Steve J. Wurtzler: Electric Sounds: Technological Change and the Rise of Corporate Mass Media (2007)

Electric Sounds brings to vivid life an era when innovations in the production, recording, and transmission of sound revolutionized a number of different media, especially the radio, the phonograph, and the cinema.

The 1920s and 1930s marked some of the most important developments in the history of the American mass media: the film industry’s conversion to synchronous sound, the rise of radio networks and advertising-supported broadcasting, the establishment of a federal regulatory framework on which U.S. communications policy continues to be based, the development of several powerful media conglomerates, and the birth of a new acoustic commodity in which a single story, song, or other product was made available to consumers in multiple media forms and formats.

But what role would this new media play in society? Celebrants saw an opportunity for educational and cultural uplift; critics feared the degradation of the standards of public taste. Some believed acoustic media would fulfill the promise of participatory democracy by better informing the public, while others saw an opportunity for manipulation. The innovations of this period prompted not only a restructuring and consolidation of corporate mass media interests and a shift in the conventions and patterns of media consumption but also a renegotiation of the social functions assigned to mass media forms.

Steve J. Wurtzler’s impeccably researched history adds a new dimension to the study of sound media, proving that the ultimate form technology takes is never predetermined. Rather, it is shaped by conflicting visions of technological possibility in economic, cultural, and political realms. Electric Sounds also illustrates the process through which technologies become media and the ways in which media are integrated into American life.

Publisher Columbia University Press, 2007
Film and Culture series
ISBN 0231136773, 9780231136778
393 pages

Review (Jonathan Sterne, Cinema Journal, 2008)
Review (Gerd Horten, The American Historical Review, 2008)
Review (Heidi Tworek, H-Net/Jhistory, 2010)

Publisher
Google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)

Veit Erlmann (ed.): Hearing Cultures. Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity (2004)

Vision is typically treated as the defining sense of the modern era and a powerful vehicle for colonial and postcolonial domination. This is in marked contrast to the almost total absence of accounts of hearing in larger cultural processes.

Hearing Cultures is a timely examination of the elusive, often evocative, and sometimes cacophonous auditory sense – from the intersection of sound and modernity, through to the relationship between audio-technological advances and issues of personal and urban space. As cultures and communities grapple with the massive changes wrought by modernization and globalization, Hearing Cultures presents an important new approach to understanding our world. It answers such intriguing questions as:

· Did people in Shakespeare’s time hear differently from us?
· In what way does technology affect our ears?
· Why do people in Egypt increasingly listen to taped religious sermons?
· Why did Enlightenment doctors believe that music was an essential cure?
· What happens acoustically in cross-cultural first encounters?
· Why do Runa Indians in the Amazon basin now consider onomatopoetic speech child’s talk?

The ear, as much as the eye, nose, mouth and hand, offers a way into experience. All five senses are instruments that record, interpret and engage with the world. This book shows how sound offers a refreshing new lens through which to examine culture and complex social issues.

Publisher Berg Publishers, 2004
Sensory Formations series
ISBN 1859738281, 9781859738283
239 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)

Barry Blesser, Linda-Ruth Salter: Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture (2007)

We experience spaces not only by seeing but also by listening. We can navigate a room in the dark, and “hear” the emptiness of a house without furniture. Our experience of music in a concert hall depends on whether we sit in the front row or under the balcony. The unique acoustics of religious spaces acquire symbolic meaning. Social relationships are strongly influenced by the way that space changes sound. In Spaces Speak, Are You Listening?, Barry Blesser and Linda-Ruth Salter examine auditory spatial awareness: experiencing space by attentive listening. Every environment has an aural architecture.

The audible attributes of physical space have always contributed to the fabric of human culture, as demonstrated by prehistoric multimedia cave paintings, classical Greek open-air theaters, Gothic cathedrals, acoustic geography of French villages, modern music reproduction, and virtual spaces in home theaters. Auditory spatial awareness is a prism that reveals a culture’s attitudes toward hearing and space. Some listeners can learn to “see” objects with their ears, but even without training, we can all hear spatial geometry such as an open door or low ceiling.

Integrating contributions from a wide range of disciplines—including architecture, music, acoustics, evolution, anthropology, cognitive psychology, audio engineering, and many others—Spaces Speak, Are You Listening? establishes the concepts and language of aural architecture. These concepts provide an interdisciplinary guide for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of how space enhances our well-being. Aural architecture is not the exclusive domain of specialists. Accidentally or intentionally, we all function as aural architects.

Publisher MIT Press, 2007
ISBN 0262026058, 9780262026055
437 pages

publisher
google books

PDF (updated on 2012-8-3)