An Exploration of the Notion of Sound (Re)Production Through Media Archaeological Creative Praxis (original) (raw)

Abstract

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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