Photo by Ernst Karel

AUDIO ETHNOGRAPHY

"The course was an opportunity to open up the question: what might constitute 'audio documentary' or 'ethnographic audio'?"
An intensive, graduate-level, practice-based course in which students record, edit, and produce anthropologically informed audio works that record and interpret culture and lived experience. Projects in this class look beyond conventional linguistic or musical codes to sounds whose semiotic or affective value may be less immediately evident. Through the process of making location recordings, analyzing those recordings, composing them into autonomous works, and critiquing every step of the way, this course engages with questions of ethnographic representation through the medium of sound.
INSTRUCTOR
Ernst Karel, PhD
CEE Visiting Fellow Spring 2019

METHODS
Audio ethnography, editing, recording, post-production

FINAL EVENT
Rainey Auditorium
Dec 9. 2019

ERNST KAREL

works with sound, including experimental nonfiction sound works for multichannel installation and performance, electroacoustic music, and postproduction sound for nonfiction vilm.
INSTRUCTOR BIO
Ernst Karel's work focuses on the practice of location recording and composing with unprocessed location recordings; in performance he sometimes combines these with analog electronics to create pieces which move between the abstract and the documentary; in performance he sometimes combines these with analog electronics to create pieces which move between the abstract and the documentary. His work has been presented at Sonic Acts, Amsterdam; Arsenal, Berlin; and the 2014 Whitney Biennial, among others. Sound installations with Helen Mirra have been exhibited at the Gardner Museum in Boston, MIT List Visual Arts Center, and in the 2012 Sao Paulo Bienal. Video with multichannel sound collaborations include Single Stream (2014, with Toby Lee and Pawel Wojtasik), Ah humanity! (2015, with Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel), and Expedition Content (2020, with Veronika Kusumaryati). ​
Ernst Karel. Photo by Domenico Singha Pedroli

CONTINUE