White noise
Sound, Materiality and the Crowd in Contemporary Heritage Practice
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5700634 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Paul Tourle (UCL Institute of Archaeology, London, UK, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 23 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 234-247 |
| Publication date | 2017-03-16 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Heritage Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1352-7258 • E-ISSN: 1470-3610 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/13527258.2016.1261919 |
| OpenAlex | W2554209596 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 21 |
Sounds of our Shores was a joint venture between the National Trust and the British Library that employed a crowdsourcing methodology to create a permanent archive of British coastal sounds. In this paper I pursue a critical analysis of that project in order to problematise the recent emergence of practices aimed at capturing and preserving everyday sounds as ‘sonic heritage’. More broadly, I use the case study to think through two trends in contemporary heritage practice. These are, first, a turn towards crowdsourcing as a means of democratising representation, and, second, a current trend towards the accumulation and preservation of an ever-broader range and mass of materials as heritage. The framework for my analysis is provided by a dual reading of the term ‘white noise’. Thus, for my purposes, ‘white noise’ describes both an acoustic phenomenon (the product of every possible frequency sounding simultaneously; a sonic expression of perfect equality and perfect chaos), and a particular mode of racialised sound production and audition, modulated and constrained by whiteness. White noise displaces and silences its Others. The white ‘listening ear’, to borrow Jennifer Stoever-Ackerman's terminology, is either deaf to, or appalled by, the sounds those Others make
Acoustics · Active listening · Aesthetics · Art · Crowdsourcing · Linguistics · Sociology · Soundscape · Terminology · Visual arts · World Wide Web · Communication · Computer Science · Conservation Techniques and Studies · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Diverse Musicological Studies · History
Noise
Uses of Heritage
Heritage
Laboratory Life
Chavs
Industrial Sonifact and the Soundscape of the Anthropocene
Forgetting to remember, remembering to forget
Protecting contemporary cultural soundscapes as intangible cultural heritage
Averting loss aversion in cultural heritage
On Scientific Observation
"The "War on Noise
Splicing the Sonic Color-Line
Making sense of transience
Introduction
Observing, Collecting and Governing "Ourselves" and "Others
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2019 (3) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |