Noise, Affect, Politics Conference June 30, 2010

What? Conference and gigs

Where? University of Salford and Islington Mill, Salford

Who for? Everyone

How much? TBC

More info and registration: email m.n.goddard@salford.ac.uk

"Bigger than Words, Wider than Pictures": Noise, Affect, Politics Organising Committee: Dr Michael Goddard, Dr Benjamin Halligan and Professor David Sanjek

Noise Annoys. Is it not a banal fact of modern, urban existence that one person's preferred sonic environment is another's irritating, unwelcome noise - whether in the high-rise apartment, on public transport or the street, or almost anywhere else?

The contingent soundscape of jack-hammers and pneumatic drills, mobile phone chatter, car sirens and alarms, sound leakage from nightclubs and bars and - moving into the suburbs - lawn-mowers and amateur renovation projects, neighbouring kids and dogs, represents a near-constant aural assault.

As a pollutant, noise can legally attain noxious levels; it is both potentially biologically harmful and psychologically detrimental. But what exactly is noise and what conditions these relative thresholds in which sound crosses over into noise? Or are these more organised and polite sonic phenomena merely varieties of noise that have been tamed and civilised, and yet still contain kernels of the chaotic, anomalous disturbance of primordial noise?

As a radical free agent, how is noise channelled, neutralised or enhanced in emergent cityscapes? As a consumable, how is noise - or lack of noise - commodified?

Such questions are particularly applicable to contemporary forms of music which, based as they are on a variety of noise-making technical machines, necessarily exist in the interface between chaotic, unpredictable noise and the organised and blended sounds of music and speech.

Does modern noise seek to lead us to new, post-secular inscapes (as with psychedelia and shoegazer), or defy the lulling noisescapes of processed background muzak with punitive blasts of disorientating, disorderly noise? And why the cult of noise - in term of both volume and dissonance - in which low cultural practices (metal, moshing) meet those of the avant-garde (atonalism, transcendentalism)?

This conference seeks to address the contemporary phenomenon of noise in all its dimensions: cultural, political, territorial, philosophical, physiological, subversive and military, and as anomalous to sound, speech, musicality and information. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

Psychedelic and Neo-Psychedelic Musics
Punk and Post-Punk Musics
Experimental Musics from Avant-Classical to Digital Noise / Raw Data Industrial Musics and Cultures
Krautrock and German Noise
Shoegazer, Nu-Gaze and Post-Rock
Noise as Cultural Anomaly
Noise, Chaos and Order
Noise and architectural planning
Noise and digital compression
Noise Scenes from No Wave to Japan-Noise
Noise and electronic music pioneers (Delia Derbyshire, Varèse, Stockhausen) Noise and Territory
Sonic Warfare
Noise and Urban Environments / "Noise pollution"
Noise and Subjectivation
Sonic Ecologies
"White Noise"
Noise and Political Subversion
Noise and hearing impairment / deafness
Psychic / silent noise
Noise and mixing, particularly in nightclub environments
Noise in Cinema, Video and Sound Art
Noise, Appropriation and Recombination
Noise and Affect

The conference will be organised by the Centre for Communication, Cultural & Media Studies at the University of Salford in co-operation with Islington Mill, Salford and will take place from the 1-3rd of July and will include both an academic conference and noise gigs featuring amongst other groups, The Telescopes and Factory Star and other special guests tbc.

Confirmed keynote speakers include rock historian Clinton Heylin, author of From the Velvets to the Voidoids and numerous other works on (post)punk and popular music, Stephen Lawrie of The Telescopes, and Paul Hegarty, author of the recent Noise/Music. In addition to conventional papers, noise, sound and video art proposals are also welcome.

To participate in the conference please send a 400 word abstract and biographical note to Michael Goddard, m.n.goddard@salford.ac.uk and Benjamin Halligan, b.halligan@salford.ac.uk by 28 February 2010.

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