Pierre Schaeffer: In Search of a Concrete Music (1952/2012)
Filed under book | Tags: · composition, electroacoustic music, media, music, music theory, musique concrète, sound
“Pierre Schaeffer’s In Search of a Concrete Music has long been considered a classic text in electroacoustic music and sound recording. Now Schaeffer’s pioneering work—at once a journal of his experiments in sound composition and a treatise on the raison d’être of “concrete music”—is available for the first time in English translation. Schaeffer’s theories have had a profound influence on composers working with technology. However, they extend beyond the confines of the studio and are applicable to many areas of contemporary musical thought, such as defining an ‘instrument’ and classifying sounds. Schaeffer has also become increasingly relevant to DJs and hip-hop producers as well as sound-based media artists. This unique book is essential for anyone interested in contemporary musicology or media history.”
First published as À la recherche d’une musique concrète, Seuil, Paris, 1952.
Translated by Christine North and John Dack
Publisher University of California Press, 2012
ISBN 0520265742, 9780520265745
225 pages
Reviews: Daniela Cascella (Los Angeles Review of Books, 2013), Brian Kane (Organised Sound, 2013), Warren Burt (SoundBytes, 2014).
PDF, PDF (7 MB, updated to an OCR’d version via Marcell Mars)
More from Schaeffer on Monoskop wiki (writings), UbuWeb (recordings), and Artsonores (films).
Comments (2)Hans Günther, Sabine Hänsgen (eds.): Soviet Power and the Media (2006) [Russian]
Filed under book | Tags: · 1920s, 1930s, cinema, communism, film, media, media theory, photography, politics, print, radio, socialist realism, sound, soviet union, technology, theatre
Proceedings from the conference “The Political as Communicative Space in History” (Bielefeld, October 2003) devoted to the comparative analysis of the media in the Soviet Union of the 1920s and 1930s provide a pioneering media-theoretical exploration of the role of radio, film, photography and print in the engineering of the communist Soviet power.
Sovetskaya vlast’ i media [Советская власть и медиа]
Publisher Akademicheskiy proekt, St. Petersburg, 2006
Open Access
ISBN 5733103353, 9785733103358
621 pages
Reviews: Wolfgang Schlott (Die Welt der Slaven, 2007, DE, PDF), Alexander Prokhorov (Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 2007), Alexander Ulanov (Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2007, RU), Jana Klenhova (ArtMargins, 2008), Yuliya Liderman (Usloviya teatra, RU, 2010).
PDF (broken link fixed on 2014-1-28)
PDFs
Friedrich Kittler, Ana Ofak (eds.): Medien vor den Medien (2007) [German]
Filed under book | Tags: · architecture, cultural techniques, image, literature, media, media theory, mediality, music, music history, philosophy, sound, time
“Das Dazwischen (to metaxy) macht das Sehen und Hören, die Erkenntnis und die Liebe erst möglich – das überliefern uns Texte der Antike. Die Medien prägen so unser Wissen und verstören unsere Sinne seit jeher. In der deutschen Medienwissenschaft ist es fast zur Selbstverständlichkeit geworden, nur heutige oder doch neuzeitliche Medien zu erforschen. Nun geht aber schon der Begriff “Medium” auf die griechische Antike zurück. Eben diesem Sachverhalt sucht der Band Medien vor den Medien gerecht zu werden. Vom Feuertelegraphen zur Ontologie, vom Marienglas zur sakralen Lichtarchitektur und immer wieder vom Ton zum Bild. Da die Medien der Antike zunächst zur Sprache kommen, wird es möglich, Brücken zu anderen Wissenschaftskulturen und in jene Neuzeit zu schlagen, die unseren kurrenten Begriff physikalischer und technischer Medien prägt. Das Buch richtet sich an Philosophen, Kunst-, Kultur- und Medienwissenschaftler.”
Publisher Fink, Munich, 2007
Kulturtechnik series
ISBN 3770542843, 9783770542840
282 pages
via adorno77
Cultural techniques at Monoskop wiki
PDF (53 MB, no OCR, updated on 2020-4-20)
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