The Sound Studies Reader

577 Pages·2012·2.116 MB·English

by  Jonathan Sterne (ed.)

THE
SOUND
STUDIES
READER
EDITED BY
JONATHAN STERNE
The Sound Studies Reader
The Sound Studies Reader is a groundbreaking anthology blending recent work
that self-consciously describes itself as “sound studies” with earlier and lesser-known
scholarship on sound.
The collection begins with an introduction to welcome novice readers to the fi eld
and acquaint them with key themes and concepts in sound studies. Individual section
introductions to give readers further background on the essays and an extensive up-to-
date bibliography for further reading in “sound studies” make this an original and
accessible guide to the fi eld.
Jonathan Sterne teaches in the Department of Art History and Communication
Studies and the History and Philosophy of Science Program at McGill University.
He is author of The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction
(2003); MP3: The Meaning of a Format (2012); and numerous articles on media,
technologies and the politics of culture. He also makes sound. Visit his website at
http://sterneworks.org.

The
Sound Studies Reader
Edited by
Jonathan Sterne
First published 2012
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2012 editorial and selection matter Jonathan Sterne; individual chapters, the
contributors
The right of Jonathan Sterne to be identifi ed as editor of this work has been asserted
by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in
any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent
to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The sound studies reader / edited by Jonathan Sterne.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Sound—Recording and reproducing—History. 2. Sound—Recording
and reproducing—Social aspects. 3. Hearing. 4. Listening. I. Sterne,
Jonathan, 1970-
TK7881.4.S684 2012
621.389—dc23
2011052981
ISBN: 978-0-415-77130-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-77131-3 (pbk)
Typeset in Baskerville
by Refi neCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1 Jonathan Sterne 1
SONIC IMAGINATIONS
PART I
Hearing, Listening, Deafness 19
2 Don Ihde 23
THE AUDITORY DIMENSION
3 Jacques Attali 29
NOISE: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF MUSIC
4 Jody Berland 40
CONTRADICTING MEDIA: TOWARD A POLITICAL
PHENOMENOLOGY OF LISTENING
5 Michel Chion 48
THE THREE LISTENING MODES
6 Charles Hirschkind 54
CASSETTE SERMONS, AURAL MODERNITIES AND THE
ISLAMIC REVIVAL IN CAIRO
7 Steve Goodman 70
THE ONTOLOGY OF VIBRATIONAL FORCE
vi CONTENTS
8 Mara Mills 73
HEARING AIDS AND THE HISTORY OF ELECTRONICS MINIATURIZATION
9 Kate Crawford 79
FOLLOWING YOU: DISCIPLINES OF LISTENING IN SOCIAL MEDIA
PART II
Spaces, Sites, Scapes 91
10 R. Murray Schafer 95
THE SOUNDSCAPE
11 Shuhei Hosokawa 104
THE WALKMAN EFFECT
12 Emily Thompson 117
SOUND, MODERNITY AND HISTORY
13 Richard Cullen Rath 130
NO CORNER FOR THE DEVIL TO HIDE
14 John Picker 141
THE SOUNDPROOF STUDY
15 Karin Bijsterveld 152
LISTENING TO MACHINES: INDUSTRIAL NOISE, HEARING LOSS AND
THE CULTURAL MEANING OF SOUND
16 Stefan Helmreich 168
AN ANTHROPOLOGIST UNDERWATER: IMMERSIVE SOUNDSCAPES,
SUBMARINE CYBORGS AND TRANSDUCTIVE ETHNOGRAPHY
17 Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter 186
ANCIENT ACOUSTIC SPACES
18 Michael Bull 197
THE AUDIO-VISUAL IPOD
PART III
Transduce and Record 209
19 John Mowitt 213
THE SOUND OF MUSIC IN THE ERA OF ITS
ELECTRONIC REPRODUCIBILITY
20 Rick Altman 225
FOUR AND A HALF FILM FALLACIES
CONTENTS vii
21 Friedrich Kittler 234
GRAMOPHONE
22 James Lastra 248
FIDELITY VERSUS INTELLIGIBILITY
23 Trevor Pinch and Frank Trocco 254
SHAPING THE SYNTHESIZER
24 Louise Meintjes 265
THE RECORDING STUDIO AS FETISH
25 Lisa Gitelman 283
THE PHONOGRAPH’S NEW MEDIA PUBLICS
26 Jason Stanyek and Benjamin Piekut 304
DEADNESS: TECHNOLOGIES OF THE INTERMUNDANE
PART IV
Collectivities and Couplings 325
27 Frantz Fanon 329
THIS IS THE VOICE OF ALGERIA
28 Michèle Martin 336
GENDER AND EARLY TELEPHONE CULTURE
29 Michelle Hilmes 351
RADIO AND THE IMAGINED COMMUNITY
30 John Durham Peters 363
THE TELEPHONIC UNCANNY AND THE PROBLEM OF COMMUNICATION
31 Gerard Goggin 372
CELLULAR DISABILITY: CONSUMPTION, DESIGN AND ACCESS
32 Ana María Ochoa Gautier 388
SOCIAL TRANSCULTURATION, EPISTEMOLOGIES OF PURIFICATION
