[Commlist] CFP: Retuning the Screen. Sound methods and the Aural Dimension of Cinema & Media History

Retuning the Screen.
Sound Methods and the Aural Dimension of Film & Media History

XXVII International Film and Media Studies Conference
March 26th – 28th 2020, University of Udine
Gorizia, Italy

More than twenty years have passed since Rick Altman famously proclaimed 
sound studies “a field whose time has come" (1999), magnifying a then 
growing body in film scholarship: the research interests he and his 
colleagues have systematically pursued since the early eighties, at the 
Iowa University. Altman's statement helped in unravelling an 
interdisciplinary undercurrent in American, European and non-English 
speaking film scholarship - Michel Chion’s widely influential works were 
published approximately at the same time.

As Michele Hilmes later stated, the sound has been an “always emerging 
and never emerged” area of interest, “doomed to a position on the 
margins of the various fields of scholarship, whispering unobtrusively 
in the background while the main action occurs elsewhere” (Hilmes 2005: 
249). Nevertheless, Sound Studies have progressively become an 
internationally recognised (and sometimes criticised: Feld 2015) 
interdisciplinary
tendency since the early 2000s, redeeming aurality from its 
ever-marginal position and foregrounding it as an area of inquiry in its 
own right.

Whereas this renewed interest did encourage explorations on previously 
neglected aspects of film and videosound (Birtwistle 2010; Rogers 2014; 
Iannotta 2018)., scholars interested in aurality only occasionally dwelt 
on cinema and visual media: however, they contributed to fresh 
perspectives and angles. Think at the researches on acoustic 
architecture of movie theatres and film studios (Thompson 2002; Meandri 
2016) or at the studies on the relation between art-film and urban 
spaces and media/soundscapes (Birdsall 2012), or on other sonic artistic 
expressions (Halliday 2013).

This year the FilmForum conference aims at enhancing the emergence and 
consolidation of these aurally oriented perspectives, as innovative 
entry points in film and media theory and history at large. As Jonathan 
Sterne has argued, to think sonically does not so much imply sound as an 
exclusive object of interest. Instead, it outlines an alternative path 
to be pursued through history, a different mapping of the same 
territory, a distinct epistemological position (Sterne 2003; 2012). 
Following this approach, we are not interested in exploring the aural 
“segment” of audiovisual texts (i.e. the soundtrack) for their 
expressive and artistic significance. Neither we are exclusively 
concerned with “audio” and technologically mediated sound in itself. 
Instead, our general objective is to understand how the theoretical 
concepts and methods developed to investigate aurality could reframe 
cinema and visual media as research objects.


Moving from these general premises, we will primarily focus on the 
following areas of interest.


- Aural epistemologies and metaphors of the audition. Albeit mostly 
visually biased, film and media theory has always made use of sonically 
inspired terms and concepts far beyond their literal meaning. Words such 
as “noise” or “voice” may indicate an unwanted element of communication 
and a marker and signifier of social identities and gender differences, 
respectively. The concept of “rhythm” served as a modernist notion to 
interpret the changes in the interfaces between the organic and the 
machinic and with the temporal dimension of cinematography itself (Cowan 
2012). However, recent studies proposed equally aurally and temporally 
inspired neologisms to address the technological specificities of 
contemporary digital media – e.g. Ernst’s "sonicity" (2016). Such 
extensive use of the aural vocabulary raises questions about the 
metaphor of listening as a "constitutive feature of epistemology" 
(Sterne 2012).How did aural figures such as “soundscape” (Schafer 1977), 
"secondary orality” (Ong 1989), or "acousmatic” (Schaeffer 1952; Kane 
2016) contribute to shaping our understanding of the overall media 
experience? Can these terms be critically scrutinised or re-assessed as 
tools for media and film analysis?


- Cinema and media in/and listening culture.**The notion of 
“auditory/listening culture” is one of the key concepts introduced by 
Sound Studies. Traditionally described as a purely affective and 
eternally archaic sense (Adorno-Eisler 1947), the hearing has been 
recently re-assessed as the result of historical, social and cultural 
construction. Its characteristics may significantly be varying. It 
depends on the "network of practices that communities of listeners 
participate in when they hear relevant features of the auditory world, 
communicate them to others, and pass them on through training” (Kane 
2017). To offer but an example, the shift from “silent” film to 
synchronised sound certainly changed what we expected to hear in a movie 
theatre, but also our set of practices and routines as spectators. 
Professionals in the film industry were suddenly required to become 
acquainted new audile techniques as “technical skills which can be 
developed and used toward instrumental ends” (Sterne 2003). We can argue 
the same for other stages and aspects of film and media history. How did 
cinema and visual media emerge from or react to a given aural culture, 
and how did they contribute to shaping it? To which extent the modern 
and contemporary spectatorship interweave the formation of the modern 
and contemporary listener? Does film culture contribute to cultivating 
our listening practices as well? Which sonic skills can be considered 
representative of the modern and contemporary media culture?


- Sound archives and archaeology. Retrieving the sounds of the past is 
an ever-challenging task which confronts scholars and historians with a 
wide array of sources. As already stressed (Birdsall 2015, 2017; 
Birdsall –Tkackzyk 2019), a close dialogue with the established field of 
Film Preservation Studies would help in promoting sound archives as a 
distinct object of study. It could foster a systematic reflection on the 
preservation methods, institutions and infrastructures and on the formal 
practices of restoration, exhibition and creative re-use of sonic 
materials. And still, however important, sound recordings alone may 
suffice to fully reconstruct historical soundscape and significance for 
the cultures of the past. Can non-sounding written and/or material 
records (e.g. scripts, physical places, architectural designs) enrich 
our knowledge on the aural dimension of cinema and media? Can the 
research and excavation methods developed in sound and music archaeology 
(see Smith 1999) be fruitfully applied also in film and media history?

We encourage contributions addressing any of these areas or the 
interrelationships occurring between them. We invite you to send us 
proposals for papers or panels. Proposals should not exceed one page in 
length. Please make sure to attach a short biographical note (10 lines 
max). The deadline for their submission is *DECEMBER 31st 2019*

A registration fee (160 euros) will be applied. Moreover travel costs 
(tickets, etc.) will not be refunded. On the other hand, we will 
partially cover the costs of your accommodation (2 nights in the best 
accommodation solutions available). Special rates are available for 
additional nights. For more information, please contact us at 
(udineconference /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(udineconference /at/ gmail.com)>.

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