The Limits of Aurality


Symposium
23 March 2018, 10–5pm
FREE

Much has been made of aurality in recent years. This is due in part to the way attention to sonic experience appears to open new critical paths and modes of thought that are otherwise unavailable to ocular and logocentric forms of analysis and interpretation. However, an aurally-inflected take on the construction of personhood, the composition of human and nonhuman relations, or the metaphysics of life, for example, is motivated as much by an urge to invent new concepts as it is by the perceived limits of any given theoretical model. This is to suggest that aurality’s reimagining of thought’s critical limits is as much an aesthetic as a critical matter. Given this we can ask what the invocation of aurality does at the level of style and substance, and whether its contemporary conceptualization is adequate to the cultures practices of the 21st century.

For this one-day symposium we will gather academics (and artists) working within the field of sound studies (broadly construed) to address questions regarding the limits of aurality.

Presenters
Elisa Ferrari & Allison Collins
Milena Droumeva
Tobias Linnemann Ewé
Lief Hall
Ted Hiebert
Alexander Fisher
Godfre Leung
Eldritch Priest
Saygin Saygirli
Rob Stone

Supported by SFU School for the Contemporary Arts, Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology, and UNIT/PITT Projects.

After party at Selectors’ Records, 8 East Pender St.