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Through an analysis of Denys Rayner's The Enemy Below (1956) and Rick Campbell's Ice Station Nautilus (2016), this article demonstrates that military submarine novels critically reflect on the entanglements between technology, human agency, and (acoustical) imaginations of the ocean. After all, crew members must rely on advanced technologies to traverse and survive in the inhospitable subaqueous space. Moreover, as light does not travel through water, perception in this underwater world depends on auditory technology. Operators of these sonic technologies (such as hydrophones and sonar) often function as recognizable figures familiarizing audiences with the intricate technology and knowledge necessary to render this inaccessible space comprehensible. Examining depictions of these operators, this paper argues that delineating their (technological) sensorium is key not only in understanding the aforementioned novels' narrative structure and the aesthetics of the submarine soundscape, but also in determining the precarious position of the human subject in this technological environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the sonic landscape of Tarell Alvin McCraney's triptych The Brother/Sister Plays, particularly how sound and its absence functions in the plays to evoke and embody the simultaneous precarity and immutability of Black being, and of Black queer being specifically. By thinking through some of the many means of sonic expression which occur throughout these works (in the form of failures and gaps in language, singing and humming, and self-narration and vocal doubling, among others), I explore the linkages the plays perform between embodied experiences and archival histories of Blackness and queerness and sonicity, all of which ultimately offer ontological alternatives to more normative precepts of straightness, visuality, and whiteness. In attending to this intentional and multilateral sonicity – defined by its particular materiality and by its entanglements with dreaming, generationality, failure, embodiment, and temporal and spatial disorientation – I show how The Brother/Sister Plays make use of the world-making capabilities of sound to situate and enact a Black queer (theatrical) world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Salons were core institutions of the eighteenth-century European social calendar, especially in Paris. Literary performances and philosophical conversation were the core activities of many of these gatherings. What did conversation and literary readings actually sound like at these events? To what extent were voices audible to everyone in the room, or too muffled or far away to be heard? What was the impact of the ambiance or of ephemeral sound on the reading or reception of the hearing? Using textual descriptions, paintings, and architectural information, I reconstruct two legendary readings of eighteenthcentury texts, Voltaire's L'Orphélin de la Chine and Marmontel's Contes Moraux at one of the better documented Enlightenment-era salons (Madame Geoffrin's) to re-create the impact of sound and acoustics on a literary reading. These fictional recreations, while inherently speculative, hold promise in enriching the realms of sound and performance studies, offering valuable glimpses into the spatial dynamics and acoustic qualities inherent to informal and smaller performance venues for literary readings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Foreign Literature Studies is the property of Foreign Literature Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Chaucer's poetic works are full of references to sound and music, incorporated variously as part of thematization, characterization, and rhetorical structure. Attending to Chaucer's repeated interest in sound in his poetry allows scholars and students to consider how the field of literary sound studies can be applied to these works, providing another point of access for students as they become acquainted with and interrogate Chaucer’s poetry. For those interested in trying this approach to teaching Chaucer in the college classroom, this essay provides resources for instructors and students, including an overview of the field of literary sound studies, its intersection with Chaucer’s poetry, and two sample activities for use in both undergraduate and graduate courses.

This piece considers what it might mean to do something called soundwriting, doing qualitative research in ways that further articulate the sonic rather than reproducing ocularcentric framings that often recreate false binaries or enunciates privileging taxonomies of knowledge and care. To these ends, this article is divided into two overarching sections. The first section attends to questions of what it might mean to theorize processes of qualitative writing in general, what qualitative writing can do and the ethical commitments such writing should likely engage as matters of course. The second section presents the kinds of possibilities and challenges soundwriting can engender. This section underscores connections to fields of sonic study, how sounds can interrupt qualitative research's often ocularcentric understandings while maintaining continuing discussions of ethical commitments to ecologies and the things that comprise them, including (more than) human animals. Rather than a polemic, this piece seeks to address what soundwriting can do as well as what might be gained for qualitative researchers and our audiences through such intentions, attentions, and expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study demonstrates how an analysis grounded in sound studies rather than visual studies reveals a different technological outcome in the development of coastal navigation systems. In the late nineteenth century engineers at Scotland's Northern Lighthouse Board developed and managed a growing network of sound-based fog signals primarily using steam-powered sirens. Despite the prevailing perception that sound signaling was more unreliable and risky than lighthouses for coastal navigation engineers focused on maximizing the loudness of these devices to address the uncertainty of sound transmission. By prioritizing the siren and