The Oxford handbook of sound studies

Pinch, T. J. (Trevor J.), (editor.). Bijsterveld, Karin, 1961- (editor.).

Summary: In this collection of essays, scholars and researchers in the emerging field of sound studies offer new 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 a 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 technologies such as slides, graphs, and telescopes. This book questions that notion by showing how listening has contributed to scientific practice. 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 a diverse set of case studies, the authors illlustrate 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 of listening practices. In addition, the book discusses the rise of new public problems such as noise pollution, hearing loss, and the "end" of the amateur musician, each problem stemming from the spread and appropriation of new sound- and music-related technologies, both analog and digital, in many domains of life.

Record details

ISBN: 9780199995813 (paperback)
ISBN: 0199995818 (paperback)
Physical Description: print
xii, 593 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm.
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press Inc, 2013.
Copyright: ©2012

Content descriptions

General Note:

"First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2013" -- Title page verso.

Written by the world's leading scholars and researchers in sound studies, this handbook offers new and engaging perspectives on the significance of sound in its material and cultural forms. The book considers sounds and music as experienced on the shop floor, in the laboratory, the clinic, the design studio, the home, and clubs, across a broad range of historical periods and national and cultural contexts.

Formatted Contents Note:

New keys to the world of sound / Trevor Pinch and Karin Bijsterveld -- Section I. Reworking machine sound : shop floors and test sites. The garden in the machine : listening to early American industrialization / Mark M. Smith ; Turning a deaf ear? : industrial noise and noise control in Germany since the 1920s / Hans-Joachim Braun ; "Sobbing, whining, rumbling" : listening to automobiles as social practice / Stefan Krebs ; Selling sound : testing, designing, and marketing sound in the European car industry / Eefje Cleophas and Karin Bijsterveld -- Section II. Staging sound for science and art : the field. Sound sterile : making scientific field recordings on ornithology / Joeri Bruyninckx ; Underwater music : tuning composition to the sounds of science / Stefan Helmreich ; A gray box : the phonograph in laboratory experiments and fieldwork, 1900-1920 / Julia Kursell -- Section III. Staging sound for science and art : the lab. From scientific instruments to musical instruments : the tuning fork, the metronome, and the siren / Myles W. Jackson ; Conversions : sound and sight, military and civilian / Cyrus C. M. Mody ; The search for the "killer application" : drawing the boundaries around the sonification of scientific data / Alexandra Supper -- Section IV. Speaking for the body : the clinic. Inner and outer sancta : earplugs and hospitals / Hillel Schwartz ; Sounding bodies : medical students and the acquisition of stethoscopic perspectives / Tom Rice ; Do signals have politics? : inscribing abilities in cochlear implants / Mara Mills -- Section V. Editing sound : the design studio. Sound and player immersion in digital games / Mark Grimshaw ; The sonic playpen : sound design and technology in Pixar's animated shorts / William Whittington ; The avant-garde in the family room : American advertising and the domestication of electronic music in the 1960s and 1970s / Tomothy D. Taylor -- Section VI. Consuming sound and music : the home and beyond. Visibly audible : the radio dial as mediating interface / Andreas Fickers ; From listening to distribution : nonofficial music practices in Hungary and Czechoslovakia from the 1960s to the 1980s / Trever Hagen with Tia DeNora ; The amateur in the Age of Mechanical Music / Mark Katz ; Online music sites as sonic sociotechnical communities : identity, reputation, and technology at ACIDplanet.com / Trevor Pinch and Katherine Athanasiades -- Section VII. Moving sound and music : digital storage. Analog turns digital : hip-hop, technology, and the maintenance of racial authenticity / Rayvon Fouché ; iPod culture : the toxic pleasures of audiotopia / Michael Bull ; The recording that never wanted to be heard and other stories of sonification / Jonathan Sterne and Mitchell Akiyama.