." Make sure you are familar with the nine texts from which you will choose for your third and final project, available as part of the guidelines for Project 3. We will be discussing texts on Monday, November 10, and evaluating them for potential data-mining/analysis as part of your final project.

Monday, November 3, 2014
Weekly assignment critiqued | Discuss Navas "Remix[ing] Music" | Read Eduardo Navas "Remix[ing] Theory" in Remix Theory (ebook): Make sure you are logged on to your PSU library account: http://link.springer.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/book/10.1007%2F978-3-7091-1263-2

Week 10:
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Lecture on image, music, text | Weekly Assignment released due on November 3 | Third and Final Major Assignment released | Lab Time

Assignment: Text analysis (guidelines available on Angel). Due on November 3, 2014

Monday, October 27, 2014
Weekly Project critiqued | Discuss Navas "Remix[ing] Sampling" | Read Eduardo Navas "Remix[ing] Music" in Remix Theory (ebook): Make sure you are logged on to your PSU library account: http://link.springer.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/book/10.1007%2F978-3-7091-1263-2

Week 9:
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
Due Second Major Project 2: Emphasis on Music and Image 30%
In class critique | Read Eduardo Navas "Remix[ing] Sampling" in Remix Theory (ebook):

Make sure you are logged on to your PSU library account: http://link.springer.com.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/book/10.1007%2F978-3-7091-1263-2

Weekly Project Released due on October 27 | Discuss Kahn, "Noises of the Avant-garde" | Lab Time

Weekly Assignment, due on October 27, 2014: Put both videos, the original and the video you edited into one file so that they play simultaneously.

Monday, October 20, 2014
Lab Time | prepare for Second Major Assignment due on October 22

Week 8:

Wednesday, October 14, 2014
Prepare for Second Major Project | Lab time

Monday, October 12, 2014
Weekly Project critiqued | Discuss Derrida, "The Voice" | Read Douglas Khan, "Noises of the Avant-garde" in The Sound Studies Reader, pp. 427 - 448

Week 7:

Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Lecture on image, music, text | Lab Time

Monday, October 6, 2014
Critique Weekly Project | Discuss Barthes, "The Grain of the Voice" | Read Jacques Derrida, "The Voice that Keeps Silence," in The Sound Studies Reader, pp. 495 - 503 | Weekly Project Released

Week 6:

Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Lab Time | Work on weekly project

Weekly Assignment Due on Monday, October 6, 2014:
Develop Analysis of three videos of your choice as explained in the tutorial titled "Video Analysis Tutorial."

Monday, September 29, 2014
Second Major Project Released due on October 20 | Weekly assignment critiqued | Discuss Chion, "Three Listening Modes" | Read Roland Barthes, "The Grain of the Voice," in The Sound Studies Reader, pp. 504 - 510 | Lecture on image, music, text | Weekly Project Released due on October 6

Week 5:

Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Due: First Major Project, Emphasis on Music (20%)
Class critique

Weekly Assignment, due on September 29:
Based on your experimentation with the DDJ system during lab hours in class, as well as the Mixxx app, develop a set of sounds that would go together as a music composition. The composition should be developed with an attitude of "being in the mix," meaning that it should appear to have been performed for recording. You don't have to perform live the actual mix, but it's the attitude, the experience of mixing live with the DJ interfaces that you need to explore and keep in mind when using sampling and various electronic instruments to develop your actual compositions.

You also need to develop an image-collage that, in your view, shares a creative approach in bringing together images as though they are a "music set," or a "sound set." The image could be of anything, but it should relate somehow to the sound composition's affect. You cannot use text yet in this collage, only images.

Once you are done experimenting with the DDJ and Mixxx, you should take your final sounds into a music editing software. One which you have used for previous projects is fine if it fits your goals and vision.

You can use any software of your choice to develop the image, as long as the final project is of the highest quality possible. Upload both to Angel for review on September 29.

Monday, September 22, 2014
Discuss Hosokawa "The Walkman Effect" | Read Michele Chion, "The Three Listening Modes," in The Sound Studies Reader, pp. 48 - 53 | Lab Time work on First Major Project.

Week 4:

Wednesday, September 17, 2014
Lecture in Preparation of First Major Project | Prepare for First major Project | Lab time

Monday, September 15, 2014
Weekly Assignment Critiqued | Lecture on image, music, text | Discuss Kittler, "Gramaphone" | Read Shuhei Hosokawa, "The Walkman Effect," in The Sound Studies Reader, pp. 104 - 116

Week 3:

Wednesday, September 10, 2014
Techniques on music and media production | Sonic Visualizer continue | Lab Time

Weekly Assignment due Monday, September 15:
Take both of your compositions from week two and three and analyze them using Sonic Visualizer. Look for the following:

1) Similarities in patterns: repetition of particular elements, and repetition in terms of rhythm.

2) Based on the analysis do you see some similarities conceptually? Do you have an idea of why you chose the material for each of the projects?

Write a brief explanation (no more than 250 words) in which you describe what you looked for and what you found. Explain if you confirmed what you were looking for, or if you found something different. In either case, share how you relate to your works now that you have analyzed them.

Monday, September 8, 2014
Weekly Assignment Due | Lecture on analysis of image, music, text | Discuss Attali, "Noise" | Read Friedrich Kittler, "Gramaphone," in The Sound Studies Reader, pp. 234-248 | Introduction of Sonic Visualizer

Week 2:

Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Critique of first weekly assignment | Lecture on music and its relation to image and text | Discussion of texts by Benjamin and Mowitt | Read Jacquest Attali, "Noise: The Political Economy of Music," in The Sound Studies Reader, pp. 29-39

Weekly Assignment due on Monday, September 8:
Develop a simple music composition based on pre-recorded loops, available with the software of your choice. The simplest and most accessible software if you have no extensive knowledge of sound mixing is Garageband. There will be a lecture on sound editing to help you use any software.

Requirements:

• Your composition must not be longer than 2 minutes.
• It must have at least three different types of drums (percussive instruments)
• It must include at least one but no more than three melodic instruments
• It must connote a mood: happy, sad, reflective, dance, or other you care to define at the time of presentation.

Monday, September 1, 2014
Labor Day, no class

Week 1:

Wednesday, August 27, 2014
Lecture on music as an art form | Begin discussion of Benjamin's "The Work of Art..." | Read John Mowitt, "The Sound of Music in the Era of Its Electronic Reproducibility," in The Sound Studies Reader, pp. 213-224

Weekly Assignment due on September 3:
Record three separate sounds from your immediate environment. You can use your phone, or any other device to do this. Then edit the sounds in any software you already use to have some type of rhythm that defies a coherent pattern. Note that the requirement of this assignment is a contradiction (rhythm/ pattern/ defiance) which you need to consider in order to develop a sound piece that questions how we record and expect to hear sound.

Monday, August 25, 2014

Introduction to Class | Lecture on Interdisciplinary Practice, the relation of image music and text | Read "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin (PDF)