Composing for Media (Practice)

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

Music has accompanied the screened moving image since the inception of cinema. This course examines the aesthetics of screen music, moving through practices in the early years of cinema, to music in auteurist cinema (Hitchcock, Kubrick, Godard etc) and present day work with digital video by both individual artists and mainstream practitioners. You will consider musical issues such as developing compositional ideas, small/large ensemble writing, working with computers and electronics, and the significance of the voice in composition for screen media. When engaging in creative work you may use software including Logic Pro, Pro Tools and Max/MSP. Your assessed submission will comprise a direct creative project (composition) in a medium agreed in advance with your tutor (for example a film score, or music for a gallery installation or a website), and a critical commentary.

Composing for Media (Theory)

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

Music has accompanied the screened moving image since the inception of cinema. This module examines the aesthetics of screen music, moving through practices in the early years of cinema, to music in auteurist cinema (Hitchcock, Kubrick, Godard etc) and present day work with digital video by both individual artists and mainstream practitioners. You will consider musical issues such as developing compositional ideas, small/large ensemble writing, working with computers and electronics, and the significance of the voice in composition for screen media. When engaging in creative work you may use software including Logic Pro, Pro Tools and Max/MSP. Your assessed submission will comprise a 5,000 word term paper on composing for media with a specific title approved in advance by your tutor.

Composition (Practice)

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

Composition develops understanding and practice of 20th century and contemporary musical methods and resources, but without stylistic restrictions, and with flexible outcomes (eg semi-notated and proportionally-notated work, graphic notation, conceptual/installation sonic work, performance art etc).

You will focus on developing an extended piece of work through alternating group seminars and workshops. In consultation with the course tutor, you will be encouraged to develop plans for an individual project early on in the course. The seminars will provide disciplinary context and insights into key techniques and examples of recent and earlier creative practice. The workshops will provide the opportunity to make presentations and to receive peer and tutor feedback. The submission will comprise a creative project (composition) in a medium agreed in advance with the tutor, and accompanied by a critical commentary.

Composition (Theory)

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

Composition develops understanding and practice of twentieth century and contemporary musical methods and resources, but without stylistic restrictions, and with flexible outcomes (eg semi-notated and proportionally-notated work, graphic notation, conceptual/installation sonic work, performance art etc). 

You will focus on developing an extended piece of work through alternating group seminars and workshops. In consultation with the tutor, you will be encouraged to develop plans for an individual project early on in the module. The seminars will provide disciplinary context and insights into key techniques and examples of recent and earlier creative practice. The workshops will provide the opportunity to make presentations and to receive peer and tutor feedback. The submission will comprise a 5,000 word term paper on composition methods with a specific title approved by the tutor.

Expanded Media: Forms and Practices

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This module looks at what happens when media forms overlap and interact. What new forms are created? What histories can be drawn upon? How does collaboration inform creative practice?

Through the exploration of global concepts such as (but not limited to) narrative (and anti-narrative),  time and space,  dreams, and  memory, you  will experiment and collaborate in ways that reflect the formal and thematic implications of the concepts discussed. Topics may include: theorisations on hybrid forms; expanded cinema; history of collaborative practice and experimentation; interactivity; notions of the avant-garde; synesthesia; site-specific media installations; and immersive technology.

Media Theory and Research

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

The module offers you the chance to explore at an advanced level a number of principal theories and methods within a cultural studies approach to media studies, and to consider how these shape the ways we might think about and research particular media industries, forms and issues. The theory element aims to introduce you to the key thinkers, traditions and debates in media and cultural studies and contributing disciplines. It investigates media as institutions and systems of representation and explores problems of production and consumption in a variety of social and geo-political contexts. You will be encouraged to prepare informal presentations and to engage in discussion with other members of the seminar group. Each week there will also be a short introduction to the following week’s topic in the lecture given by members of the Media and Film faculty.  The research element aims to develop a systematic and critical understanding of the practical, epistemological and ethical issues involved in conducting different kinds of media and cultural research. It also aims to make you methodologically self-conscious in your own research and written work.

Media, Culture and Communication

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

The module offers you the chance to explore at an advanced level a number of principal theories and methods within a cultural studies approach to media studies, and to consider how these shape the ways we might think about and research particular media industries, forms and issues. The module begins with a focus on questions concerning media production, distribution and consumption. In the latter part of the module, we pay attention to a variety of methodological approaches which draw attention in particular to different ways of conceptualising the relation between the media and concepts like subjectivity, identity, perception and experience.

