99% Inaudible
PROPOSAL
Kevin (KJ) Schaeffner
Is that a kind of model for creativity? David Byrne
Through Nathaniel Rivers’ course on Public Rhetoric, I composed my own kinetic definition of musicology by constructing a multimedia webspace revolving and expanding around audio podcasts. Sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, the broad thesis motivating the development of each podcast episode incorporates the broad thesis motivating the design podcast 99% Invisible:by reconsidering design as an active process rather than a fixed object, we can access much of “the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world.”
Putting musicology in motion, I contemplated the agency of a variety of human and inhuman agents across five episodes. Take, for instance, the brief abstract I composed for “Episode 1: Acoustics (A Phantom Measure),” which investigated the role of architecture in the creative process:
This episode explores the way acoustics and space relate to music, how physical spaces not only influence creative compositions, but how they are inseparable from a definition of music itself.
After navigating the agency of space on the “musicking” process in the first episode, I gradually developed a diverse network of creative models with each completion of an episode. By the end of the course, my website brought the agencies of architecture, censorship, sampling, recording technology, and city spaces into orbit around my thesis and around my evolving theory of musicology.
Reviving the website for my Senior Capstone presents a unique opportunity to seamlessly integrate my work in Rhetoric, Writing, and Technology (RWT), Research Intensive English (RIE), and Film Studies (FSTD):
I will continue to engage an extensive secondary research process compiling, arranging, and incorporating a body of critical texts into my episodes in addition to continuing to engage music as a primary text.
Furthermore, In addition to revising my existing anthology, I’ll generate both new content and new visual forms. In particular, I’ll utilize video podcasts as a vehicle to understand music as an agent in film and I’ll utilize infographics as a vehicle to understand a variety of musical agents.
Lastly, I will further develop my project’s online presence in order to attend to my project’s relationship with an online audience. This calls for restructuring/reorganizing my website’s infrastructure and restructuring/reorganizing the infrastructure of my website’s social media accounts.
Preliminary Primary Texts:
Do The Right Thing. Dir. Spike Lee. 40 Acres & a Mule, 1989. Film.
The Graduate. Dir. Mike Nichols. Turman, 1967. Film. Kanye West. Yeezus.G.O.O.D. Music, 2013. CD. Foo Fighters. Sonic Highways.HBO Films, 2014. Film
Preliminary Secondary Texts:
Abel, Jessica. Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio.New
York: Broadway Books, 2015. Print.
Bradley, Adam. Bo o k O f R h y m e s : t h e P o e t i c s o f H i p H o p .N e w Y o r k , N Y : B a s i c C i v i t a s B o o k s ,
2009. Print.
B y r n e , D a v i d . H o w M u s i c W o r k s . S a n F r a n c i s c o : M c S w e e n e y ' s , 2 0 1 2 . P r i n t .
Kern, Jonathan. Sound Reporting: The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Print.
K o r p e , M a r i e . Sh o o t T h e S i n g e r ! : M u s i c C e n s o r s h i p T o d a y .L o n d o n : Z e d B o o k s , 2 0 0 4 . P r i n t . McLeod, Kembrew, and Peter DiCola. Creative License: the Law and Culture of Digital
Sampling.Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Print.
S c h i c k e , C . A . R e v o l u t i o n I n S o u n d ; a B i o g r a p h y o f t h e R e c o r d i n g I n d u s t r y . B o s t o n : L i t t l e ,
Brown, 1974. Print.
Small, Christopher. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening.Hanover: University
Press of New England, 1998. Print.
Sterne, Jonathan, ed. The Sounds Studies Reader.New York: Routledge, 2012. Print. Tompkins, Dave. How To Wreck a Nice Beach: the Vocoder from World War II to HipHop: the
Machine Speaks.Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2010. Print.
Waksman, Steve. Instruments Of Desire: the Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Print.
Putting musicology in motion, I contemplated the agency of a variety of human and inhuman agents across five episodes. Take, for instance, the brief abstract I composed for “Episode 1: Acoustics (A Phantom Measure),” which investigated the role of architecture in the creative process:
This episode explores the way acoustics and space relate to music, how physical spaces not only influence creative compositions, but how they are inseparable from a definition of music itself.
After navigating the agency of space on the “musicking” process in the first episode, I gradually developed a diverse network of creative models with each completion of an episode. By the end of the course, my website brought the agencies of architecture, censorship, sampling, recording technology, and city spaces into orbit around my thesis and around my evolving theory of musicology.
Reviving the website for my Senior Capstone presents a unique opportunity to seamlessly integrate my work in Rhetoric, Writing, and Technology (RWT), Research Intensive English (RIE), and Film Studies (FSTD):
I will continue to engage an extensive secondary research process compiling, arranging, and incorporating a body of critical texts into my episodes in addition to continuing to engage music as a primary text.
Furthermore, In addition to revising my existing anthology, I’ll generate both new content and new visual forms. In particular, I’ll utilize video podcasts as a vehicle to understand music as an agent in film and I’ll utilize infographics as a vehicle to understand a variety of musical agents.
Lastly, I will further develop my project’s online presence in order to attend to my project’s relationship with an online audience. This calls for restructuring/reorganizing my website’s infrastructure and restructuring/reorganizing the infrastructure of my website’s social media accounts.
Preliminary Primary Texts:
Do The Right Thing. Dir. Spike Lee. 40 Acres & a Mule, 1989. Film.
The Graduate. Dir. Mike Nichols. Turman, 1967. Film. Kanye West. Yeezus.G.O.O.D. Music, 2013. CD. Foo Fighters. Sonic Highways.HBO Films, 2014. Film
Preliminary Secondary Texts:
Abel, Jessica. Out on the Wire: The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio.New
York: Broadway Books, 2015. Print.
Bradley, Adam. Bo o k O f R h y m e s : t h e P o e t i c s o f H i p H o p .N e w Y o r k , N Y : B a s i c C i v i t a s B o o k s ,
2009. Print.
B y r n e , D a v i d . H o w M u s i c W o r k s . S a n F r a n c i s c o : M c S w e e n e y ' s , 2 0 1 2 . P r i n t .
Kern, Jonathan. Sound Reporting: The NPR Guide to Audio Journalism and Production.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Print.
K o r p e , M a r i e . Sh o o t T h e S i n g e r ! : M u s i c C e n s o r s h i p T o d a y .L o n d o n : Z e d B o o k s , 2 0 0 4 . P r i n t . McLeod, Kembrew, and Peter DiCola. Creative License: the Law and Culture of Digital
Sampling.Durham: Duke University Press, 2011. Print.
S c h i c k e , C . A . R e v o l u t i o n I n S o u n d ; a B i o g r a p h y o f t h e R e c o r d i n g I n d u s t r y . B o s t o n : L i t t l e ,
Brown, 1974. Print.
Small, Christopher. Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening.Hanover: University
Press of New England, 1998. Print.
Sterne, Jonathan, ed. The Sounds Studies Reader.New York: Routledge, 2012. Print. Tompkins, Dave. How To Wreck a Nice Beach: the Vocoder from World War II to HipHop: the
Machine Speaks.Brooklyn, NY: Melville House, 2010. Print.
Waksman, Steve. Instruments Of Desire: the Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Print.