Curtis Roads: Microsound (2001)

“Below the level of the musical note lies the realm of microsound, of sound particles lasting less than one-tenth of a second. Recent technological advances allow us to probe and manipulate these pinpoints of sound, dissolving the traditional building blocks of music—notes and their intervals—into a more fluid and supple medium. The sensations of point, pulse (series of points), line (tone), and surface (texture) emerge as particle density increases. Sounds coalesce, evaporate, and mutate into other sounds.

Composers have used theories of microsound in computer music since the 1950s. Distinguished practitioners include Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis. Today, with the increased interest in computer and electronic music, many young composers and software synthesis developers are exploring its advantages. Covering all aspects of composition with sound particles, Microsound offers composition theory, historical accounts, technical overviews, acoustical experiments, descriptions of musical works, and aesthetic reflections.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2001
ISBN 0262182157, 9780262182157
xii+409 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)
Accompanying CD (68 FLAC files, ZIP, added on 2013-9-11)

Allen S. Weiss (ed.): Experimental Sound & Radio (2000)

“Art making and criticism have focused mainly on the visual media. This book, which originally appeared as a special issue of TDR/The Drama Review, explores the myriad aesthetic, cultural, and experimental possibilities of radiophony and sound art. Taking the approach that there is no single entity that constitutes “radio,” but rather a multitude of radios, the essays explore various aspects of its apparatus, practice, forms, and utopias. The approaches include historical, political, popular cultural, archeological, semiotic, and feminist. Topics include the formal properties of radiophony, the disembodiment of the radiophonic voice, aesthetic implications of psychopathology, gender differences in broadcast musical voices and in narrative radio, erotic fantasy, and radio as an electronic memento mori.

The book includes a new piece by Allen Weiss on the origins of sound recording.”

Contributors: John Corbett, Tony Dove, René Farabet, Richard Foreman, Rev. Dwight Frizzell, Mary Louise Hill, G. X. Jupitter-Larsen, Douglas Kahn, Terri Kapsalis, Alexandra L. M. Keller, Lou Mallozzi, Jay Mandeville, Christof Migone, Joe Milutis, Kaye Mortley, Mark S. Roberts, Susan Stone, Allen S. Weiss, Gregory Whitehead, David Williams, Ellen Zweig.

Publisher MIT Press, 2000
ISBN 0262731304, 9780262731300
188 pages

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)

Matthew G. Kirschenbaum: Mechanisms: New Media and the Forensic Imagination (2008)

“In Mechanisms, Matthew Kirschenbaum examines new media and electronic writing against the textual and technological primitives that govern writing, inscription, and textual transmission in all media: erasure, variability, repeatability, and survivability. Mechanisms is the first book in its field to devote significant attention to storage—the hard drive in particular—arguing that understanding the affordances of storage devices is essential to understanding new media. Drawing a distinction between ‘forensic materiality’ and ‘formal materiality,’ Kirschenbaum uses applied computer forensics techniques in his study of new media works. Just as the humanities discipline of textual studies examines books as physical objects and traces different variants of texts, computer forensics encourage us to perceive new media in terms of specific versions, platforms, systems, and devices. Kirschenbaum demonstrates these techniques in media-specific readings of three landmark works of new media and electronic literature, all from the formative era of personal computing: the interactive fiction game Mystery House, Michael Joyce’s Afternoon: A Story, and William Gibson’s electronic poem ‘Agrippa.’

Drawing on newly available archival resources for these works, Kirschenbaum uses a hex editor and disk image of Mystery House to conduct a “forensic walkthrough” to explore critical reading strategies linked to technical praxis; examines the multiple versions and revisions of Afternoon in order to address the diachronic dimension of electronic textuality; and documents the volatile publication and transmission history of ‘Agrippa’ as an illustration of the social aspect of transmission and preservation.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 0262113112, 9780262113113
296 pages

Online companion
Publisher

PDF (no OCR; some pages missing; updated on 2014-3-5)
EPUB (added on 2018-7-30)