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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ADVENTURES IN SONIC FICTION: A HEURISTIC FOR SOUND STUDIES
(2018)
author(s): Holger Schulze
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This article presents Kodwo Eshun's concept of sonic fiction as an advanced and adequate methodological approach to sound studies. The references of More Brilliant Than The Sun (Eshun 1998) to afrofuturism and their methodological elaboration in Steve Goodman's Sonic Warfare (Goodman 2010) are discussed – as well as the strong epistemological connections to Michel Serres' reflections in his anthropology of the senses. Finally, this article explores the historical ramifications of the concept of sonic fictions in Alexander Baumgarten's concept of an aesthetic heuristic and ends with an enumeration of ten criteria for the methodological application of sonic fiction.
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CAUGHT IN THE CURRENT: WRITING ETHNOGRAPHY THAT LISTENS
(2018)
author(s): Justin Patch
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In Listening (2002) Jean-Luc Nancy proposes a philosophy that listens, one that does not arrive at static, definitive conclusions but continuously resonates and remains open. This essay conceptualizes an ethnography that listens by putting Nancy’s thinking into play with texts that philosophically critique writing from different angles. By examining concepts of voice, speaking, the author, listening, and open work within writing practices, a polyvocal, nomadic concept of writing that listens emerges and points in many potential directions. One line of flight leads to ethnography, where the conflicts inherent in textualizing human representation continue to be examined and experimented with. In the second half of this essay, I propose one of many possible approaches to an ethnography that listens: ethnography of spin. In conscientiously, honestly, and openly writing the experience of getting spun – an integral part of mediated everyday experience in modernity – we offer texts that listen, resonate, echo, and can be transformed, remixed and re-mastered.
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HISTORY AND ITS ACOUSTIC CONTEXT: SILENCE, RESONANCE, ECHO AND WHERE TO FIND THEM IN THE ARCHIVE
(2018)
author(s): Maarten Walraven
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Listening to history requires the historian to compose sonic events from the archive. This essay explores how Audible History has developed since Alain Corbin’s ground-breaking Village Bells. The listening historian has broadened the scope of social and cultural history by rearranging existing and creating new narratives. However, historians need to go beyond interrogating the earwitnesses of aural cultures. They need to listen to sounds-as-objects and the acoustic context of events. Three concepts are introduced to develop a methodology for this: 1) silence, which is the silence of the archive as well as the role silence played in history’s sonic register; 2) resonance, which demonstrates the way that resonances between people and their environment and among people created community; 3) echo, as a concept that allows for the objectification of sounds at the same time that it attends to the origins of sounds-as-objects.
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OA#1: LISTENING AND MAPPING THE SONIC. PLURALITY AND WAYFARING: WRITING THE OPENSOUND PROJECT
(2018)
author(s): J. Milo Taylor
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Wayfaring, I believe, is the most fundamental mode by which living beings, both human and non-human, inhabit the earth. By habitation I do not mean taking one’s place in a world that has been prepared in advance for the populations that arrive to reside there. The inhabitant is rather one who participates from within in the very process of the world’s continual coming into being and who, in laying a trail of life, contributes to its weave and texture. (Ingold 2007: 81)
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The Acoustic Space of Television
(2018)
author(s): Anthony Enns
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Critics often argue that television is primarily an acoustic rather than a visual medium, as the soundtrack anchors the meaning of the images and the sound practices developed for television are largely derived from radio. In recent years, however, the television screen has become increasingly saturated with textual information, and it has gradually transformed from “illustrated radio” into something that more closely resembles a computer or web interface. Rather than suggesting that television is no longer a primarily acoustic medium, this paper employs Marshall McLuhan’s concept of “acoustic space” to argue that contemporary television is actually more acoustic than ever before, as the television screen has become a non-linear and multisensory information space that reflects the immersive qualities of sound itself.
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The Hiss of Data
(2018)
author(s): Cormac Deane
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This article conducts an examination of the connections between the fantasy user interfaces (FUIs) of computers in the television shows 24 and CSI and the sounds that they emit. The resulting sense of computational activity produces what might be characterized as a digital subjectivity. The significance of this kind of subjectivity is considered in relation to: the historical context of contemporary television/cinema (‘TVIII’); the apparently cybernetic tendencies of complex screen environments; and the political ramifications of a logic of computation. The competing claims of the sound and the image to be the prior, determining factor are discussed. It becomes clear that the distinction between what constitutes information and what constitutes noise (audio and non-informational) is a key problematic both within the screen narratives in question and in the broader media environment that they occupy.