理解声音：科学、技术与社会

This course introduces the emerging and fast developing field of Sound Studies. This interdisciplinary field has emerged in the last twenty years in response to the recognition that all too often the academy has been dominated by just one sense – sight. Sound Studies breaks through the traditional academic research paradigm and opens up a new way of understanding, a new interpretation scheme and a new research dimension. STS is an interdisciplinary filed that connects science and humanities, creates a dialogue between them, and bridges the gap between them. As one of the forefront topics of STS, Sound Studies has brought new ways of understanding sound including music, noise, silence and all other sounds. This course covers sound philosophy, sound landscapes, the sociology of silence and noise, traditional and electronic instruments, experimental music, recording technology, game sounds; in the last part, sound-related topics including sound and medicine, sound and science, and sound and gender will be interpreted. This course will use a large number of sound materials to motivate students’ auditory sense and cultivate the way of thinking through sound. Each student will use sound technology to create their own sound artwork. At the end of the semester, students will submit a paper of their sound statement to demonstrate their understanding of the course and their own auditory experience.<br/>