3rd Biannual Conference of
ASLEC-ANZ
The Association for the Study of Literature, Environment, Culture–
Australia and New Zealand
University of Tasmania
Launceston
20, 21, 22 October 2010
Sounding the Earth: Music, Language, Acoustic Ecology
‘All of the sound we hear is only a fraction of all the vibrating going on in our universe’ (ecologist and composer David Dunn, Nature Sound). ‘Since each thing is made differently, each form of life hears a slightly different multiverse’.
ASLEC-ANZ invites papers, performances, photo/phonographics—on music, language, sound, the earth—that reflect the multiversity of human and non-human worlds; that investigate music’s power as intrinsic language to ‘transcend social and cultural barriers’; that examine the process of remixing, recycling, renewing in sound and the environment.
The proposed theme, Sound and the Environment. actively engages with the aural (human and non-human), and thus seeks to bring into encounter human and non-human aural expressions and aesthetics; conservatory and architecture; drama and legislation; arts and industry sustainability.
Among the topics that presenters will take up are: soundscapes and environmental awareness; music modeled on nature; music performed collaboratively with nature; the power of song (human and non-human) to change the way humans think and act; Indigenous ’singing up’ as a mode of resilience and joy. We envisage an extension of the theme that includes the politics of sound and air.
Topic suggestions include but are not limited to:
* nature writing / nature singing / inherited language
* noise as pollutant
* silence as extinction
* noise as environmental aesthetic
* popular / classical / sacred music and ecology
* Music as environmental ‘bandaid’
* ‘silence’ in environmental art, film, literature and philosophy
* auditory perception; extra-human acoustic ecologies
* capturing sound / Unsound practices
The conference is to be held at the School of Architecture at Inveresk. This is the site of the Academy for the Arts, and the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and is situated on the North Esk, in Launceston. Accommodation in town is within Zimmer frame walking distance from the venue.
Submission deadline is 15 July 2010. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words, and should state IT requirements. Selected papers will be published in the inaugural ASLEC-ANZ refereed journal. Registration information, venue and accommodation details will be posted to the ASLEC-ANZ website at the end of May. In the meantime abstracts and questions should be directed to
Dr CA Cranston
President ASLEC-ANZ http://www.asle-anz.asn.au/
CA.Cranston@utas.edu.au