The theory element aims to introduce you to the key thinkers, traditions and debates in media and cultural studies and contributing disciplines. You will investigate media as institutions and systems of representation and explore problems of production and consumption in a variety of social and geo-political contexts. You will be encouraged to prepare informal presentations and to engage in discussion with other members of the seminar group. Each week there will also be a short introduction to the following week’s topic in the lecture given by members of the Media and Film faculty. The research element aims to develop a systematic and critical understanding of the practical, epistemological and ethical issues involved in conducting different kinds of media and cultural research. It also aims to make you methodologically self-conscious in your own research and written work.

Music and the Media of Performance (Practice)

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

During the past fifty years the parameters of musical performance have expanded enormously. For John Cage all musical performance was inherently theatrical since it engaged both eye and ear. The visual aspect of musical performance, and the relationship of music to the spatial and to the embodied, has often been overlooked, and has led composers such as, eg, Cage himself, Mauricio Kagel and Heiner Goebbels to explore the extended theatricality of musical performance in directions beyond opera. Other artists like Meredith Monk, Philip Glass and Robert Wilson have restored the term 'opera' to refer to music theatre works that reconfigure the traditional media of opera (music, language, voice, sound, body, space, image) in new ways. More recently muscians such as Michel van der Aa have incorporated sonic and visual media in a live performance context.

The module will examine both theories and practices of experimental music theatre and multi-media performance through critical and practical engagement with the ideas that lie behind such practices. The module will be assessed by an essay, through which you will demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of key theories and practices in experimental music theatre or multi-media performance.

New Developments in Digital Media 1a

30 credits
Spring teaching, year 1

This module critically surveys developments in the expanding field of new media and explores the dynamics driving digital convergence, which is viewed as an industrial, political, social, economic and technological process. You will consider what drives convergence between previously discrete industries, technologies, and contents, and what limits convergence processes. You will explore key developments in the field of new media, including phenomena such as social networks, pervasive and locative technologies, new forms of knowledge organization and gathering.

The module is both theoretical and practical, with seminars exploring the areas outlined above through critical reading, while a series of workshops provide you with an understanding of core technologies underlying contemporary developments, and help you gain literacy in approaches to content development in this field.

Sound Environments (Practice)

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This module examines sonic media creations and sound architectures, which may be physical, digital or hybrid, through alternating seminars and workshops. Seminars will provide interdisciplinary context and review a range of practices, while workshops afford a space for you to develop your ideas through practical work and theory.

We consider the rapid development of interdisciplinary sound creation beyond the concert hall. Urban spaces as venues for creative work are considered alongside creative, curatorial and critical practices arising from networked sound technologies (streamed radio, distributed performance works, podcasts etc.)

We also consider architectures where performance is integral. Earlier examples of the integration of architecture, space and organised sound include Semper's Festpielhaus in Bayreuth and Le Corbusier/Xenakis's Philips Pavilion.

Today, digital processing opens up new performance possibilities including new notions of 'performative architectures'.

You will create a practical project and critical commentary in response to these ideas.

Sound Environments (Theory)

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

This module examines sonic media creations and sound architectures, which may be physical, digital or hybrid, through alternating seminars and workshops. Seminars will provide interdisciplinary context and review a range of practices, while workshops afford a space for you to develop your ideas through practical work and theory. We consider the rapid development of interdisciplinary sound creation beyond the concert hall. Urban spaces as venues for creative work are considered alongside creative, curatorial and critical practices arising from networked sound technologies (streamed radio, distributed performance works, podcasts etc.) We also consider architectures where performance is integral. Earlier examples of the integration of architecture, space and organised sound include Sempers Fespielhaus in Bayreuth and LeCorbusier/Xenakis's Philips Pavilion. Today, digital processing opens up new performance possibilities including new notions of 'performative architectures'. You will write a term paper of 5,000 words in response to these ideas.

Theory and Practice of Interactive Media

30 credits
Autumn teaching, year 1

Digital technologies are re-wiring established media cultures, transforming traditional media systems (television, cinema) and introducing new media networks (internet, mobile devices). This module explores aspects of this techno-cultural transformation, through both a practical exploration of the form and by considering critical debates exploring the power, force, significance and form of a series of new media texts, artefacts and systems. The module situates practices related to these forms in a media studies/cultural studies perspective and with reference to multi-disciplinary debates.

The module consists of a series of theory orientated seminars and project based workshops that are designed to give you a practical introduction to a range of software authoring tools widely used within the media. Early sections of the course are taught through discrete group-based tasks. During the latter stages of the module, you produce your own short terms papers and creative projects investigating an aspect of a new media artefact or system.

The module will equip you with the necessary production skills and theoretical frameworks to schedule and deliver these projects. This grounding will provide you with basic authoring skills, will give you the capacity to develop your skills further through individual study, and will also equip them to think critically about the forms and contents of contemporary media systems.