Voice, Body and Identity in Sound Art

The Department of Music at the University of Aberdeen is pleased to announce a PhD fee-waiver scholarship open to UK/EU and overseas students who intend to start in September 2016. We are particularly interested in accepting applications from those who show potential in conducting practice-based research through performance art, creative coding, and/or audiovisual and sound installation.

This research explores ways in which sound art practice inscribes the contemporary issues around identity, voice and the body. Since the Fluxus movement and the experimental music in the 1960s and 1970s, and through the establishment of sound art in the 1990s, the relation between sound and voice, body and identity has been closely examined by sound artists. Working with the research team at the University of Aberdeen, the successful candidate will lead practice-led research on this research project by conducting an extensive survey on this relation and realising a series of creative work that examines and expands the possibility of sound art practice. We encourage a research project that has the potential to make a substantive contribution to the above research theme through the rigorous application of existing methods, and a project that reflects on practice within and across discipline boundaries and those that explore methodological approaches.

Research topics: sound art, audiovisual/sound installation, video-music, creative coding, live electronic performance, and/or sound studies.

The successful PhD candidate will become a member of SERG (www.serg-aberdeen.net). Based on its research theme, New Approaches to Sound and Place, SERG members work on various inter- and cross-disciplinary research and artistic projects. The School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture has a lively postgraduate community. Postgraduate students are offered a comprehensive programme of research skills training.