AND THE AURAL PUBLIC SPHERE IN LATIN AMERICA
PART V
The Sonic Arts: Aesthetics, Experience, Interpretation 405
33 Richard Leppert 409
READING THE SONORIC LANDSCAPE
viii CONTENTS
34 Georgina Born 419
MUSIC RESEARCH AND PSYCHOACOUSTICS
35 Douglas Kahn 427
NOISES OF THE AVANT-GARDE
36 Kodwo Eshun 449
OPERATING SYSTEM FOR THE REDESIGN OF SONIC REALITY
37 Michael Veal 454
STARSHIP AFRICA
38 Brandon LaBelle 468
AUDITORY RELATIONS
39 Tara Rodgers 475
TOWARD A FEMINIST HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ELECTRONIC MUSIC
PART VI
Voices 491
40 Jacques Derrida 495
THE VOICE THAT KEEPS SILENCE
41 Roland Barthes 504
THE GRAIN OF THE VOICE
42 Alexander Weheliye 511
DESIRING MACHINES IN BLACK POPULAR MUSIC
43 Adriana Cavarero 520
MULTIPLE VOICES
44 Jacob Smith 533
LAUGHING MACHINES
45 Mladen Dolar 539
THE LINGUISTICS OF THE VOICE
Index 555
Acknowledgements
2. Ihde, Don. 1974. The Auditory Dimension. In Listening and Voice: A Phenomenology of
Sound. Athens: Ohio University Press. Pp. 49–55
3. Attali, Jacques. 1985. Listening. In Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Translated by
B. Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pp. 3–12 & 18–20
4. Berland, Jody. 1993. Contradicting Media: Toward a Political Phenomenology of
Listening. In Radiotext(e), edited by N. Strauss. New York: Semiotext(e). Pp. 209–17
5. Chion, Michel. 1994. The Three Listening Modes. In Audio-Vision. Translated by
C. Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 25–34
6. Hirschkind, Charles. 2006. Introduction In The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons
and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp. 1–9 & 18–25
7. Goodman, Steve. 2010. The Ontology of Vibrational Force. In Sonic Warfare: Sound,
Affect and the Ecology of Fear. Cambridge: MIT Press. Pp. 81–84
8. Mills, Mara. 2011. Hearing Aids and the History of Electronics Miniaturization. IEEE
Journal of the History of Computing. Pp. 24–27
9. Crawford, Kate. 2009. Following You: Disciplines of Listening in Social Media.
Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 23 (4): 525–35
10. Schafer, R. Murray. 1994. The Soundscape. In The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment
and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books. Pp. 3–12
11. Hosokawa, Shuhei. 1984. The Walkman Effect. Popular Music 4: 165–80
12. Thompson, Emily. 2002. Sound, Modernity and History. In The Soundscape of Modernity:
Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America 1900–1930. Cambridge:
MIT Press. Pp. 1–12
13. Rath, Richard Cullen. 2003. No Corner for the Devil to Hide. In How Early America
Sounded. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pp. 97–107 & 113–19
14. Picker, John. 2003. The Soundproof Study. In Victorian Soundscapes. New York: Oxford
University Press. Pp. 41–52
15. Bijsterveld, Karin. 2006. Listening to Machines: Industrial Noise, Hearing Loss and the
Cultural Meaning of Sound. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 31 (4): 323–37
16. Helmreich, Stefan. 2007. An Anthropologist Underwater: Immersive Soundscapes,
Submarine Cyborgs and Transductive Ethnography. American Ethnologist 34 (4): 621–27
17. Blesser, Barry, and Linda-Ruth Salter. 2007. Auditory Awareness as an Extension of
Religion. In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture.
Cambridge: MIT Press. Pp. 82–93
18. Bull, Michael. 2008. The Audio-Visual iPod. In Sound Moves: iPod Culture and Urban
Experience. New York: Routledge. Pp. 38–49
19. Mowitt, John. 1987. The Sound of Music in the Era of Its Electronic Reproducibility.
In Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, edited
by R. Leppert and S. McClary. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 184–97
20. Altman, Rick. 1992. Four and a Half Film Fallacies. In Sound Theory/Sound Practice,
edited by R. Altman. New York: Routledge. Pp. 35–45
21. Kittler, Friedrich. 1999. Gramophone. In Gramophone-Film-Typewriter. Translated by
G. Winthrop-Young and M. Wutz. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Pp. 21–37
22. Lastra, James. 2000. Sound Theory. “Fidelity Versus Intelligibility”. In Sound Technology
and American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity. New York: Columbia
University Press. Pp. 138–43