narrowing the system's goals to warning sailors about imminent danger the engineers created a system with fundamentally different aims implementation methods and design priorities than those of visually-based lighthouse technology. This sound-based analysis uncovers how sensory hierarchies shaped technological decisions leading to a unique and distinct approach to coastal navigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to construct a sonic understanding of the recent past of Hong Kong in protest. By utilizing and extending Steven Feld's framework of acoustemology, I examine the sonic events during protests and identify sounds in the cultural system understood among the inhabitants. I conducted a digital archival search of newspaper articles and created a dataset of the events sounding 'Glory to Hong Kong' during the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement. I explore three aspects: the participants, the space where the protest activities took place, and the sound generated and/or sounded in the activities. By demonstrating the interrelationality of them, I argue that sounds are able to reveal and (re-)claim spaces, establish a relationship between humans and space, bring an understanding of Hong Kong, and construct 'Hong Kong,' via collective sounding in protests and daily activities across time. This is the acoustemology of Hong Kong in protest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to chart out a cultural history of the voice in conversation in the nineteenth century. Often understood as a period of decline of the 'art' of conversation, as it was defined in the eighteenth century (and studied by historians of the period), the nineteenth century was witness to a shift away from conscious cultivation. Conversation, in the nineteenth century, became the counterpoint to more formalized modes of speech like oratory and debate, and was defined as 'natural'. As such, it also became an object of study for experts specializing in vocal health, who saw this 'natural' form of vocal expression as a place to see the voice in action at its least artificial. Based on the work of these experts – scientific treatises, early forays in laryngoscopy, educational work and self-help manuals – I propose an analysis of their largely normative texts that focuses on sound and vocal practice, rather than the development of scientific discourse and its disciplinary character. I borrow central concepts from sound studies, like that of the audile technique and aurality in order to do so, and place the vocalizing body at the center of this analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to delimit communicational questions for the study of the phenomenon of audiophilia. The research on audiophilia raises topics such as the influence and experience of audio technologies, the circulation of different types of sound media, the feedback between production and consumption, the practices that connect human and nonhuman in the reconfiguration of artistic production, etc. We aim to present three axes of analysis of audiofilia as a problem of communication. Firstly, audiophilia as a concept, its historical, functional and ideological determinations. Secondly, the musical production practices that problematise the links between art and technique in the scope of studios and phonographic recordings. Finally, the impact audiophilia has on listening techniques and on the very forms of translation and configuration of audiophile listening as communicational processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2006, Canadian director Guy Maddin premiered a semi-autobiographical film at TIFF called Brand Upon the Brain!, which featured live Foley sound and orchestral accompaniment. Adopting the aesthetics of silent film, Maddin presents a warped version of his childhood traumas, filtered through the funhouse mirror of Sigmund Freud, Fritz Lang and the Brothers Grimm. Further emphasizing the discordances of recollection and actual event, Maddin's theatrical presentation divorces sound from screen, reimagining the film's soundscape (and by extension, that of his childhood) as an exaggerated live reproduction, mirroring the very process of replaying a memory. Two years after this film premiered, Maddin made a faux-documentary about the original Foley process called Footsteps (2008), which centres upon the sound artists themselves. Employing the same aesthetic conventions, this short film depicts the craft of Foley as a surreal science of the subconscious, an act of symbolic projection carried out by strange figures in lab coats. If watching and listening to these films is to be momentarily trapped inside 'the fevered brain of Guy Maddin', as one critic puts it, then this article sets out to interrogate the role of the sound artist in enabling and enacting such fantasies within the director's singular psychodramas. Maddin's foregrounding of the Foley artist is, I argue, analogous to the exhumation and display of unconscious material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This autoethnographic study examines powerviolence in the predominantly Hispanic unincorporated area of El Rio, California, from the perspective of a drummer in a local powerviolence band. The unique human geography of El Rio, characterized by its demographic composition, urban layout, and cultural practices, shapes sonic cartographies and influences how individuals understand sound. Situating powerviolence as a form of "borderlands noise-music," this article investigates the intersection of sound perception and cultural identity, particularly for Chicano noise musicians. By exploring how powerviolence subverts dominant music constructs through its sonic, linguistic, emotional, and iconographic elements, this article highlights the transformative potential of noise-music in marginalized communities. Drawing on a sonic lineage from hardcore punk to powerviolence in California, commonalities among hardcore punk, thrashcore, grindcore, and powerviolence are illuminated, providing a basis for understanding powerviolence through sound. Furthermore, this study foregrounds the significance of powerviolence and noise-music as accessible forms of expression, particularly for aspiring musicians who lack