The Sonic Engineering Show  

Podcasters and former public radio reporters Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett are touring engineering schools with their immersive sound show, which brings together students, faculty, and the general public to reconsider the world through the often overlooked sense of hearing. While visiting campuses, the pair are giving an interdisciplinary lecture based on their two-hour documentary about the social and cultural context of so-called artificial intelligence.

The Show: For 75 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 the vibrations of the Golden Gate Bridge, footsteps of ants, the first song sung by a computer, and a sonic representation of outer space. You’ll be transported into a waterfall, up to the ionosphere, and under a sand dune through a mix of audible sounds, ultrasonics, infrasonics, and sonified data. This sonic trip encourages students to question what they think they already know, opening them up to different approaches to solving problems and communicating solutions. It is a communal listening experience that transcends disciplines: it brings together engineering students and faculty with members of the academic community from across the entire campus. 

Guest Lecture: “An Interdisciplinary Understanding of Artificial Intelligence”

“Artificial intelligence” is not a technical term. It has no concrete definition. It is a metaphor that equates machine processes with human thought, and it’s at the heart of the myth that so-called generative AI will soon be able to do everything we can only better, faster, and more efficiently. This myth is obscuring the history of computer science that led to so-called AI products in use today, while at the same time helping companies build infrastructure, rewrite laws, and alter norms that will fundamentally change how we work, recreate, communicate—and ultimately think about what it means to be human. Based on this 2-part documentary produced in collaboration with Cornell University.

Who We Are: Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett are co-producers of The World According to Sound, a collection of podcast series and touring sound shows. Their latest podcast project is Ways of Knowing, a series about academic research made in partnership with institutions like Johns Hopkins, University of Chicago, and The University of Washington. The pair are former public radio reporters—Chris covered arts and culture in San Francisco, and Sam was the Silicon Valley reporter for KQED, where he covered the intersection of technology and labor. While working in public radio, 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. They have since published academic papers; spent a semester at Cornell as practitioners-in-residence; and performed their octophonic audio compositions at more than 100 universities, theaters, art spaces, and corporate headquarters.

Book us at: thewatsound@gmail.com