Field Recording and Documentary Sound

Field Recording and Documentary Sound:
Practice, Ethics, and Aesthetics

Wednesday, December 5 at 7:00 pm
Michelson Theater
NYU Department of Cinema Studies
721 Broadway, 6th Floor

Traditional documentary studies places particular emphasis on the authenticity and reception of visual representation of events and situations. While discussions of images dominate the discourse around documentary, audio recording and mixing are often overlooked or under-theorized with regard to the understanding of non-fiction media.

The purpose of this event is to examine practices and ethics of field recording in documentary art by looking at and listening to works by non-fiction artists who incorporate diverse strategies of sound recording into their practices.

Filmmakers and sound artists Stephanie Spray, Joshua Bonnetta, and Ernst Karel will present on practices of audio capture, strategies of sound mixing and collage, and the ethics of combining image and sound in non-fiction media works, and then join a discussion with film scholars Lukas Brasiskis and Leo Goldsmith focusing on the aesthetic, perceptual, and ethical implications of using sound in documentary.   

The event is organized by Lukas Brasiskis and Leo Goldsmith in collaboration with the Department of Cinema Studies at NYU.