Ways of Knowing: A Sonic Celebration of the Humanities

If your brain is fried by screens but still hungry for ideas, Ways of Knowing could offer a solid reset. Podcast hosts and audio producers Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett create a program of music, language, sounds of nature and infrastructure, and more “informed by contemporary humanities scholarship, and rendered into soundscapes for an octophonic speaker array.” The audience will wear eye masks for the duration. The co-producers will participate in a Q&A after the program. Registration is required at humanities.wisc.

media release: A Special Multi-Channel Audio Event

The World According to Sound presents Ways of Knowing, a multi-channel audio event about humanities research and thought.

NOTE: An RSVP is required; please register here to attend this event.

For 70 minutes you are going to put on an eye mask, sit in the dark, and be taken on a sonic trip that asks you to rethink the world through your ears instead of your eyes. You’ll hear everything from the vibrations of the Golden Gate Bridge, footsteps of ants, and ancient Latin, to the first piece of musique concrete, recordings of Berlin made in 1930, a sonified essay about the gendering of glial cells, and the theory of how push buttons and Tupperware act as media objects. All the pieces in the show are informed by contemporary humanities scholarship, and rendered into soundscapes for an octophonic speaker array.

You’ll hear ideas, essays, books, theories, and contemporary research all translated into soundscapes that challenge you to rethink the world through your ears instead of your eyes…and ultimately to reconnect with what makes academic inquiry so meaningful.

The performance will be followed by a Q&A with co-producers Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett.

Presented by the Mead Witter School of Music, The Division of the Arts, The Digital Scholarship Hub, and the Department of Communication Arts. Additional Support from the Center for the Humanities and WSUM 91.7 Student Radio.

Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett are co-producers of Ways of Knowing, a podcast series made in partnership with academic institutions like Johns Hopkins, UChicago, and The University of Washington. They have published academic papers; spent a semester at Cornell as practitioners-in-residence; and performed their octophonic audio compositions at more than 50 universities, theaters, and art spaces. They previously worked in public radio, where their reporting won two Edward R. Murrow Awards for excellence in sound design and was featured regularly on All Things Considered, Morning Edition, The World, Science Friday, and other nationally-syndicated radio programs.