Hearing: An Introduction

About

Tue 17 March 2020 | 6.30pm–8.30pm

Nottingham Contemporary

Free, booking essential

Study Sessions are informal and intimate discussion groups. Throughout 2020, Nottingham Contemporary's study-as-listening-sessions, Sonic Continuum, explore how sound and rhythm create forms of attunement between the self and the world. Readings and discussions explore the sonic, the auditory and the aural spanning philosophy, history, politics, finance and biology. The sessions open out the ideas and themes of Nottingham Contemporary's research strand and ask: how can listening practices produce sociality?

This study session is an introduction to acoustics, the branch of physics concerned with the properties of sound, from its production, transmission, reception, and effects to how it relates to noise, vibration over a vast range of frequencies, ultrasound and infrasound. The physical properties of waves and their surrounding media give rise to significant challenges for both artists, engineers, and mathematicians, who research how sound and vibration travel. These challenges include uncertainties and oscillations for which there is no single solution approach.

Through collective exercises and a brief overview of the properties of sound and its contingencies, this study session is an experiment in understanding the propagation of sound waves through a material medium. No experience in science is necessary to attend this session.

Join one session or all. Booking is required as places are limited.

David Chappell is Associate Professor in Applied Mathematics at Nottingham Trent University. He completed his PhD in 2007 at the University of Brighton on modelling transient acoustic fields radiated by vibrating elastic structures with application to modelling sound fields from loudspeakers. In 2009, Dr Chappell moved to the University of Nottingham to work as a postdoctoral researcher on modelling high-frequency wave energy transport in built-up systems. He began working at Nottingham Trent University in September 2012 and his current research interests surround the mathematical modelling of wave phenomena with industrial applications.