IMPR Student Colloquium: Mike Hansen—”The First Experience: A Noise…”

Mike Hansen will present his IMPR PhD Student Colloquium at 3 PM in ImprovLab on October 21. This hybrid presentation is titled “The First Experience: A Noise…” and will be accessible via Zoom:

This paper will examine a common first point of exposure to sound poetry for children, by which an epistemological understanding of sound and noise is created in a performative setting. This occurs when a parent or guardian reads a children’s picture board book to a toddler, thereby developing an ontology of learning. 

This paper will argue that the improvised performative poetic presentation—or sound poetry—of these children’s texts functions as an oral tool for learning, comprehension, and agency building.

This paper will examine how noises are presented in various picture books, such as Dr. Seuss’ Mr. Brown Can Moo! The paper’s primary focus is the noise-to-sound paradigm developed through the improvisational performance of children’s texts like The Noisy Book, by famed children’s author and poet Margaret Wise-Brown (best known for Goodnight Moon). These seminal texts are about the relationship of noise, improvisation and poetry in the ears of toddlers. The inclusion of onomatopoeic words creates the flow of written noises, and their presented function—via improvisational, performative actions—emphasizes comprehension. This paper will dissect noise and the context in which it is perceived in toddler’s poetic literature, where its purpose is to be orally performed. These board books are sonic-poetic presentations that form the recipient’s thinking while also developing agency in the presenter. These texts move past read poems or stories to onomatopoeic presentations, creating an ontology of performative acts which stress actions of understanding and definition, building the foundation of an epistemology towards future thinking. This is the first experience of language and improvisation for toddlers, and possibly for the presenter or performer as well. 

Mike Hansen is a sound artist, visual artist and experimental musician who uses noise through acts of improvisation as a tool to create social constructs. He is a PhD student in Critical Studies in Improvisation (IMPR) at the University of Guelph.  His research seeks to develop an understanding of when noise becomes a sound, both through how it is defined and its evolution. He completed his Masters of Fine Arts at York University in 2008 and has been exhibiting paintings, sculptures and installations since 1984. For 22 years, he hosted a radio program of experimental and improvised music in Toronto. He has published a number of papers on noise and experimental turntablism.