Summer Workshop 2005: In and Out of the Sound Studio

The In and Out of the Studio summer workshop is an outgrowth of a SSHRC-funded multi-university research project headed by Dr. Andra McCartney about the contemporary working contexts and practices of women sound producers and artists in Canada.

Over the last four years we have interviewed women in Quebec, Ontario, B.C. and Newfoundland across a range of disciplines including but not limited to public and community radio, music production, film and video game sound design, theatre and museum sound production. In all of these areas, women are isolated by disciplinary boundaries and by the small numbers of women practising in each area of sound production. In many cases, an interviewee would be the only woman in her area. This summer workshop will allow us to bring these producers and artists into interaction with each other, as well as with graduate students and scholars working on questions of gender and sound technologies. The workshop will bring together artists, producers and scholars around questions and practices of gender and sound technologies. We will exchange skills through master classes, and discuss political, aesthetic and technological issues in the context of daily sessions. The invitees, chosen in part because of their previous involvement in the In and Out of the Studio project as researchers or interview subjects, form the core of presenters and instructors, while a call for papers will garner more textual presentations on the subject of gender and sound technologies. “Hear and Tell” sessions at the end of each day will allow artists and producers to discuss examples of their work in the context of the day’s practical classes.

Studio XX, Montreal’s premiere digital resource centre for women, has also agreed to lead introductions to the Linux computing platform and open source sound software resources throughout the week. Finally, this mix of practice and theory will animate the making of a sound documentary about gender and sound technologies, and an interactive website. All sessions will be translated simultaneously and recorded for web dissemination. Additionally, we will broadcast a programme of workshop participants’ works on CKUT FM, and host two evening concerts featuring works by participants and other notable Montreal women sound artists.

We will create a sound documentary about the work of women sound producers and artists in Canada. Work on this documentary will commence during the workshop, using recordings of daily sessions as source material. The documentary will be completed shortly after the workshop.

http://artsandscience.concordia.ca/facstaff/m-o/mccartney/conference/conference.htm