Journal of Sonic Studies
About this portal
The portal is used to publish contributions for the online OA Journal of Sonic Studies, the storage of A/V materials, and the storage of previous issues.
contact person(s):
Marcel Cobussen ,
Vincent Meelberg url:
http://sonicstudies.org/about
Recent Activities
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Sounds of the Balkan - Editorial
(2022)
author(s): Diana Grgurić
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Sounds of the Balkan - Editorial
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Listening against "The Transition"
(2022)
author(s): Theodore Teichman
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This is an archive of places, but it is even more an archive of the materiality of listening. This constitutes a larger inquiry and fascination with the listening as performance and the various “instruments” and “scores” that shape or encode this sonic event of the performance of the image. In particular, this project uses this arts-based research approach to engage critically with the concept of "The Transition," which has shaped the geography and imaginary of Ex-Yugoslavia. This is a collection of recordings made and then composed into soundscapes between September 2018 and May 2019 in Serbia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Kosovo. Through these techniques I propose an approach soundscape practices to engage materially the constitutive world of listening and the narration of time-worlds.
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Soundscapes of Stalinism: Acoustical Experiences in Bucharest in the 1940s and 1950s
(2022)
author(s): Błażej Brzostek
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In this paper I point out phenomena related to the perception of sounds in Bucharest during the Stalinist period (1948-1956). I refer to personal accounts – diaries and memoirs – of representants of the city’s former social elite, sentenced to various deprivations under the communist regime. I focus on descriptive accounts of sounds in the city’s everyday life. The sounds are treated as an expression of the mental experiences of their listeners. In the sources collected here, the key experience is a reduction of agency, associated with existential anxiety.
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A Spectral Geology
(2022)
author(s): D.A. Calf
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Monuments exist as loci of official history, designed to be resilient and permanent. However, the world around them is in constant flux, questioning their continued significance. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken at monument (spomenik) sites in the former Yugoslav republics of the Western Balkans, together with archival sources, A Spectral Geology is a creative outcome of a continuing speculative investigation into sound and its potential contribution to alternative historical narratives. In imagining sound as a geological, sedimentary medium with the potential to transmit and sequester memory, it considers the possibility of hearing the murmured traces of the past through its excavation.
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What is the Affect of a Merry Genre? The Sonic Organization of Slovenian Folk Pop as a (Non)Balkan Sound
(2022)
author(s): Robert Bobnič, Natalija Majsova, and Jasmina Šepetavc
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This article examines Slovenian folk pop: an allegedly “national Slovenian” musical genre and sound. We analyze the political discourses, sonic organization, and affect of Slovenian folk pop, applying the theoretical perspectives of cultural studies, sonic studies, and affect studies, to decouple the affect of Slovenian folk pop from spontaneously ideological associations with the nation and its borders. We advocate for a layered analytical lens accounting for the sonic and sociocultural dimensions of music, concluding that analyses of modern, (seemingly) locally-specific genres, should consider how and to what ends affect is territorialized and inscribed into the framework of the nation.
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The Right to Polished Sound: Age and Class in the Viennese Balkan Music Scene
(2022)
author(s): Ondřej Daniel
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This study explores the musical sounds that link contemporary Vienna to the countries of the former Yugoslavia. For this purpose, I uncover a layer of South Slavic sounds in the Austrian capital and analyze two musical contributions to the city by migrants from this former socialist federation. I consider Vienna’s residents from the former Yugoslavia to be a distinct acoustic community; the two sound objects are in particular analyzed regarding age and class of both their producers and consumers.