Review: On Audio Culture

A review of the book Audio Culture edited by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner

The flap-o-phone, a Site-Specific Turntable

This article gives an overview of the author\u27s site specific turntable, the flapophone. Supplemental attached files include images, audio, and video of the flapophone being played by the author

A Secret History of Phonography

The version posted here is the expanded version of an essay that first appeared in The Believer in 2008

Activist Sound: Field Recording, Phonography, and Soundscapes of Protest

Fusing practiced-based and scholarly research, this thesis examines and articulates the practice and products of field recording as a form of protest. Unlike studio recording, which transpires in sheltered and otherwise controlled environments, field recordings have historically been made in unstable, ad hoc, and unpredictable contexts often by un- and self-trained scholars, scientists, artists, and explorers. The contingent and elusive categorization of such recordings as ethnographic documents, environmental research, sound effects, nature recording, soundscape composition, sound art, music, and non-music not only can perturb or further unsettle the listener but offers an entryway into explicating ideologies of listening and recording. The practice-based component of this research emerges from phonography, a contemporary form of field recording characterized by critical approaches to subject matter, sonic fidelity, and the role of the recordist––mediated by the relatively recent availability of inexpensive portable recording devices. The written, scholarly component of this research is rooted in the soundscape model articulated by R. Murray Schafer and subsequently developed by theorists of and contiguous to sound studies, including Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp. Research methodologies include historical investigation, paratextual analysis, participant observation, and artistic creation. Drawing from a representative selection of the author’s unfolding practice over the last 10 years–– N30: Live at the WTO Protest November 30, 1999 (2008); Favorite Intermissions (2008); and To the Cooling Tower, Satsop (2015)––the case studies in this thesis resulted in a critical framework, “activist sound,” for identifying field recordings and field recording-based sound works as a form of protest

James L. Smith, Water in Medieval Intellectual Culture

Comment l’imaginaire de l’eau est-il mobilisé dans les pratiques intellectuelles ? C’est la question originale que pose James L. Smith dans Water in Medieval Intellectual Culture. L’ouvrage prend pour fil conducteur l’eau, conçue comme une entité intellectuelle, pour explorer les textes monastiques du xiie s. L’a. se donne une double tâche. Premièrement, il étudie comment les métaphores relatives à l’eau sont mises au service d’un mode de pensée à la fois fluide et complexe. Pour cela, il s’i..

Religion, science et magie au Moyen Âge

Béatrice Delaurenti, maître de conférences (en cours de nomination) L’action à distance au Moyen Âge : histoire intellectuelle de l’imitation et de la contagion Le séminaire s’est intéressé aux conceptions médiévales de l’action à distance, envisagée comme un fil conducteur pour questionner les relations entre religion, science et magie au Moyen Âge. Une première partie a été consacrée à définir l’action à distance et à identifier ses enjeux, dans le monde contemporain d’abord, dans le monde ..

Oresme, Lucain et la « voix de sorcière »

Dans la littérature enfantine, le personnage de la sorcière se caractérise par un balai, un chat noir, un chapeau pointu, une verrue… et une voix particulière, caverneuse ou glaçante. Cet attribut vocal appartient à l’imaginaire contemporain : la voix émane du corps de la sorcière, elle le prolonge, elle augmente son pouvoir. Quel serait le ressort de la puissance de cette voix ? Quelles en sont les sources ? Sur ces questions, les réflexions d’un théologien du XIVe siècle apportent un éclair..

Critical Approaches to Information Literacy and Authentic Assessment Using Wikipedia

The interdisciplinary course Pink Noise: Women Making Electronic Music explores the hands-on creation of electronic music through the lens of feminist critical frameworks, activism, and collective action. Techniques and topics include composing with Texts, Activist Sound, Live Sampling and Delay, Turntablism, Soundscape Composition, the Occult Voice, and Meditative Synthesis. Students compose electronic music individually and collaboratively in small groups. No prior knowledge of music theory, composition, instrumental technique, or sound software is necessary. I designed and co-taught this assignment with significant feedback from Christopher DeLaurenti, Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at the College of William and Mary. This assignment is a significant part of the course, and as the music librarian, I made six class visits over the semester. The assignment on Critical Approaches to Information Literacy and Authentic Assessment Using Wikipedia by Kathleen Delaurentl is published in Information Literacy in Music: An Instructor's Companion, edited by Beth Christensen, Erin Conor, and Marian Ritter, MLA Technical Reports Series. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, Inc., 2017. Used with permission. see: www.areditions.com and http://www.aredltions.com/publicatlons/mla-bookseries/mla-technical-reports. htm

Les Parva Naturalia d’Aristote. Fortune antique et médiévale, éd. Christophe Grellard et Pierre-Marie Morel

Le volume dirigé par Christophe Grellard et Pierre-Marie Morel rassemble onze contributions en français ou en anglais sur la « fortune antique et médiévale » des Parva Naturalia d’Aristote. L’intitulé engage un questionnement sur le devenir de ce corpus dans l’Antiquité – aux périodes hellénistique et impériale – ainsi qu’au Moyen Âge, dans le monde arabe et dans l’Occident latin. Les Parva Naturalia sont une collection de traités d’Aristote sur la sensation, la mémoire, le sommeil et les rêv..