Theo van Leeuwen – Speech, Music, Sound

Theo van Leeuwen worked as a film and television producer and used to play  jazz before he studied linguistics and became the dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology in Sydney. He is now regarded a key figure in the field of social semiotics. Dispite that, his book “Speech, Music, Sound” is [...]

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Stuart Sim – Manifesto for Silence

In Cairo, biggest city on the african continent, noise levels from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. average at about 85 decibels, at central squares even noises often reach 95 decibel, the New York Times recently reports. For Stuart Sim, Professor of Critical Theory in the Deptartment of English Studies at the University of Sunderland, this [...]

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Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner – Audio Culture

An almanach packed with essays and writings of such different sources like early modern music pioneers Russolo, Varèse, and Cage next to DJ Spooky and Kim Cascone, the book traces back many cross references in all strains of the musical avant-garde be it experimental, minimal, improvised, electronic or from the DJ culture. A must on [...]

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Jean-Francois Augoyard and Henry Torgue – Sonic Experience, A Guide To Everyday Sounds

In a word: this book is very rewarding reading: loaded with indepth theory and surprising new concepts about the classification of sound phenomena, it took 10 years to translate this work into english. Nothing for someone new to philosophical considerations about music, sound and  noise, nevertheless the best summary in this area I know so [...]

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Bernie Krause – Wild Soundscapes

Environmental sound recording appears to look back on a short history: until the late 1960s is was only practiced by some biologists doing reasearch in acoustic interaction in nature. Understandably enough recording equipment at that time was heavy and prone to technical failure in the field. This changed not only due to developments in sound [...]

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Pierre Bourdieu – About Television

This book is not explicitly about music or sound art, nevertheless it is a thoughtful examination under which circumstances the media is working. Though published in 1996 and based on two programmes Bourdieu produced for a private TV channel of France, the transcriptions of his TV-lectures are by no means dated but even more relevant [...]

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Morton Feldman – Give my Regards to Eight Street, collected Writings of Morton Feldman

This Book is a collection of essays, short writings, sleeve notes and little sketches of one of the most influential last century avantegarde composers. Morton Feldman is famous for the quiteness and subtle beauty of his pieces, they were inhabited by a spiritual life rarely found in modern music. Feldman found a metaphysical place of [...]

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