Read the introduction
Illustrations: 14 illustrations
Release Date: December 28, 2018
Published: January 2019
Is a sound an object, an experience, an event, or a relation? What exactly does the emerging discipline of sound studies study? Sound Objects pursues these questions while exploring how history, culture, and mediation entwine with sound’s elusive objectivity. Examining the genealogy and evolution of the concept of the sound object, the commodification of sound, acousmatic listening, nonhuman sounds, and sound and memory, the contributors not only probe conceptual issues that lie in the forefront of contemporary sonic discussions but also underscore auditory experience as fundamental to sound as a critical enterprise. In so doing, they offer exciting considerations of sound within and beyond its role in meaning, communication, and information and an illuminatingly original theoretical overview of the field of sound studies itself.
Contributors. Georgina Born, Michael Bull, Michel Chion, Rey Chow, John Dack, Veit Erlmann, Brian Kane, Jairo Moreno, John Mowitt, Pooja Rangan, Gavin Steingo, James A. Steintrager, Jonathan Sterne, David Toop
“What are sound objects? This carefully assembled collection—featuring voices both pioneering and new—offers an exhilarating array of answers to this question. Taken as a whole, this volume invites us to consider listening as a form of theory, and theory itself as a form of listening. As James A. Steintrager and Rey Chow insist, sonic entities—in contrast to the visual—need to be ‘apprehended otherwise’; and these essays prompt us to do precisely that, offering provocative new tools, refrains, and sensibilities for a more nuanced attunement to the world’s infinite soundscapes. As such, Sound Objects represents a new milestone in the rapidly evolving world of sound studies.” - Dominic Pettman, author of Sonic Intimacy: Voice, Species, Technics (or, How to Listen to the World)
“This groundbreaking book provides a welcome interdisciplinary treatment of concepts central to sound studies, film studies, musicology, music theory, and literature. Bringing together leading scholars in sound studies, this volume contributes critical historical and contemporary contexts—as well as new understandings, critiques, and expansions—to the concept of the sound object. The editors have masterfully choreographed conversations across the chapters, resulting in a tightly focused work that will be an important contribution to the development of sound studies.” - Nina Sun Eidsheim, author of The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music
"Recommended. Advanced undergraduates and above." - P. L. Kantor, Choice
"The carefully curated sequence of essays and chapters makes a significant contribution to the field of sound studies." - Aurelio Cianciotta, Neural
"Like the field of sound studies, the essays collected here are disciplinarily difficult to define or contain.… The text may well contribute to the creation of an audience through the challenges it presents. This volume moves the discussion of sound forward by recognizing its aesthetic and ideological richness as well as its ontological instability. As a whole, Sound Objects demonstrates the potential for engagement with sound to reverberate more deeply across artistic, aesthetic, and scholarly landscapes, as well as the promise of richness that comes from examining our basic assumptions." - Maribeth Clark, Notes
" Sound Objects provides readers with a deepened exploration of the sonic field while maintaining cross-disciplinary conversations to help sound studies further congeal as an integrated field. . . . The collection will also resonate with a wide readership through the range of represented experiences of sound with which readers will identify." - Kate Galloway, MUSICultures
