Scholars consider sound and its concepts, taking as their premise the idea that popular culture can be analyzed in an innovative way through sound.
The wide-ranging texts in this book take as their premise the idea that sound is a subject through which popular culture can be analyzed in an innovative way. From an infant's gurgles over a baby monitor to the roar of the crowd in a stadium to the sub-bass frequencies produced by sound systems in the disco era, sound—not necessarily aestheticized as music—is inextricably part of the many domains of popular culture. Expanding the view taken by many scholars of cultural studies, the contributors consider cultural practices concerning sound not merely as semiotic or signifying processes but as material, physical, perceptual, and sensory processes that integrate a multitude of cultural traditions and forms of knowledge.
The chapters discuss conceptual issues as well as terminologies and research methods; analyze historical and contemporary case studies of listening in various sound cultures; and consider the ways contemporary practices of sound generation are applied in the diverse fields in which sounds are produced, mastered, distorted, processed, or enhanced. The chapters are not only about sound; they offer a study through sound—echoes from the past, resonances of the present, and the contradictions and discontinuities that suggest the future.
Contributors Karin Bijsterveld, Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer, Carolyn Birdsall, Jochen Bonz, Michael Bull, Thomas Burkhalter, Mark J. Butler, Diedrich Diederichsen, Veit Erlmann, Franco Fabbri, Golo Föllmer, Marta García Quiñones, Mark Grimshaw, Rolf Großmann, Maria Hanáček, Thomas Hecken, Anahid Kassabian, Carla J. Maier, Andrea Mihm, Bodo Mrozek, Carlo Nardi, Jens Gerrit Papenburg, Thomas Schopp, Holger Schulze, Toby Seay, Jacob Smith, Paul Théberge, Peter Wicke, Simon Zagorski-Thomas
Author(s): Jens Gerrit Papenburg, Holger Schulze
Edition: 1
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2016
Language: English
Tags: Cultural Studies, Popular Culture, Sound Studies
Contents
Preface
Introduction: Sound as Popular Culture
I Outlining a Non-Discipline: The Theory of Sound as Popular Culture
Conceptualizing Sound
1 The Sonic: Sound Concepts of Popular Culture
2 Sound/Music
3 Popular Culture
4 Sound Practices
5 Sound as Musical Material: Three Approaches to a Material Perspective on Sound and Music
Questioning Disciplines
6 Sound Studies versus (Popular) Music Studies
7 Sound and Racial Politics: Aural Formations of Race in a Color-Deaf Society
8 Sound Studies across Continents: A Multidisciplinary Research Approach
Establishing New Methodologies
9 Ethnography and Archival Research in Studying Cultures of Sound
10 Sonic Epistemology
11 Historicization in Pop Culture: From Noise Reduction to Noise Recording
12 Sound and Media Studies: Archiving and the Construction of Sonic Heritage
13 Soccer Stadium as Soundscape: Sound and Subjectivity
II Formations of Listening: Popular Culture by Ear
Making History by Ear
14 The Invention of the Listener: An(other) History
15 Sonic Modernities: Listening to Diasporic Urban Music
16 On the Modern Listener
Listening Materialities and Techniques
17 Listening and Digital Technologies
18 Enhanced Bass: On 1970s Disco Culture's Listening Devices
19 Baby Monitor: Parental Listening and the Organization of Domestic Space
20 Over-Hearing: Techniques of Popular Listening
21 Technological Sensory Training
Concepts of Listening
22 Listening as Gesture and Movement
23 Concepts of Fidelity
24 Loudness Cultures: Practices, Conflicts, Discourses
25 Existential Orientation: The Sound Knowledge of Fans
26 Corporeal Listening
III Producting Sonic Artifacts: Hands-On Popular Culture
Material Sound Concepts
27 Records on the Radio
28 From Stationality to Radio Aesthetics: Investigations on Radiophonic Sounds
29 World Music 2.0: Updated and Expanded
30 Computer Game Sound: From Diegesis to Immersion to Sonic Emotioneering
Production Processes
31 “Syd’s Theme”: On the Conceptualization of Audio Production Processes
32 Sonic Signatures in Record Production
33 Phonographic Work: Reading and Writing Sound
34 Listener Orientation
35 (Re-)Mastering Sonic Media History
Cultural Sound Practices
36 Distorted Voices, Afrofuturism, and the Aesthetic Experience ofthe Self as Other
37 Critical Listening
38 Sonic Cartoons
Contributors
Index
