Michal Rataj: Electroacoustic Music and Selected Concepts of Radio Art (2007/2010) [Czech, English]

The main purpose of the present thesis is to search for ways of methodological orientation within reflection of electroacoustic music, seen through the prism of what has been recently called acoustic arts. The way we try to formulate such positioning deals with particular methodological tasks: we try to generate space in which it is possible to think of “artistic discourses” within acoustic arts; subsequently, the thesis describes the specific discourse of electroacoustic music/radio art, explaining it from the viewpoint of the Czech radio-art producer.

English edition
With a Foreword by Miloš Vojtěchovský
Publisher PFAU, Saarbrücken, 2010
100 pages

Review (Tereza Havelková, Hudební věda, in Czech)

Publisher (CZ)

Elektroakustická hudba a vybrané koncepty radioartu (Czech, 2007, Ph.D. Dissertation), Alt link
Electroacoustic Music and Selected Concepts of Radio Art (English, undated)
Electroacoustic Music and Selected Concepts of Radio Art (English, 2010, added on 2013-12-31)

Friedrich A. Kittler: Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (1986–) [DE, EN]

“Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the hegemony of the printed word was shattered by the arrival of new media technologies that offered novel ways of communicating and storing data. Previously, writing had operated by way of symbolic mediation—all data had to pass through the needle’s eye of the written signifier—but phonography, photography, and cinematography stored physical effects of the real in the shape of sound waves and light. The entire question of referentiality had to be recast in light of these new media technologies; in addition, the use of the typewriter changed the perception of writing from that of a unique expression of a literate individual to that of a sequence of naked material signifiers.

Part technological history of the emergent new media in the late nineteenth century, part theoretical discussion of the responses to these media—including texts by Rilke, Kafka, and Heidegger, as well as elaborations by Edison, Bell, Turing, and other innovators—Gramophone, Film, Typewriter analyzes this momentous shift using insights from the work of Foucault, Lacan, and McLuhan. Fusing discourse analysis, structuralist psychoanalysis, and media theory, the author adds a vital historical dimension to the current debates over the relationship between electronic literacy and poststructuralism, and the extent to which we are constituted by our technologies. The book ties the establishment of new discursive practices to the introduction of new media technologies, and it shows how both determine the ways in which psychoanalysis conceives of the psychic apparatus in terms of information machines.

Gramophone, Film, Typewriter is, among other things, a continuation as well as a detailed elaboration of the second part of the author’s Discourse Networks, 1800/1900 (Stanford, 1990). As such, it bridges the gap between Kittler’s discourse analysis of the 1980’s and his increasingly computer-oriented work of the 1990’s.”

Publisher Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin, 1986
ISBN 3922660177
427 pages

English edition
Translated, with an Introduction by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz
Publisher Stanford University Press, 1999
ISBN 0804732337, 9780804732338
315 pages

Reviews: Bruce Clarke (Electronic Book Review, 1999), Alex Magoun (Technology and Culture, 2001).

Publisher (DE)
Publisher (EN)

Grammophon Film Typewriter (German, 1986, 7 MB, added on 2014-6-30, updated on 2019-5-2)
Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (English, trans. Geoffrey Winthrop-Young and Michael Wutz, 1999, updated on 2012-10-13)

Karen Collins: Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design (2008)

“A distinguishing feature of video games is their interactivity, and sound plays an important role in this: a player’s actions can trigger dialogue, sound effects, ambient sound, and music. And yet game sound has been neglected in the growing literature on game studies. This book fills that gap, introducing readers to the many complex aspects of game audio, from its development in early games to theoretical discussions of immersion and realism. In Game Sound, Karen Collins draws on a range of sources—including composers, sound designers, voice-over actors and other industry professionals, Internet articles, fan sites, industry conferences, magazines, patent documents, and, of course, the games themselves—to offer a broad overview of the history, theory, and production practice of video game audio.

Game Sound has two underlying themes: how and why games are different from or similar to film or other linear audiovisual media; and technology and the constraints it has placed on the production of game audio. Collins focuses first on the historical development of game audio, from penny arcades through the rise of home games and the recent rapid developments in the industry. She then examines the production process for a contemporary game at a large game company, discussing the roles of composers, sound designers, voice talent, and audio programmers; considers the growing presence of licensed intellectual property (particularly popular music and films) in games; and explores the function of audio in games in theoretical terms. Finally, she discusses the difficulties posed by nonlinearity and interactivity for the composer of game music.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2008
ISBN 026203378X, 9780262033787
200 pages

Keywords and phrases
PlayStation, arcade games, LucasArts, iMUSE, MIDI, wavetable synthesis, dynamic music, Grim Fandango, Konami, FM synthesis, surround sound, Super Mario Bros, Sega Genesis, Nintendo DS, Commodore 64, sound chips, subtractive synthesis, diegetic, Intellivision, diegesis

Publisher

PDF (updated on 2021-3-16)