UNSW Research in Sound captures international attention

Professor of Media and Innovation  Douglas Kahn is touring major cities and universities  across the United States and Europe delivering a series of keynote addresses, lectures and symposia that provide an introduction to his thinking surrounding energies in the arts. 

These talks extend upon the themes of Doug’s most recent book,  Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts  (University of California Press, 2013) and will outline a number of the ideas that underpin two forthcoming texts: the edited volume  Energies in the Arts  (MIT Press, March 2019) and the monograph  Of Artists and Ecopaths: Ecological Energies from the Cold War to the Warm War  (MIT Press). 

Doug is an historian and theorist of media arts, sound and music in the arts, energy in the arts, and science in the arts from the late-19th Century to the present, with an emphasis on the traditions of the avant-garde, and experimentalism. 

Throughout May and June Doug’s tour takes him to more than a dozen institutions, including highlights such as a distinguished lecture at University of California at San Diego, conference keynote in Paris, evening lectures at University of Basel, University of Karlsruhe, and invited lectures at University of Washington, Oxford, Cambridge, University of Birmingham. 

Prior to joining UNSW, Doug was a professor in Science and Technology Studies, University of California at Davis. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship. 

Doug’s books include  Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts  (MIT Press, 1999);  Earth Sound Earth Signal: Energies and Earth Magnitude in the Arts  (University of California Press, 2013);  Mainframe Experimentalism: Early Computing and the Foundations of Digital Arts, edited with Hannah Higgins (University of California Press,2012); and  Source: Music of the Avant-garde, edited with Larry Austin (University of California Press, 2011). 

Selected dates and events 

7 June 2018 – Cité de la Musique, Philharmonie de Paris. 

• Keynote presentation: Spetctres De l’Audible: Sound studies, cultures de l’écoute et art sonores

• Presented in partnership with  La Frabrique des Arts Sonores, Labex Arts H2H.  

13 June 2018 – Faculty of Music, University of Oxford. 

• Keynote presentation:  Sounds and Vibrations Are Two Energies Among Others 

• Event hosted as part of the Seminar in Ethnomusicology and Sound Studies Series, based at St John’s College, University of Oxford. 

15-16 June 2018 – Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Cambridge.   

• Presentation: Sensing the Sonic: Histories of Hearing Differently (1800-now)

• ​Supported by the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the ERC Project ‘Sound and Materialism in the 19th Century’ (University of Cambridge). 

19 June 2018 – Critical Media in the Arts: Time, Materiality, Ecology. 

• Keynote presentation:  Survivable Communication: Trees 

• Symposium is supported by The School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music (LCAHM) and the Contemporary Philosophy of Technology Research Group. 

21 June 2018 – The Reading Room, The Hague, Netherlands. 

• Workshop:  Radiant Matter 

• Program is supported by Stroom Den Haag and the Dutch Creative Industries Fund, and is produced by the Instrument Inventors Initiative. 

22 June 2018 – E-ARTHHA, DE PLAYER, Rotterdam. 

• Alongside BJ Nilsen, Aurelie Lierman and Max Franklin.