The following text is an excerpt from the introduction of the book The Sounds of Spectators at Football. The excerpt indicates the general motivation for the book, namely a discrepancy between, on the one hand, a widely held belief that the sounds of spectators are important to the experience of football spectatorship and, on the … Read more
In a previous post on this blog, Marie Thompson has discussed the complex interweaving of audio technologies and care in the home. This is a broad theme that I’d like to continue here. Marie’s post is accompanied by an image of a smart speaker in the home. This complex machine housing many electronic components to … Read more
In my last blog, I wrote about a recent visit to Maya Lin’s Listening Circle at Chief Timothy Park in Eastern Washington. Associated with the Confluence Project, the site asked challenging questions about how sound and listening to silence can help us recognize the devastating impact of Lewis and Clark’s 1804/5 expedition on Native American … Read more
In this and my next post to this blog, I write about a recent trip along the Columbia River and invite you to think about sound’s ability to read violent history against the grain and memorialize the silence that followed the destruction of vibrant sites of life. How, I ask, can we listen to the … Read more
In this regular Q&A series, we interview authors and major figures in the field about their work, interests, and overall thoughts on sound studies. Nicolai Jørgensgaard Graakjær is Professor of Music and Sound in Market Communication in the Department of Communication and Psychology at Aalborg University, Denmark. His publications include Analyzing Music in Advertising (2015), … Read more
In this regular Q&A series, we interview authors and major figures in the field about their work, interests, and overall thoughts on sound studies. Based in Hangzhou, China, Jing-Adel Wang is a sound studies scholar, art anthropologist, curator and practitioner in sound art. She is currently an Associate Professor of sound studies at Zhejiang University, … Read more
Listening-with Humans and Nonhumans Auditioning a field recording, and assembling its meaning, is a similar yet very different process to making a jigsaw. As a child, I tried to complete a jigsaw puzzle without the crutch of the image guide. It was a process that oscillated between hope and despair. Hope at the freedom to … Read more
When do the sounds and silences of any war really end? I recently came across a contemporary story of a World War One shell exploding in the Carpathian Mountains. A newly married British couple of Ukrainian heritage, Norbert and Lydia Makarchuk had camped out in the idyllic countryside to share a honeymoon evening with family … Read more
Thousands of college instructors, after doing their job for the last year primarily from home and via video, are back to teach in real classrooms and lecture halls this fall. Instead of seeing their students locked into separate Zoom tiles on screen, they finally face them head-on again, physically present. Little about this, however, feels … Read more
In November 2020, Amazon launched Care Hub: ‘a free remote care-giving solution from Alexa’. Owners of Amazon’s Echo smart speaker in the United States are now able to use their device to provide updates to a designated caregiver, or call a loved one if they need help. In an advert for the service, an older … Read more