Featured Course: Topics in Art or Media I: Soundscapes Baltimore

If you live in or around Baltimore you are probably familiar with the distinct sounds of the city – car horns, chattering crowds, barking dogs, and the occasional musical performer. As we go about our daily lives we tend to ignore these sounds and treat them as background noise. But the noises of a big city like Baltimore can prove useful in allowing people to reconnect with their environment and understand the historical significance of their neighborhood.

In ART 392 – Soundscapes: Baltimore, students will listen to the sounds of the city and through their experiences will create a sound map of Baltimore. A sound map is a sonic representation of a geographical location that is affected by the time of day, the weather, the nearby buildings and ultimately the people in those spaces. Sound maps bring out the richness of specific neighborhoods and can paint a multi-dimensional picture of life in a city. These maps not only have artistic value, but are also physical records that can be used as historical artifacts. Students in this course will curate their own sound map by choosing a neighborhood, record the sounds that happen around them, and edit the sounds they’ve captured into a sound map. This course will meet at the Lion Brothers Building, which is located by the University of Maryland, Baltimore campus. The convenient location will give students access to the raw materials they will need to create their project, and in turn they will get to know UMBC’s newest neighborhood.

ART 392 is a six-week course offered during Summer Session II, which starts on July 10. Prerequisites for this course have been waived for the summer. So, if you’re not a Visual Arts major but have an interest in time-based media, this is the course for you! If you have questions about registration, contact Joseph Reinsel at jreinsel@umbc.edu.

This course will meet at the Lion Brothers Building in Baltimore. For more information about transportation and parking visit the Special Programs website.

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