Soundscapes of New York: Capturing and Mapping Cultures through Sound and Music
Soundscapes of New York: Capturing and Mapping Cultures through Sound and Music - 4 units
Cities are a noisy, frenzied, chaotic places. New York City is especially so. However, embedded within the urban cacophony are acoustic signatures that uniquely characterize the rich multi-cultural tapestry of races, ethnicities, and rituals that embody New York.
This class will explore the unique sonic worlds often hidden amidst the din of New York’s noise to create a cultural map of the city, simultaneously learning to listen to and capture the acoustic characters of the City, while introducing ‘sound studies’ as an emerging research domain in the humanities and sciences.
New York City is an ideal place to explore and experience the myriad of cultures through the innumerable musical and linguistic dialects that create the fabric of the city. Integrating the concept of the soundscape, ethnographic inquiry, history, and some science of acoustics and psychoacoustics, the class will comprise interdisciplinary perspectives on the Humanities and Sciences.
This course fulfills the Aesthetic and Interpretive Inquiry (AII) and Creative Expression (CE) WAYS requirements.
Meet the Instructor(s)
Jonathan Berger
Jonathan Berger is the Denning Family Provostial Professor in Music at Stanford University, where he teaches composition, music theory, and cognition at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). Jonathan is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow and a 2016 winner of the Rome Prize.He was the founding co-director of the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SICA, now the Stanford Arts Institute) and founding director of Yale University’s Center for Studies in Music TechnologyDescribed as “gripping” by both the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune, “poignant”, “richly evocative” (San Francisco Chronicle), “taut, and hauntingly beautiful” (NY Times), Jonathan Berger’s recent works deal with both consciousness and conscience. His monodrama, My Lai, toured internationally. The Kronos Quartet's recording was released by Smithsonian/Folkways. His opera, The Ritual of Breath is the Rite to Resist will be performed at Lincoln Center in July 2024. Thrice commissioned by The National Endowment for the Arts, Berger’a recent commissions include The Mellon and Rockefeller Foundations, Chamber Music Society, Lincoln Center, and Chamber Music America. Upcoming commissions include a new work for the Kronos Quartet. In addition to composition, Berger is an active researcher with over 80 publications in a wide range of fields relating to music, science and technology and has held research grants from DARPA, the Wallenberg Foundation, The National Academy of Sciences, the Keck Foundation, and others. Berger is the PI of a major grant from the Templeton Religion Trust to study how music and architecture interact to create a sense of awe.