----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- Hello everyone and thank you to Renate, Tim and Asha for inviting me!
Asha's points about pedagogy are ever-present in my mind. Many of the narratives that we weave about our discipline eschew what might be perceived as “irrelevant” elements of race, gender, and class. Yet this detritus is important. People create music; people are the agents in the creation of ideas. An individual's cumulative experience stands behind the sound. As the love child of music and technology, electronic music in its current state is exploding with creative uses of computer code. So if we turn our attention to a computer science course, we quickly see that these courses are often devoid—probably for the sake of time and efficiency—of discussions about agents: the people who made the code, functions, or scripts and their histories. Frankly, for computer scientists, an employer probably does not care if a job applicant the history of Bjarne Stroustrup and C++. The stories of innovators such as Leon Theremin and Robert Moog are written into our histories of development, but are only included when they are necessary to chronicle the basic evolution of the technologies. By disavowing the human history of our field, we leave behind real, important detritus: the valuable information about our innovators from all backgrounds. These stories are necessary to the study of electronic music because they provide paradigms for students who are in the process of becoming the next generation of innovators. All artists at one point in their career have read a fact or detail in a biography (or heard a story/urban legend) about a luminary in their field that inspired them. Even more powerful are these histories for students who might not have shared experiences with their mentors or cohort. Students benefit from identifying with the stories of innovators who came before them, and the usefulness of identification, of course, is not exclusive to race, gender, and class. My analysis is one of a practitioner and student of electronic music not a historian, so I freely admit that this is a surface look which does not fully account for wider cultural implications. I look forward to all of your thoughts! Rachel racheldevorahtrapp.com On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 12:22 PM, Asha Tamirisa <ashatamir...@gmail.com> wrote: > > ----------empyre- soft-skinned space---------------------- > Dear Renate and Tim, > > Thanks so much! I’m honored to be included in this month’s discussion along > with such an incredible group of artists and scholars: Rachel, Monisola, > Caroline, and Lyn. > > I will begin the discussion this evening with a post on my own research on > modular interfaces, and the ways in which their design and use expresses > particular ideas of power, freedom, connection, and subjectivity. My hope, > though, is that this week’s discussion will expand into larger issues of > feminist approaches of audio technology, audio culture, history, pedagogy, > and feminist spaces, drawing inspiration from the incredible work done by > scholars like Tara Rodgers, Harraway, Judy Wajcman, Anne Basalmo, and Wendy > Chun. I will keep tabs on all resources and ideas and summarize them into a > bibliography/list at the end. > > To preface, here are some topics I hope to touch on in this week: > > Audiotechnical Design > * Rhetorical weight in technological design > * How can technological design not just make things “better” but “different” > in ways that provoke social change? > > Audiotechnical Language: > * What does the language imply? Who does it exclude? > > Feminist Spaces > * Intersectionality: Why haven’t most feminist electronic music spaces > addressed race and broader issues of gender diversity? What are some examples > of structures that have? > * Fetishizing/categorizing women in electronic music > * Male allyship > > Pedagogy > * Why is there resistance to incorporating gender and race into the study of > this field? Is that changing? > * Moving beyond tokenism: How can the study of gender and race not be an > appendage to the field, but a true part of its study? > * Making balanced / diverse syllabi > * Changing use of gendered/racialized language > > History / Archives > * Radical archives / Integrating feminist archives into “mainstream” > electronic music history > * Linkages between militaristic technological development and audio > technologies > * Complicating the relationship electronic music history to Futurism/Fascism > > Very much looking forward to seeing what this network brings to the fore! All > best, > > -- > - Asha Tamirisa > > ashatamir...@gmail.com > > > _______________________________________________ > empyre forum > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au > http://www.subtle.net/empyre _______________________________________________ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
