Sound Connections

An Aural Epistemology of Proximity and Distance in Urban Culture

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4476673
AutoresMichael Bull (0009-0001-7214-9846, Media Studies, University of Sussex, Essex House, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9RQ, England, autor correspondente)
Ano2004
Volume22
Fascículo1
Páginas103-116
Data de publicação2004-02-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1068/d314t
OpenAlexW2157751349
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas9
Referências citadas18

In this paper I analyse the nature of proximity and distance as experienced through the use of sound-communication technologies. I argue that contemporary media-based analyses of communication technologies often fail to take into account the specific relational qualities attached to forms of 'sound' consumption. The meanings and uses attached to sound technologies are then conceptualised through reinterpreting three iconic historical moments of sound consumption in Western culture: Horkheimer and Adorno's account of the meeting between Odysseus and the Sirens in The Dialectic of Enlightenment, and early-20th-century accounts of the use of the phonograph and radio taken from the work of Kracauer and Taussig. One example is situated in the mythic prehistory of Western culture, the other two from its 'heroic' period of mechanical reproduction. These examples are used to point to what an analytical framework for understanding contemporary states of aural proximity and distance might look like. The paper points to the manner in which the use of sound technologies can be understood as part of the Western project of the appropriation and control of space, place, and the 'other'. In particular I focus upon the specific relational qualities attached to sound through which subjects relate to their surroundings, others, and themselves, focusing upon the central role that aestheticisation plays as a strategy of the control of place and space. The analysis is contextualised through a contemporary analysis of that most mobile and privatised of media artefacts, the Walkman

Acoustics · Aesthetics · Appropriation · Art · Consumption (sociology · Dialectic · Epistemology · Linguistics · Period (music · Phonograph · Situated · Sociology · Sound (geography · Computer Science · Cybernetics and Technology in Society · History · Literature and Cultural Memory · Philosophy · Visual Culture and Art Theory