The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies

by Pinch, Trevor; Bijsterveld, Karin

• ISBN13: 9780195388947
• ISBN10: 0195388941
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-12-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Written by the world's leading scholars and researchers in sound studies,The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studiesoffers new and fully engaging perspectives on the significance of sound in its material and cultural forms. The book considers sounds and music as experienced in such diverse settings as shop floors, laboratories, clinics, design studios, homes, and clubs, across an impressively broad range of historical periods and national and cultural contexts. Science has traditionally been understood as a visual matter, a study which has historically been undertaken with optical instruments such as slides, graphs, and telescopes. This book questions that notion powerfully by illustrating how sounds have always been a part of human experience, shaping and transforming the world in which we live in ways that often go unnoticed. Sounds and music, the authors argue, are embedded in the fabric of everyday life, art, commerce, and politics in ways which impact our perception of the world. Through an extraordinarily diverse set of case studies, authors illustrate how sounds -- from the sounds of industrialization, to the sounds of automobiles, to sounds in underwater music and hip-hop, to the sounds of nanotechnology -- give rise to new forms listening practices. In addition, the book discusses the rise of new public problems such as noise pollution, hearing loss, and intellectual property and privacy issues that stem from the spread and appropriation of new sound- and music-related technologies, analog and digital, in many domains of life. Rich in vivid and detailed examples and compelling case studies, and featuring a companion website of listening samples, this remarkable volume boldly challenges readers to rethink the way they hear and understand the world.

Author Biography

Trevor Pinch is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University, and author or co-author of several books including Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (2002, with Frank Trocco) and The Golem at Large: What You Should Know About Technology (1993, 1998, with Harry Collins).

Karin Bijsterveld is Professor of Science, Technology and Modern Culture at Maastricht University. She is author of Mechanical Sound: Technology, Culture and Public Problems of Noise in the Twentieth Century (2008), and co-editor of Sound Souvenirs: Audio Technologies, Memory and Cultural Practices (2009, with José van Dijck).

Table of Contents

Contributors	p. xi
About the companion website	p. xiii
New Keys to the World of Sound	p. 3
Reworking Machine Sound: Shop Floors and Test Sites
The Garden in the Machine: Listening to Early American Industrialization	p. 39
Turning a Deaf Ear? Industrial Noise and Noise Control in Germany since the 1920s	p. 58
"Sobbing, Whining, Rumbling": Listening to Automobiles as Social Practice	p. 79
Selling Sound: Testing, Designing, and Marketing Sound in the European Car Industry	p. 102
Staging Sound for Science and Art: The Field
Sound Sterile: Making Scientific Field Recordings in Ornithology	p. 127
Underwater Music: Tuning Composition to the Sounds of Science	p. 151
A Gray Box: The Phonograph in Laboratory Experiments and Fieldwork, 1900-1920	p. 176
Staging Sound for Science and Art: The Lab
From Scientific Instruments to Musical Instruments: The Tuning Fork, the Metronome, and the Siren	p. 201
Conversions: Sound and Sight, Military and Civilian	p. 224
The Search for the "Killer Application": Drawing the Boundaries around the Sonification of Scientific Data	p. 249
Speaking for the Body: The Clinic
Inner and Outer Sancta: Earplugs and Hospitals	p. 273
Sounding Bodies: Medical Students and the Acquisition of Stethoscopic Perspectives	p. 298
Do Signals Have Politics? Inscribing Abilities in Cochlear Implants	p. 320
Editing Sound: The Design Studio
Sound and Player Immersion in Digital Games	p. 347
The Sonic Playpen: Sound Design and Technology in Pixar's Animated Shorts	p. 367
The Avant-Garde in the Family Room: American Advertising and the Domestication of Electronic Music in the 1960s and 1970s	p. 387
Consuming Sound and Music: The Home and Beyond
Visibly Audible: The Radio Dial as Mediating Interface	p. 411
From Listening to Distribution: Nonofficial Music Practices in Hungary and Czechoslovakia from the 1960s to the 1980s	p. 440
The Amateur in the Age of Mechanical Music	p. 459
Online Music Sites as Sonic Sociotechnical Communities: Identity, Reputation, and Technology at ACIDplanet.com	p. 480
Moving Sound and Music: Digital Storage
Analog Turns Digital: Hip-Hop, Technology, and the Maintenance of Racial Authenticity
iPod Culture: The Toxic Pleasures of Audiotopia	p. 526
The Recording That Never Wanted to Be Heard, and Other Stories of Sonification	p. 544
Index	p. 561
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