Creative Sound and Media TechnologyCreative Sound andMedia Technology104
Creative Sound and Media TechnologyThis course is intended primarilyfor those with experience ofmusic technology who wishto explore the field in more depth,or broaden their experience ininterdisciplinary and multimediawork. It would also benefit thosewith a general musical backgroundwho wish to gain more experienceworking with technology, andthose with experience in mediabasedtechnologies who wish tofocus on sound.We take a creative and experimentalapproach, whilst remaining nongenre-specific. The course spans awide variety of styles and approaches,and will be of interest to those involvedin such areas as electro-acoustic/acousmatic music, soundscape,acoustic ecology, computer music,sound/sonic art, electronica, visualmusic and audiovisual work.The emphasis of the course islargely practical, giving students theopportunity to produce a substantialbody of creative work over the durationof the course. Students engage with awide variety of technical and creativeskills - these range from classictechniques derived from areas such as musique concrete and visual musicto more contemporary practice, andinclude advanced skills such assoftware development using Max/MSP/Jitter and multimedia skills.The course will also include agrounding in postgraduate-levelresearch methodology, andopportunities to collaborate withother musicians, performers andmedia practitioners.The multimedia aspects of thecourse are optional. Students canchoose at what depth to engage withthis area, or indeed to focus entirely onsound. In the first trimester there is anopportunity to take on multimediabasedskills as part of the SkillsPortfolio module, while the optionalVisual Music module will give furtheropportunities to specialise in this areain trimester 2.Course structure and contentIn full-time mode, the course runsover three trimesters, September toSeptember. The first trimester givesa thorough grounding in researchmethodology in the Context andMethodology module, and the SkillsPortfolio module offers a toolkit ofoptional skills-based projectsdesigned to allow students to improveon specific technical and creative skillsas required. The second trimesteroffers a choice; where students canopt to explore sound within amultimedia context in the Visual Musicmodule, or to take the ElectroacousticComposition Techniques modulewhich focuses purely on audio work.All students will take the Collaborativeand Interdisciplinary Practice module,which gives an opportunity to workwith peers and across subjectboundaries, with the possibility ofworking with other creative disciplines(film- and theatre-makers, dancersand choreographers etc.) as well as musicians. The third trimester is research-based, with studentsundertaking an individual MajorProject which allows them to explore a chosen area in depth.ModulesTrimester 1Skills PortfolioThis module is offered to allowstudents to garner any technical andcreative skills they will need for therest of the course. It is recognisedthat students at this level will alreadyhave a strong skill-set, but also thatthey may have areas they wish tostrengthen, or indeed areas theyhave not previously engaged with.Students will be offered a selectionof skills-based ‘bolt-ons’ – small,self-contained bespoke practicalprojects based around particulartechnical (in the broadest sense)skills. The skills on offer will cover a broad range of sound and media skills. This will provide an opportunity for students fromdifferent backgrounds to reach aparity in terms of skill set, and willalso provide a progression fromundergraduate-level project workto the sort of projects that will beundertaken in Semesters 2 and 3.Students will choose three from a wide selection of such projects. In each case, the student willundertake a small practical projectand also submit an evaluative log of the technology concerned.Context and MethodologyThis module is intended to fulfil the requirements of a researchmethodology module. However, sincea large part of the this programme ispractice-based, and the methodologyfor this aspect of students’ work willbe covered by other modules in theprogramme, it is intended to combinea study of research methodology witha study of context in terms of thestudent’s own practice – specificallyof a set of paradigms thatcharacterise the field’s current,creative boundaries. The primaryteaching method for this modulewill be a weekly lecture/seminar,with some tutorial sessions thatfocus on pathway specialism. Theassessment item will be a 5000-word topic review, demonstrating anunderstanding of the methodologiescovered by the module and anawareness of the contextual siting of the student’s own practice.105