the means to pursue formal study. By amplifying voices that may otherwise go unheard, powerviolence allows noise musicians to feel audible to dominant capitalist society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Avant is the property of Centre for Philosophical Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939) confounds 'common readers,' an elitist epithet for those who might otherwise be termed non-academic, non-specialized, non-conscripted, non-professional, or plain readers of Joyce. The flattened image of this common reader, as it is often constructed within Joycean and modernist thought, is at odds with the heterogeneity of actual readers, as well as with the anticipated common reader whom Joyce writes into the text of the Wake itself. Nevertheless, there is a commonality which unites the varied constructions of this reader: that aurality or listening to the text is for them the most viable method of accessing something as difficult as the Wake. In this article, I interrogate the constructions of this common reader to arrive at the meaning of an aural common reading of Joyce. Through a reading of the Wake, I argue that aurality as a mode of accessing the text is sanctioned by its design, and further, that the instability of listening facilitates the reader's recognition of that design. I also suggest that an aural common reading of the Wake constitutes a challenge to its authoritative and authorized readings, and reconfigures notions of its ownership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the advent of poetry performed by generative-AI voices. It proposes that these synthetic voices can cast a new light on literary historical understandings of the original performances through their minute differences. In places where the AI fails to fully achieve verisimilitude, there can be an “uncanny valley” effect, which allows listeners to hear the original performances anew, defamiliarized in the Russian Formalist sense of the term. The paper goes on to propose a phonetic comparison between the AI voices and the human voices they were trained on. By identifying a number of prosodic differences, the paper posits why the AI voice may sound similar but not quite right, leading to the uncanny effect. The intent of this machine-aided close listening is to further discuss the nuances of the human performances and their literary historical contexts, highlighting how the AI voice can support analyses of the original author performances.

Questo paper si concentra sul tema del world-building applicato ad una serie di progetti sonori contemporanei, proponendo un percorso multidisciplinare volto a delinearne le caratteristiche in relazione all’interazione con l’ascoltatore. Il testo esplora la dimensione speculativa di questi progetti, mettendo in luce come, oltre a rappresentare la realtà, essa venga anche messa in discussione, favorendo un'analisi critica su temi politici e sociali contemporanei. L’articolo prende avvio dalla rassegna New Worlds di Alice Bucknell e dall'articolo The Rise of Conceptronica di Simon Reynolds, i quali forniscono il contesto teorico di partenza per comprendere il ruolo crescente del world-building sonoro. Attraverso l’applicazione del modello del “database” di Azuma, verrà esplorata la struttura di questi progetti, ponendo successivamente attenzione sull'agentività del suono, che rappresenta un fattore cruciale nell’interazione con il fruitore. Inoltre, la sonic fiction e il design speculativo verranno analizzati come pratiche parte di questi progetti, sovvertendo le strutture narrative tradizionali e fungendo da strumenti chiave per esplorare temi contemporanei quali il controllo, la resistenza e l'inclusione. Tali opere offrono nuovi modi di concepire il futuro, proponendo alternative alle visioni dominanti e aprendo spazi per una riflessione critica sulla realtà e sulle sue possibili trasformazioni.

Attuned to sonic, aesthetic, and sensory modes of experience, and directed particularly to explore the implications of sound as it informs political thought and actions, in 2021, I began investigating Jerusalem’s soundscape. Following Jean-Luc Nancy’s argument that our perception is impacted by the subjectivity of listening, I invited a group of Palestinian and Israeli artists to work with me on this project, hoping to capture the multiple soundscapes this city offers to its residents, visitors, and passers-by. In this essay, I examine two of the group's projects: “Listening Walks in Jerusalem,” an online sonic archive open for anyone to listen to and download; and “Scores for Social Acoustics in Jerusalem,” an anthology of suggested listening paths in the city. I suggest that these artistic acts succeeded in capturing a range of sonic experiences of Jerusalem and may even have gone beyond Nancy’s words to provide tangible methods for listening to a sound event and hearing it (almost) the same.

Plantcare is having a moment. Recent years have seen an outpouring of audiovisual content across several social media platforms, wherein humans film and photograph themselves taking care of houseplants. These self-proclaimed “plant moms” build community through their shared passion for caring for houseplants and showing this form of tree-hugging to a wider community. In this contribution, I theorize this plant-filled digital terrain as a virtual greenhouse, a space where humans can perform with and show off their collections of houseplants. This virtual greenhouse points to how plantcare becomes a space to play with expectations of humanness apart from human–animal boundaries. Furthermore, contrary to notions of plants as being silent or inaudible lifeforms, this virtual greenhouse is rich with music and sound. Following an exploration of the overarching features of plantcare content and other kinds of digital human–nonhuman representations, I describe how creators in the virtual greenhouse use ASMR-like techniques, acousmatic narration, and reinterpretations of popular music to make their intimate relationships with nonhuman life audible. This contribution demonstrates how these human–plant assemblages engage with a “back-to-nature” environmentalism and present opportunities to reframe human–nonhuman relationships through creative practice.

