COFA TALKS
Experimental Sound
Inaugural Lecture, Professor Douglas Kahn
WHEN WHERE
Wednesday 17th COFA UNSW
November 2010 Cnr Oxford St & Greens Rd
6pm Paddington
Lecture Theatre: EGO2
In his inaugural lecture, NIEA Professor of Media and
Innovation, Douglas Kahn discusses Experimental
Sound in the Arts and History
About a decade ago “sound art” burst onto the official
world stage and has since become widely accepted.
This was concurrent with the rise of “sound studies”
in history, anthropology, cultural studies, histories
of the arts, science and technology studies and
other disciplines. Now courses in “sound” are
found across the curricula, symposia and events
are regularly held across the world, fellowships,
theses, performances, exhibitions… Experimental
aesthetics once asked for “more new sounds”: what
is it going to do now that it has them? How might
they resonate with other disciplines in academe and
other activities in society?
Douglas Kahn is Professor of Media and Innovation
at the National Institute of Experimental Arts (NIEA),
the University of New South Wales. Until recently, he
was Professor of Science and Technology Studies
at the University of California, Davis.
NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR EXPERIMENTAL ARTS
COLLEGE OF FINE ARTS | THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES
CNR OXFORD ST & GREENS RD PADDINGTON NSW 2021 AUSTRALIA
PHONE + 61 2 9385 0619 EMAIL r.kiang@unsw.edu.au WEB www.niea.unsw.edu.au
WHO COST
Professor Douglas Free & Open
Kahn to the Public
He is an historian and theoretician of the arts
and media arts, with special focus on sound,
electromagnetism, and science in the traditions of
the avant-garde and experimentalism. His books
include Noise Water Meat: A
History of Sound in the Arts (MIT Press, 1999) and
Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio and the Avant-
garde (MIT Press, 1992).
His major project, Earth Sound Earth Signal (UC
Press, forthcoming) is the product of a decade of
research into natural electromagnetic and acoustical
phenomena occurring at a geophysical scale in the
arts, media, science and military from the mid-19th
Century to the present.
He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for research
on the historical discovery of natural radio and an
Arts Writers Grant from Creative Capital and the
Warhol Foundation for the completion of Earth
Sound Earth Signal.