Journal of Sonic Studies
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About this portal
The portal is used to publish contributions for the online OA Journal of Sonic Studies, the storage of A/V materials, and the storage of previous issues.
contact person(s):
Marcel Cobussen ![](/rc/images/email.gif)
,
Vincent Meelberg ![](/rc/images/email.gif)
url:
http://sonicstudies.org/about
Recent Activities
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The Harley Effect: Internal and external factors that facilitate positive experiences with product sounds
(2018)
author(s): Elif Özcan
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Everyday activities are laden with emotional experiences involving sound. Our interactions with products (shavers, hairdryers, electric drills) often cause sounds that are typically unpleasant to the ear. Yet, we may get excited with the sound of an accelerating Harley Davidson because the rumbling sound represents adventure or an espresso machine pouring cappuccino because the sound signals an upcoming relaxing event. These examples demonstrate that it is often difficult to predict how pleasant or unpleasant a product sound is and that the circumstances surrounding sound events (i.e., external factors) can influence our judgment regarding those sounds. This paper discusses these external factors and provides a technical support for this notion. It will further present implications that could influence future product designers. Furthermore, the aim of this paper is to re-position the role of sound in human-product interactions.
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Tuned In and Hands On: Sound Designers Beyond Technical Expertise
(2018)
author(s): Isabelle Delmotte
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
The term sound designer is a relatively new addition to the professional roles in a film sound crew. Its use can be traced to the 1970s when the dismantlement of some major Hollywood studios gave space for more experimental approaches to film making. A study on acoustic ecologies and cinema sound allowed for creative and altruistic collaborations with some Australian cinema professionals. Subsequent face-to-face interviews and correspondence with the participants to the study pointed to the humanity and concerns at play behind the screen. It is apparent that the capacity of sound designer cannot be pigeonholed: it oscillates according to the demands of a film production and depends on its director’s and financial backers' sonic awareness. Amongst professional sound makers themselves exists a lack of consensus on the role and importance of the position of sound designer. The author proposes a way to lessen professional ambiguity and increase public recognition of atmospheric cinema sound. Invoking atmospheric sound at the inception of an audio-visual narrative could reward its makers and audiences in unsuspected ways. To acknowledge sound designers as architects of sensations and, by the same token, include viscerality and affect as creative elements of film production, could lead to a different appreciation of our lives in sound.
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The Sonic Lifeworld: A Phenomenological Exploration of the Imaginative Potential of Animation Sound
(2018)
author(s): James Batcho
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
The wonder of animation lies in its ability to create entirely new worlds that exist only in the imagination. Much care is taken to render these worlds visibly in great detail. Sound, however, is grounded in everyday reality in order to legitimize our expectations of experiential logic and continuity. This paper argues for new ways of thinking about how sound might move beyond this strict adherence to the visual by going beyond the rational. The problem of sound design is that it is an exercise in satisfying modes of Cartesian dualism, which separates the outside world of extension from the inner world of consciousness. Sound design should instead be conceived phenomenologically, as modes of disclosure and nondisclosure to consciousness. I propose new ways of thinking about the sonic connection of character to lifeworld, and in the process offer a critique of prevailing notions of film theory as related to the hearing and listening subject.
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SONIC FACTS FOR SOUND ARGUMENTS: MEDICINE, EXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY, AND THE AUDITORY CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE IN THE 19TH CENTURY
(2018)
author(s): Axel Volmar
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This article addresses the auditory culture of science and problematizes sonic practices as epistemological practices. In order to deepen our understanding about how scientific knowledge is acquired, represented, and constructed through sound, I discuss case studies from the history of medicine and the life sciences in which sound and listening do not form the objects of scientific observation and reasoning but epistemic tools employed by scientists to produce “sound” scientific facts. First I reassess the question why physicians began to listen to the sounds of the human body in order to diagnose diseases around 1800. After that, I follow late nineteenth-century neurophysiologists who used the electric telephone to study the nervous system by transforming bioelectric currents into sounds. I argue that such acoustemic practices and technologies favorably emerge in the presence of in-visibilities, i.e. situations in which a direct visual observation or representation of the object of study is hindered or impossible. I also show that the success of these practices largely depends on whether or not it is possible to develop the sounds of science into stable frameworks of sonic facts.
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STRAßENMUSIK AND EARDVERTS: PUBLIC LISTENING INTERVENTIONS AS AN ARTISTIC PRACTICE FOR ENCOURAGING AURAL AWARENESS IN AN EVERYDAY CONTEXT
(2018)
author(s): Florian Hollerweger
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This article discusses public listening interventions as an artistic research method to encourage and study aural awareness in everyday environments. I will first provide an overview of aestheticized listening practices in the sonic arts. This will be followed by a discussion of my public listening interventions Straßenmusik and EaRdverts, which I will situate within this wider context of artistic practice. From this perspective, I will adopt a sound artist’s perspective on the questions of how to study sound and enable a discourse on sonic experience. I will suggest possible contributions that sound art makes to this process.
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RESOUNDING SCIENCE: A SONIC ETHNOGRAPHY OF AN URBAN FIFTH GRADE CLASSROOM
(2018)
author(s): Walter Gershon
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This sonic ethnography represents two years in an ongoing study in which urban elementary and middle grades students wrote songs about the science content they learned. Originally designed to examine whether processes of songwriting might help bridge race and gender gaps in science education for city kids, over time, this project has become what participating teachers and I refer to as “listening to the sounds of science,” a change that underscores the variety of sounds, ideas and ideals, and ways of knowing and being of the daily life of classrooms. Specifically, this piece focuses on two years in an urban fifth grade classroom. Here, the text supports the sounded portion of the piece, providing contextual information about process and participants. As such, this piece provides an opportunity to listen to how often marginalized students make sense, understandings, and experiences that are at once epistemological, ontological, and sensorial.