record

Thesis Info

LABS ID
00077
Thesis Title
Dark Room Project
Author
Virginia M Madsen
2nd Author
3rd Author
Degree
Doctorate Of Creative Arts(DCA)
Year
2001
Number of Pages
243
University
University of Technology, Sydney
Thesis Supervisor
Dr Norie Neumark
Supervisor e-mail
Other Supervisor(s)
Dr Stephen Muecke
Language(s) of Thesis
English
Department / Discipline
Dept. of Media and Text, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
Languages Familiar to Author
English, French
URL where full thesis can be found
Keywords
Theories and cultures of listening and vision, radio and audio arts, television and virtual reality, Critical theory, media theory, Paul Virilio, Michel Serres, Jean-Francois Lyotard, sound studies, media studies, phenomenology of media.
Abstract: 200-500 words
Dark Room Project comprises a set of critical soundings (dissertation) and a collection of poetic works primarily for radio, but also including a collaborative 'poem for television' (text, sound and still photographic images) in addition to the libretto for a large-scale radiophonic opera drawn from the life of the American tycoon, Howard Hughes. In more than metaphor, this interconnected chamber suite (performative, compositional, diagnostic, forensic) opens up a series of overlooked ‘dark room’ spaces (media events, ‘wild soundscapes’, Beckett’s wireless imaginings, a certain kind of intense radiophony…) to new critical reflection and sounding. It interrogates a long undervalued perceptual ecology: audition, and asks; what place listening and sound in our current obsession with the image and the screen? Can we reclaim the camera obscura (and inversely its obscuring camera) as a site for listening? What benefits are to be gained from such an opening? The loss of a space to ‘sound out’ is at the heart of this exploration, which may thus be termed ecological. Dark Room Project offers an expansive auscultation and questioning of the wider topos fashioned by mediated reality and desire, in what Paul Virilio has called, the “disintegration of the time of light”. The Project includes Introduction, full text Libretto, Dissertation (‘Decours’) in 4 ‘Developments’, Bibliography, and two CDs and VHS Video containing all performance ‘Works’.