MUSIC 7430 - Rethinking the Instrument

Fall. 4 credits.

M. Papalexandri-Alexandri.

This seminar focuses on redefining the musical instrument. Participants will use musical instruments, everyday objects, materials, and architectural elements in conjunction with loudspeakers, kinetic and mechanical devices, and other systems to create sounding objects. In a workshop environment, the course traces the artistic work of building, composing for, and operating an instrument. Through this process we will question notions of sound perception and generate new forms of sonic knowledge. In support of this aim, instruments will be taken apart and examined as autonomous resonant bodies. We will observe the form of these components, their materiality, their mechanics, and we will document their behavior in the context of new sonic functions. The instrumental/mechanical components will be combined with and modified by devices, materials and other instruments. A final project using the work developed through the course can be submitted as a composition, a sound object, an instrumental device, an installation, a new technique, an exhibition, or any combination thereof.