Research Catalogue

an international database for artistic research

• 27. Issue 27 Issue 27

• Telephonic Territories. The Landline Phone As a “Place-Dependent” Sound Technology (2021) author(s): Mette Simonsen Abildgaard published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  A distinguishing feature of the landline telephone is that, in contrast to most phones in use today, it belongs first and foremost to a place. Following the last thirty years of scholarly interest in the wide-ranging implications of mobile telephony, what would happen if we were to pay similar attention to the significance of living with “place-dependent” sound technologies such as the home telephone? In this article, I draw on concepts from the fields of sound studies and science and technology studies (STS) to present the twentieth-century landline telephone as a place-dependent sound technology based on qualitative interviews with Danish landline telephone users. I emphasize several consequences of “place-dependency”: First, that the home becomes an “auditory territory” (LaBelle 2010) where zones of telephonic silence and noise are fixed but also call for continuous negotiations. The notion of territory points us towards the second consequence – that negotiations of ownership become complicated through the landline telephone’s attachment to a household rather than an individual. Third, I consider the implications of the landline telephone’s irreducibility from its surroundings, where it exists as less a solitary technology than an assemblage of the home. Here, I also pay attention to the way immobility for the landline telephone is not a stable concept but is continuously re-negotiated by its users and its own assembled materiality.
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  ODONTOPHONES (2020) author(s): Martí Ruiz i Carulla, Sudhanshu Tewari published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  This exposition focuses on an important portion of the Baschets’ work: the use of clamped rods to create complex systems of oscillation. We intend to show the complexity and richness of the Baschet world, as well as proving the efficacy of their theoretical approach that allows anyone (and everyone) to understand and create sound objects. We propose the term odontophones for a wide family of sound sculptures based on the use of clamped rods, as a humorous but serious tribute to the Baschet acoustic system, fostering a finer understanding of a great variety of complex sound devices. In this exposition we offer explanations of the Baschet perspective and audio visual examples to help appreciate how these sound devices work.
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  Editorial – Enjoy Sound Art and Sound Studies at Home During Hard Times (2020) author(s): Marcel Cobussen published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  Editorial – Enjoy Sound Art and Sound Studies at Home During Hard Times
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  Sonic Affordances of a Sacred Spring. The Urban Courtyard as a Figure of Rehabilitation of the Medina (2020) author(s): Noha Gamal Saïd published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  This article investigates, from an in situ sonic experience, the rehabilitation project of the Source Bleue in Tiznit, Morocco, realized in 2015 by the architect and anthropologist Salima Naji. As the new architecture has favored the acoustic aspect of the spring, I reflect on the sonic affordances of the rehabilitated space. The study hinges on three concepts – affordances, thresholds, and ambiances – in order to analyze a double focus on sounds: field recordings (fixed points and short journeys) and a text that basically represents the author’s feelings, reinforced through short interviews conducted with users of the space. By using these methods, it is possible to determine the particularities of this soundscape and to comprehend the sonic affordances of the Source Bleue.
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  Secret Noise: Marcel Duchamp and the (Un)sound Object (2020) author(s): Krzysztof Fijalkowski published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  Marcel Duchamp’s enigmatic sculpture With Hidden Noise (1916) is widely known, but its complex relationship to sound has received limited attention. Containing a secret object whose presence and identity is registered only by the noise it makes inside a ball of twine held between metal plates, this performative aspect of the work remains unavailable for contemporary audiences; as such, it participates in what Christof Migone qualifies as the “unsound,” the latent aural registers of silence or suppressed noise. Considering the secrecy and sonic capabilities of this object, as well as the work’s collaborative contexts alongside the repeated interest in sound found elsewhere in Duchamp’s activity, gives access to reading With Hidden Noise as a proposition about hidden or embodied knowledge, a knowledge whose complex and hybrid nature is specifically registered through the promise of a performance of sound that remains tacit but resonant.
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  Experiencing Recorded Geophony. Listening to Arctic Winter Winds at Home (2020) author(s): Svein Høier and Asbjørn Tiller published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
  This essay discusses how YouTube users describe their experience when listening to long durations of recorded geophony, in this case the sounds of winter winds. The analysis shows how individual differences and ambivalence are expressed in commentaries online and how the listening experiences involve affects, memories, associations, and imagination as well as, according to some user comments, having a more physical impact. The discussion draws on both recent and traditional theories, concepts, and terminology in order to study the phenomenon at hand. We argue that a listener-centered approach can be used to generate new knowledge on everyday listening to recorded geophony and find it relevant to search for similarities and contrasts between listening to these geophonic sounds and the somewhat parallel phenomenon of listening to music as background sound.
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