Sound as Popular Culture: A Research Companion

Description

Scholars consider sound and its concepts, taking as their premise the idea that popular culture can be analyzed in an innovative way through sound. The wide-ranging texts in this book take as their premise the idea that sound is a subject through which popular culture can be analyzed in an innovative way. From an infant's gurgles over a baby monitor to the roar of the crowd in a stadium to the sub-bass frequencies produced by sound systems in the disco era, sound—not necessarily aestheticized as music—is inextricably part of the many domains of popular culture. Expanding the view taken by many scholars of cultural studies, the contributors consider cultural practices concerning sound not merely as semiotic or signifying processes but as material, physical, perceptual, and sensory processes that integrate a multitude of cultural traditions and forms of knowledge. The chapters discuss conceptual issues as well as terminologies and research methods; analyze historical and contemporary case studies of listening in various sound cultures; and consider the ways contemporary practices of sound generation are applied in the diverse fields in which sounds are produced, mastered, distorted, processed, or enhanced. The chapters are not only about sound; they offer a study through sound—echoes from the past, resonances of the present, and the contradictions and discontinuities that suggest the future. Contributors Karin Bijsterveld, Susanne Binas-Preisendörfer, Carolyn Birdsall, Jochen Bonz, Michael Bull, Thomas Burkhalter, Mark J. Butler, Diedrich Diederichsen, Veit Erlmann, Franco Fabbri, Golo Föllmer, Marta García Quiñones, Mark Grimshaw, Rolf Großmann, Maria Hanáček, Thomas Hecken, Anahid Kassabian, Carla J. Maier, Andrea Mihm, Bodo Mrozek, Carlo Nardi, Jens Gerrit Papenburg, Thomas Schopp, Holger Schulze, Toby Seay, Jacob Smith, Paul Théberge, Peter Wicke, Simon Zagorski-Thomas Contents Preface Introduction: Sound as Popular Culture I Outlining a Non-Discipline: The Theory of Sound as Popular Culture Conceptualizing Sound 1 The Sonic: Sound Concepts of Popular Culture 2 Sound/Music 3 Popular Culture 4 Sound Practices 5 Sound as Musical Material: Three Approaches to a Material Perspective on Sound and Music Questioning Disciplines 6 Sound Studies versus (Popular) Music Studies 7 Sound and Racial Politics: Aural Formations of Race in a Color-Deaf Society 8 Sound Studies across Continents: A Multidisciplinary Research Approach Establishing New Methodologies 9 Ethnography and Archival Research in Studying Cultures of Sound 10 Sonic Epistemology 11 Historicization in Pop Culture: From Noise Reduction to Noise Recording 12 Sound and Media Studies: Archiving and the Construction of Sonic Heritage 13 Soccer Stadium as Soundscape: Sound and Subjectivity II Formations of Listening: Popular Culture by Ear Making History by Ear 14 The Invention of the Listener: An(other) History 15 Sonic Modernities: Listening to Diasporic Urban Music 16 On the Modern Listener Listening Materialities and Techniques 17 Listening and Digital Technologies 18 Enhanced Bass: On 1970s Disco Culture's Listening Devices 19 Baby Monitor: Parental Listening and the Organization of Domestic Space 20 Over-Hearing: Techniques of Popular Listening 21 Technological Sensory Training Concepts of Listening 22 Listening as Gesture and Movement 23 Concepts of Fidelity 24 Loudness Cultures: Practices, Conflicts, Discourses 25 Existential Orientation: The Sound Knowledge of Fans 26 Corporeal Listening III Producting Sonic Artifacts: Hands-On Popular Culture Material Sound Concepts 27 Records on the Radio 28 From Stationality to Radio Aesthetics: Investigations on Radiophonic Sounds 29 World Music 2.0: Updated and Expanded 30 Computer Game Sound: From Diegesis to Immersion to Sonic Emotioneering Production Processes 31 “Syd’s Theme”: On the Conceptualization of Audio Production Processes 32 Sonic Signatures in Record Production 33 Phonographic Work: Reading and Writing Sound 34 Listener Orientation 35 (Re-)Mastering Sonic Media History Cultural Sound Practices 36 Distorted Voices, Afrofuturism, and the Aesthetic Experience ofthe Self as Other 37 Critical Listening 38 Sonic Cartoons Contributors Index