Â鶹´«Ã½ÍøÕ¾

Doctoral Colloquium:ÌýNick Miskey (Music Theory) 

Title: Hearing Places: Music, Field Recordings, and Ecologies of Listening in Climate Crisis

Since the turn of the millennium, musicians, composers, and sound artists have increasingly turned to field recordings—usually figured as sounds recorded outside of a space for controlled sound production, and generally relating to specific sites or locales—to deliver ecological critiques. Yet, music researchers still lack models for assessing both the musical value and the urgent environmental messaging of these artistic gestures, and music theory as a discipline continues to neglect the role of field recordings in bonding cultures to their social and physical environments. In this presentation, I examine and critique pieces by Hildegard Westerkamp and Kate Carr, two prominent sound artist-composers working with field recordings. I employ descriptive and spectrographic analyses to explore how the listening practices they espouse and engender both facilitate and complicate hearing and valuing ecosystems, in the process opening inquiries into political and material ecologies of human and nonhuman sound.

Nick Miskey is a PhD candidate in Music Theory at the Schulich School of Music. His research combines the analysis of contemporary sound art and experimental music with sound studies, media studies, and environmental humanities.

The Doctoral Colloquium is open to all.