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)

Emily Thompson: The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900-1933 (2002)

“In this history of aural culture in early-twentieth-century America, Emily Thompson charts dramatic transformations in what people heard and how they listened. What they heard was a new kind of sound that was the product of modern technology. They listened as newly critical consumers of aural commodities. By examining the technologies that produced this sound, as well as the culture that enthusiastically consumed it, Thompson recovers a lost dimension of the Machine Age and deepens our understanding of the experience of change that characterized the era.

Reverberation equations, sound meters, microphones, and acoustical tiles were deployed in places as varied as Boston’s Symphony Hall, New York’s office skyscrapers, and the soundstages of Hollywood. The control provided by these technologies, however, was applied in ways that denied the particularity of place, and the diverse spaces of modern America began to sound alike as a universal new sound predominated. Although this sound—clear, direct, efficient, and nonreverberant—had little to say about the physical spaces in which it was produced, it speaks volumes about the culture that created it. By listening to it, Thompson constructs a compelling new account of the experience of modernity in America.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2002
ISBN 0262201380, 9780262201384
510 pages

Publisher

PDF (33 MB, updated on 2017-5-15)

Michel Chion: Guide To Sound Objects: Pierre Schaeffer and Musical Research (1983–) [FR, EN]

This work is an introductory guide to the monumental Traité des objets musicaux. An index lists each Schaeferian term. Discussions of each of the terms include a combination of Pierre Schaeffer’s key ideas, includinga short definition, and the inclusion of reference pages within the Traité des objets musicaux.

Publisher Buchet/Chastel, Paris, and Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, Bry-sur-Marne, 1983/1995
ISBN 2702014399
187 pages

English edition
Translated by John Dack and Christine North
London, 2009
212 pages

More information

Guide des objets sonores: Pierre Schaeffer et la recherche musicale (French, 1983/1995, added on 2014-3-8)
Guide To Sound Objects: Pierre Schaeffer and Musical Research (English, trans. John Dack and Christine North, updated on 2012-8-3), Chapters (on EARS, added on 2014-11-16), Scribd (updated on 2012-8-3)