170.037 (20S) Visual Side of Popular Music
Overview
- Lecturer
- Course title german Visual Side of Popular Music
- Type Seminar (continuous assessment course )
- Hours per Week 2.0
- ECTS credits 6.0
- Registrations 8 (30 max.)
- Organisational unit
- Language of instruction English
- Course begins on 02.04.2020
- eLearning Go to Moodle course
Time and place
Course Information
Intended learning outcomes
The course explores visual language of popular music, treating it as an important dimension in the overall repertoire of popular music that helps to create and communicate its expressions and meanings. Through a variety of representations of popular music, mostly from the second part of the 20th century with few excursions into the new millenium, students will be familiarized with key artifacts that helped to establish visual component of popular music and explore a range of topics that played a vital role in this process. Concretely, we will examine visuality of popular music across different media forms, from graphic design and photography to video and film. Concepts and phenomena such as popular musical icons, genres, styles, subcultures or venues will all be analyzed in their diverse visual manifestations.
Teaching methodology including the use of eLearning tools
Course readings will be handed out at the beginning of the summer semester, a month ahead of the start of the course (students are expexted to read only mandatory readings except when they are presenting). For each class, one student is expected to make a 15 min presentation based on the readings (both mandatory and optional ones) and to prepare a set of questions. At the end, each student is expected to write the term paper (8-12 pages), a case study on a topic suggested by the student and accepted by the instructor, linked to the themes of the course (students will be especially encouraged to use/analyze original material). Grading will be based on presentation/class participation (regular attendance, in-class comments) 40%, and a quality of the term paper 60%.
Course content
I – INTRODUCTION: VISUALITY OF POPULAR MUSIC [2 April]
This introductory section, consisting of two classes, will set out the aims of the course. After sketching out an overview of the existing discourses and analyticial tools used in popular music studies, students will be introduced with the idea of visuality of music. Concepts like intermediality, gesamtkunstwerk and synaesthesia will be explored in conjecture with visual representations of music, using historical examples such as concept albums.
II – MEDIA: MUSIC AND STILL IMAGES (Graphics, Photographs) [23 April]
Consisting of two classes, this section of the course analyzes in turn a) music images/photographs/graphics in magazines/photo monographs/promo material, b) record covers, music posters and graffiti art, providng an overview of key visual styles from pop-art to psychedelia that played formative role in affirming visual allure of popular music.
III – MEDIA: POPULAR MUSIC AND MOVING IMAGE [24 April / 7 May]
This extensive section, consisting of four block classes, focuses on central themes and conventions in the relation between popular music and moving images. We will discuss key film music genres, from rock musicals and fiction films based on LPs to music star dramas or counter-cultural films with rock soundtracks. We will also examine musical documentaries along with its many subgenres (concert/tour/scene films..) that capture moments in pop music history, and validate styles and performers.
In ths final two classes, students will also be familiarized with the role of television in visualizing popular music, from historical music programs (Top of the Pops, Peter’s Pop Show) to the advent of music videos as a hybrid media form and its key channel (MTV) which boosted produciton of video music clips, reshaping in the process its form and broadcasts based on it, while influencing the production and nature of videos as audio-visual texts.
V – VISUALITY OF MUSIC SUBCULTURES & STYLES & VENUES [21 May]
Continuing the discussion of the visuality of key concpets/phenononema in popular music, classes will explore visuality of pop-music styles, subcultures and phisical venues.
VI – NON-WESTERn MUSIC, POP IN THE GALLERY, Wrap-up)
Classes will analyze visuality of music in the context of the museum. (Alternatively we would devote one class to the explorations of music in new media.
Literature
Kendrick, Robert L. “Iconography” in Shephard, Tim and Leonard, Anne, eds. The Routledge Companion to Music and Visual Culture (London: Routledge, 2013): 43-49.
Rippl, Gabriele. “Introduction: Why Intermediality; Theory and Concepts, Intermediality, Pluramediality, Transmediality,” Handbook of Intermediality: Literature – Image – Sound – Music (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015): 1-31.
Goodwin, Andrew. “A Musicology of the Image” in Dancing in the Distraction Factory. Music Television and Popular Culture. (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1992): 49-71.
Rose, Phil. “Introduction; Roger Waters and The Evolution of the Concept Album,” “Wall” in Roger Waters and Pink Floyd. The Concept Albums (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015): 1-11.
You will get a complete list of literature during the course!
Examination information
Grading scheme
Grade / Grade grading schemePosition in the curriculum
- Master's degree programme Media, Communications & Culture
(SKZ: 841, Version: 09W.1)
-
Subject: Freie Wahlfächer
(Optional subject)
-
Freie Wahlfächer (
0.0h XX / 12.0 ECTS)
- 170.037 Visual Side of Popular Music (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
-
Freie Wahlfächer (
0.0h XX / 12.0 ECTS)
-
Subject: Freie Wahlfächer
(Optional subject)
- Master's degree programme Visual Culture
(SKZ: 655, Version: 18W.2)
-
Subject: Ästhetik/Aisthesis
(Compulsory elective)
-
8 Ästhetik/Aisthesis (
0.0h VO, SE, PM, VC, PS, KS, UE / 12.0 ECTS)
- 170.037 Visual Side of Popular Music (2.0h SE / 6.0 ECTS)
-
8 Ästhetik/Aisthesis (
0.0h VO, SE, PM, VC, PS, KS, UE / 12.0 ECTS)
-
Subject: Ästhetik/Aisthesis
(Compulsory elective)