Specifically sound: Critical pedagogy and the sound art practice of Ultra-red

Ultra-red is a contemporary sound art collective of twelve internationally-based artists and social justice organizers. Founded in 1994 during the AIDS crisis, Ultra-red's activist sound art practice coalesced in the audio-documentation of a hypodermic needle exchange on the streets of Los Angeles. In 1997, Ultra-red joined Union de Vecinos, an L.A.-based organization of public housing residents, in the fight to prevent the Federally subsided demolition of their housing community, Aliso Village, in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of L.A. Core to Union de Vecinos' conception of organizing is Brazilian literacy educator Paulo Freire's theory of critical pedagogy, which conceives of organizing as a socially embedded, participatory alternative to conventional, hierarchical educational models. Ultra-red adopted Freire's critical pedagogy as a framework for embedding their sound art practice in an ongoing investigation of the role of aesthetics in activist work. This thesis draws from precursors in the history of sound, such as John Cage's 4'33" (1952), Pierre Schaeffer's objet sonore, R. Murray Schafer's acoustic ecology, and Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening, and from Freire's critical pedagogy to analyze Ultra-red's hybrid social justice and artistic practice.