Sound Lab 2.0 builds on an earlier project
that we'd been working on.
It was essentially four computer stations in the Music Library
that allowed students to work on their sound editing
and sound technology projects.
And Sound Lab 2.0 is the bigger and better version of it.
So after the first round, we realized
that we were quite interested in expanding on what worked well,
and we wanted to see sound technology more integrated
into curricular events.
And so we came up with a few projects that
would allow this expansion.
The most important part is to create a website
to let people know that we exist.
The second most important part is
to update the equipment, the computer stations,
buy high-end recording equipment.
And perhaps the most significant innovation
is the third part that allowed us
to organize a regular series of workshops
that Chris organizes and runs where he invites
guest speakers who talk about all sorts of aspects
of working with sound.
And that could be radio production.
It could be turn-tabling, so all kinds
all kinds of technological and creative approaches
that work with sound and that the students are
very interested in.
One that has been the most memorable
was we did a workshop about circuit bending, which
is when you take a cheap electronic device that
creates sound and it's typically battery powered.
You take it apart, reveal the circuit board,
and then you dive right into the circuitry and rewire it
so it then makes a new palette of sounds
that you can then manipulate.
Then we brought in Erik Brunvand from the University of Utah
to teach this, and it was an interesting way
to create a new sound device, a new instrument.
But it also was a way to teach students to empower themselves,
to not be afraid of technology, to just go right in,
and you can control it.
You can decide what happens.
And he did a really fascinating lecture
that combined very technical engineering speak.
He simplified it but was able to engage with the students.
And then we spent the rest of the afternoon taking apart
electronic toy dogs, other Casio keyboards,
the weird random things that we found
at thrift stores, and a bunch of toys that he brought in,
kids toys, that we took apart and made some amazing
sounding instruments.
It was quite a lot of fun.
At the moment, we have a couple of courses
that use the equipment from the Sound Lab.
There is a freshman seminar that my colleague Chris Hasty
teaches on sound tracking, producing sound, music
and sounds for pre-existing film clips.
I've been teaching a course for the last five
years, "The Art of Listening," that
uses the equipment quite a lot.
The whole course is arranged around a number
of creative projects, starting with a mix
tape where we hand out a cassette tape to the students.
And most of them have, obviously, never
seen a cassette tape before and don't really
know what to do with it.
And so we start with this Jurassic technology.
And then we move through various aspects of digital editing
toward the final project, which is
a sound map of sonically interesting places
around Cambridge.
So they record and edit their soundscapes,
and then we put them up on a digital map.
And so over time, we get historical layers.
Some students and some TFs have taken
advantage of our "Intro to Audio Production Workshop."
The focus is on podcasting.
"California in the '60s," which is a class that's also offered
in the music department, but other classes
throughout the FAS have brought in students or faculty
have come in to attend those workshops, to enable themselves
to then go and teach how to do podcasting
or then the students can directly learn how to do it.
So a variety of people have come in
to use the resource that's been created with this funding.
And one of the things that's really
surprised us is the overwhelming response
that we've received from all parts of the university.
We've worked with people from public health.
We've worked with people from the Divinity School,
with the Hutchins Center for African-American Studies--
History and literature.
--history and literature, English, lots of anthropology.
But we expected FAS to be a central focal point,
but it's all the other schools as well.
So it's really something that supports
the work in all of Harvard throughout the schools.
Sure.
So I think, for us, we had two measures of success.
One was how well we connected with other parts
of the institution.
And the other was how many projects the Sound Lab
generated, how the general interest in the workshop
panned out.
And we're pretty satisfied on all those fronts.
For us, the big challenge is to bring
the integration of sound technology
and sound production forward with curricular interests.
And you kind of need to--
I think the hardest part is to convince faculty members
that they can do this and that you don't need
to start from scratch and that it's
possible to build those projects into syllabi and curricular
ideas in interesting ways.