Learning to Listen to Background Sounds: Turning Away From Words to Something Reverberating Beyond

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Fugitive Modes of Curricular Production: Attending to the Forces of Mind, Body, and Spirit (Table 32)

Abstract

In the context of literacy and language arts education, the human capacity for listening is generally restricted to its function as a conduit for language¬-based communication, and while this is undoubtedly an important measure of listening’s labour, lived experiences of listening involve more than words alone could ever possibly express. Attending to the artistic possibilities of sound as non¬representational, and turning to the insights of such contemporary sonic experimentations as ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) and noise, this paper wonders how the decidedly expansive and exploratory aesthetics of contemporary sound art might be used to consider the educational affordances of listening beyond the textual limits of traditional classroom practice.

Author

• David Lewkowich, University of Alberta