Sound Thinking: A Seminar of Auditory Praxis

Sound is ubiquitous. To evade the visual, we simply close our eyes, but to escape the sonic space is nearly impossible. Cairo is a thought-provoking sonic cacophony of an average of 87 decibels; a threatening threshold to the ear. How can we think the auditory of this city and how do we produce it, negotiate it and navigate it? The seminar is an invitation to think the world through the ear. What can we learn from sound? Using an eclectic combination of lectures, experiential learning and different modes of student participation, the course will attempt to attune the aesthetic, political and social through the modulations of the auditory.

We will explore the core ideas of sound theory and its relation to the history of recording technologies with a specific interest in the avant-garde and the experimental, but only in an attempt to help us think what a tok tok driver is doing by blasting his music and how it relates to Import/Export policies or ways of policing the streets, or the reason fireworks are so popular after the revolution that they are sold in abundance on the pavements of Attaba.

In other words, we will open our ears to our surroundings. We will draft sonic diaries and attempt thinking through what we hear as well as experience the non-thought of a-signifying sounds. We will record, listen and play. We will read Jaques Attali, John Cage, Michelle Serres, Mladen Dolar, Yasser Abdel Latif, Iman Mersal, Haytham El Werdany, Pierre Schaeffer, and listen to Sun Ra, Ahmed Berrein, Mahragant Music, Yassin El Tohamy, Miles Davis, The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Elaine Radigue, and Musique Concrète Pioneers among others. We will listen to film soundtracks, mainstream films, experimental films, films with voiceovers and more.

Other than curiosity and a sense of exploration, rigorous student participation is mandatory in accomplishing the ambitions of our learning goals in the seminar, it can only work if we are all reporting to the class from our ears.