Sound Objects

Is a sound an object, an experience, an event, or a relation? What exactly does the emerging discipline of sound studies study? Sound Objects pursues these questions while exploring how history, culture, and mediation entwine with sound’s elusive objectivity. Examining the genealogy and evolution of the concept of the sound object, the commodification of sound, acousmatic listening, nonhuman sounds, and sound and memory, the contributors not only probe conceptual issues that lie in the forefront of contemporary sonic discussions but also underscore auditory experience as fundamental to sound as a critical enterprise. In so doing, they offer exciting considerations of sound within and beyond its role in meaning, communication, and information and an illuminatingly original theoretical overview of the field of sound studies itself. Contributors. Georgina Born, Michael Bull, Michel Chion, Rey Chow, John Dack, Veit Erlmann, Brian Kane, Jairo Moreno, John Mowitt, Pooja Rangan, Gavin Steingo, James A. Steintrager, Jonathan Sterne, David Toop Reflections on the sound object and reduced listening / Michel Chion -- Pierre Schaeffer and the (recorded) sound source / John Dack -- The fluctuating sound object / Brian Kane -- Listening with Adorno, again : nonobjective objectivity and the possibility of critique / James A. Steintrager -- Spectral objects : on the fetish character of music technologies / Jonathan Sterne -- Listening after "acousmaticity" : notes on a transdisciplinary problematic / Rey Chow -- The skin of the voice : acousmatic illusions, ventriloquial listening / Pooja Rangan -- The acoustic abject : sound and the legal imagination / Veit Erlmann -- The alluring objecthood of the heartbeat / Jairo Moreno and Gavin Steingo -- On nonhuman sound : sound as relation / Georgina Born -- The sound of arche-cinema / John Mowitt -- Listening to the sirens / Michael Bull -- Entities inertias faint beings : drawing as sounding / David Toop "Is a sound an object, an experience, an event, or a relation? What exactly does the emerging discipline of sound studies study? Sound Objects pursues these questions while exploring how history, culture, and mediation entwine with sound's elusive objectivity. Examining the genealogy and evolution of the concept of the sound object, the commodification of sound, acousmatic listening, nonhuman sounds, and sound and memory, the contributors not only probe conceptual issues that lie in the forefront of contemporary sonic discussions but also underscore auditory experience as fundamental to sound as a critical enterprise. In so doing, they offer exciting considerations of sound within and beyond its role in meaning, communication, and information and an illuminatingly original theoretical overview of the field of sound studies itself"--Page 4 de la couverture "Is a sound an object, an experience, an event, or a relation? What exactly does the emerging discipline of sound studies study? Sound Objects pursues these questions while exploring how history, culture, and mediation entwine with sound's elusive objectivity. Examining the genealogy and evolution of the concept of the sound object, the commodification of sound, acousmatic listening, nonhuman sounds, and sound and memory, the contributors not only probe conceptual issues that lie in the forefront of contemporary sonic discussions but also underscore auditory experience as fundamental to sound as a critical enterprise. In so doing, they offer exciting considerations of sound within and beyond its role in meaning, communication, and information and an illuminatingly original theoretical overview of the field of sound studies itself" -- From the publisher The contributors to this ambitious and wide-ranging collection explore sound as an object, sound studies as a discipline, and the limits of sonic objectivity.