I am a current PhD student at the University of Glasgow researching 'computer mediated physicality in sound art practice'.This research will investigate the significance of the physical object in contemporary sound art, drawing theories from post-digital aesthetics, media archaeology and concepts of spectatorship and mediation in order to develop a critical framework for my practice.Central to the project will be the development of physical sound art works which seek to address the tangibility of links between sound and the physical world. This practice is inherently interdisciplinary, connecting aspects of visual art and sound art, as well as digital hobbyism and exhibition design. It is my contention that to investigate such works is relevant not only within sound art and musicology but to a wider conversation about post-digital culture and aesthetics. Drawing on my masters research into the schizophonic problematisation of technology I will relate my practice to relevant cultural, aesthetic and artistic theories, leading to the proposition of conceptual tools useful in illuminating and critiquing practice in the ‘post-digital’ domain.Specifically, arising from a dissatisfaction with ‘digitalism’, characterised by Nicholas Carr’s writings on computing’s ‘shallowing’ effect on the brain (2011) and urbanist William Mitchell’s work on the ‘grades of presence’ in digital media, the notion of ‘post-digital aesthetics’ will provide a key theoretical context. The practices in question continue to use technology but are no longer fixated with it, refocusing instead on a return to more tangible, ‘authentic’ cultural experiences: “Post-digital is not pre-techno but exploits technology for a civilising purpose, human congregation and intercourse.” (Jenkins, 2011). Supervisors: Dr Nick Fells
Since the invention of sound reproduction technology in the late 19th century, the technological ... more Since the invention of sound reproduction technology in the late 19th century, the technological mediation (recording and transmission) of sound has been variously criticised. American bandleader and composer John Philip Sousa (1906, p.278-279) wrote shortly after the invention of the phonograph that it threatened to 'reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders, and all manner of revolving things, which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful, living, breathing daughters'. Acoustic ecologist R. Murray Schafer coined the term 'schizophonia' in The New Soundscape (1969, p.46) to describe the 'alienating' effect of hearing sound reproduced (and abstracted) independently from its source. Although these responses could be criticised as merely technophobic, they share a contention that is sharply relevant to my sound practice-that there is a quality (or perhaps 'quale') in the direct, acoustic experience of sound that can't be adequately reproduced or transmitted. These qualia, associated with an unmediated experience of sound, are particularly relevant to the current post-digital condition defined by Florian Cramer amongst others as one which re-engages the material, analogue world in tandem with the digital, transcending mediation, and returning to the tactility of pre-digital media. This paper explores the dual notions of production and reproduction at play in my work as a sound artist, with particular reference to my recent sound installation Eigenfunction. 17 This (re)production duality is situated across three sites in the work: a media archaeological exploration of past media as stimulus, the use of existing sound reproduction technologies to produce an acoustic (and visual) effect and the performative mediated encounter at play in my video documentation. Each of these are examined in turn as media archaeological sites of (re)production and the work is then framed within a broader post-digital context.
Since the invention of sound reproduction technology in the late 19th century, the technological ... more Since the invention of sound reproduction technology in the late 19th century, the technological mediation (recording and transmission) of sound has been variously criticised. American bandleader and composer John Philip Sousa (1906, p.278-279) wrote shortly after the invention of the phonograph that it threatened to 'reduce the expression of music to a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, cylinders, and all manner of revolving things, which are as like real art as the marble statue of Eve is like her beautiful, living, breathing daughters'. Acoustic ecologist R. Murray Schafer coined the term 'schizophonia' in The New Soundscape (1969, p.46) to describe the 'alienating' effect of hearing sound reproduced (and abstracted) independently from its source. Although these responses could be criticised as merely technophobic, they share a contention that is sharply relevant to my sound practice-that there is a quality (or perhaps 'quale') in the direct, acoustic experience of sound that can't be adequately reproduced or transmitted. These qualia, associated with an unmediated experience of sound, are particularly relevant to the current post-digital condition defined by Florian Cramer amongst others as one which re-engages the material, analogue world in tandem with the digital, transcending mediation, and returning to the tactility of pre-digital media. This paper explores the dual notions of production and reproduction at play in my work as a sound artist, with particular reference to my recent sound installation Eigenfunction. 17 This (re)production duality is situated across three sites in the work: a media archaeological exploration of past media as stimulus, the use of existing sound reproduction technologies to produce an acoustic (and visual) effect and the performative mediated encounter at play in my video documentation. Each of these are examined in turn as media archaeological sites of (re)production and the work is then framed within a broader post-digital context.
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