Call for Participation:
"Bigger than Words, Wider than Pictures": Noise, Affect, Politics
University of Salford and Islington Mill, July 1-3 2010
Organising Committee:
Dr Michael Goddard, Dr Benjamin Halligan and Professor David Sanjek
"If there are people that are dumb enough to use
Metallica to interrogate prisoners, you're
forgetting about all the music that's to the
left of us. I can name 30 Norwegian death metal
bands that would make Metallica sound like Simon and Garfunkel." - Lars Ulrich
"... this music can put a human being in a
trance like state and deprive it of the sneaking
feeling of existing, 'cos music is bigger than
words and wider than pictures... if the stars
had a sound it would sound like this." - Mogwai,
"Yes! I Am a Long Way from Home"
Noise Annoys. Is it not a banal fact of modern,
urban existence that one person's preferred
sonic environment is another's irritating,
unwelcome noise - whether in the high-rise
apartment, on public transport or the street, or
almost anywhere else? The contingent soundscape
of jack-hammers and pneumatic drills, mobile
phone chatter, car sirens and alarms, sound
leakage from nightclubs and bars and - moving
into the suburbs - lawn-mowers and amateur
renovation projects, neighbouring kids and dogs,
represents a near-constant aural assault. As a
pollutant, noise can legally attain noxious
levels; it is both potentially biologically
harmful and psychologically detrimental.
But what exactly is noise and what conditions
these relative thresholds in which sound crosses
over into noise? Or are these more organised and
polite sonic phenomena merely varieties of noise
that have been tamed and civilised, and yet
still contain kernels of the chaotic, anomalous
disturbance of primordial noise? As a radical
free agent, how is noise channelled, neutralised
or enhanced in emergent cityscapes? As a
consumable, how is noise - or lack of noise - commodified?
Such questions are particularly applicable to
contemporary forms of music which, based as they
are on a variety of noise-making technical
machines, necessarily exist in the interface
between chaotic, unpredictable noise and the
organised and blended sounds of music and
speech. Does modern noise seek to lead us to
new, post-secular inscapes (as with psychedelia
and shoegazer), or defy the lulling noisescapes
of processed background muzak with punitive
blasts of disorientating, disorderly noise? And
why the cult of noise - in term of both volume
and dissonance - in which low cultural practices
(metal, moshing) meet those of the avant-garde (atonalism, transcendentalism)?
This conference seeks to address the
contemporary phenomenon of noise in all its
dimensions: cultural, political, territorial,
philosophical, physiological, subversive and
military, and as anomalous to sound, speech,
musicality and information. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
* Psychedelic and Neo-Psychedelic Musics
* Punk and Post-Punk Musics
* Experimental Musics from Avant-Classical to Digital Noise / Raw Data
* Industrial Musics and Cultures
* Krautrock and German Noise
* Shoegazer, Nu-Gaze and Post-Rock
* Noise as Cultural Anomaly
* Noise, Chaos and Order
* Noise and architectural planning
* Noise and digital compression
* Noise Scenes from No Wave to Japan-Noise
* Noise and electronic music pioneers
(Delia Derbyshire, Varèse, Stockhausen)
* Noise and Territory
* Sonic Warfare
* Noise and Urban Environments / "Noise pollution"
* Noise and Subjectivation
* Sonic Ecologies
* "White Noise"
* Noise and Political Subversion
* Noise and hearing impairment / deafness
* Psychic / silent noise
* Noise and mixing, particularly in nightclub environments
* Noise in Cinema, Video and Sound Art
* Noise, Appropriation and Recombination
* Noise and Affect
The conference will be organised by the Centre
for Communication, Cultural and Media Studies at
the University of Salford in cooperation with
Islington Mill, Salford and will take place from
the 1-3rd of July and will include both an
academic conference and noise gigs featuring
amongst other groups, The Telescopes and Factory
Star and other special guests tbc. Confirmed
keynote speakers include rock historian Clinton
Heylin, author of From the Velvets to the
Voidoids and numerous other works on (post)punk
and popular music, Stephen Lawrie of The
Telescopes, and Paul Hegarty, author of the recent Noise/Music.
In addition to conventional papers, noise, sound
and video art proposals are also welcome.
To participate in the conference please send a
400 word abstract and biographical note to
Michael Goddard, (m.n.goddard /at/ salford.ac.uk) and
Benjamin Halligan, (b.halligan /at/ salford.ac.uk) by 28 February 2010.
