As a way of knowing and interacting with the world, techniques of listening constitute a wide range of socially and historically circumscribed practices that shape our subjective positions and collective identities. Techniques of listening orient the ear and represent sound in distinct and often contradictory ways.

Techniques of listening are bound up in the materials and instruments we listen with and to, but they are also found in the ideologies and cultures that define, use, and misuse sound and music. With this conference, we wish to shed light on the aesthetic, scientific, technical, legal, medical, historical, social, cultural, religious, and philosophical ways of listening as they pertain to any kind of music and/or sound.

 This conference runs October 13-14, 2017. It is being presented by the IAS Music & Sound Studies Research and Creative Collaborative; for more information please email [email protected].