On August 14, 2012, driving along what has become known as Mexico's "Carretera de la Muerte," Milynali Pérez, her three cousins, her uncle, and their car all disappeared as they approached Ciudad Mante, Tamaulipas. Since that day, Graciela Pérez, Milynali's mother, has arduously searched for answers and her daughter's remains, becoming one of Mexico's numerous buscadores. Moved by her story, Teatro Línea de Sombra (TLS) created Zona clausurada (2022) to relate the ruptured genealogies that have devastated Graciela's family, as well as myriad families in Tamaulipas and the nation. Emphasizing the sounds Graciela associates with Milynali's life and silences that characterize her disappearance, the performance-installation underscores the power of sound to affect us physically and emotionally. Employing what I call an acoustic affective map, I analyze how auditory recordings of search efforts, artistic prerecorded and live voices, and vocal interpretations of songs from Graciela's personal Spotify playlist remap affective triggers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews three books and uses these as motivation to consider the changing conditions for the discourse communities which define musicology and its companion disciplines. More specifically, the books inspire a re-evaluation of the contemporary conditions of musical experience, activity, and research in a digitally oriented sound–word publishing world. The article notes a growing body of disciplinary literature that interacts with, or presumes, the presence of a particular readership that not only reads, but actively listens, while reading. It encourages a more aurally directed way of writing and suggests that musicology and its companion disciplines should continue to explore more coherent ways to link words to music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper introduces sound studies as a field of interdisciplinary historical research and demonstrates how the history of sound and hearing can be explored in the historical record, using the example of the early Calvinist Reformation in Geneva. It argues that hearing difficulties were the central theme of early Calvinism that significantly shaped the character of its religious and material culture, and proposes to study the Reformation as a process of systematically creating a new culture of attentive listening. It shows that the Calvinist Reformation played an active role in constructing historical categories such as deafness as well as in defining distinctions between good and bad hearing and sound, contributing to the broadly defined history of acoustics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As public high school teachers, we have independently come to the realization that we are both searching for ways that our music rooms can be spaces where everyone has a chance to sound (speak, sing, play an instrument), and students and teachers have the opportunity to hear others in the room. At the center of this realization stands the classroom piano: it could be an instrument of communal sonic enjoyment but, in our experiences, tends to be dominated by a few. What we are here calling sonic egalitarianism is about creating conditions whereby students have equal opportunities to sound out, be loud, and perform in an environment without the expectation or demand of occupying such space sonically. In the tradition of co-writing (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2017), we share our individual critical narratives, adopting critical listening positionality (Robinson, 2020). Next, we respond to one another's narratives, drawing out commonalities for exploration through relevant literature and delve into analysis. We conclude with describing implications for classroom practices and making suggestions for a sonic constitution. By applying critical listening positionality through a reflective and critical practitioner approach we hope to move beyond defaults within our practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Artnodes is the property of Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Audio recording interviews, focus groups, and naturally occurring interactions have been utilised by social researchers for decades. Yet, the use of audio recordings as a tool to elicit participant responses has received less attention in social science research. This is despite heightened interest in non-traditional techniques such as the use of visual methodologies, and arts-based methods. In this article, I describe how I advanced a known method, vignettes, into an audio narrative to explore perceptions of sex work. This article reports on the methodological rationale for the novel use of audio vignettes, and the capacity they have for memory retrieval, eliciting reflections on lived experiences, and for providing richer attitudinal data. By drawing on 'accessibility theory', this article argues that audio vignettes are a powerful elicitor of attitudes. Furthermore, I claim that audio methods as I define them, can enhance the social scientists' toolkit and that, what I term 'audio sociology' needs further development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research examines studies about the process of spatial experience and highlights aural interactions. In this sense, the goal is to assess and describe the expanding corpus of literature in the field of sound and spatial experience and to provide a framework for further investigation. Key concepts and themes that emerge at the intersection of space, sound, and experience are examined through a comprehensive review. Bibliometric research techniques are applied with a methodological framework in accordance with the process of detecting themes. Web of Science database was used as the raw data source, and scientific mapping and analysis of the obtained data was performed using VOSviewer. PRISMA guidelines were utilized for the study's document selection, and reporting processes. Systematic scanning and selection processes resulted in the collection of 416 documents. The procedure of detecting themes led to the identification of 13 major themes and 136 key concepts that emerged. Essentially, it was discovered that the "soundscape" was the most significant concept and theme in the field of study. Furthermore, assessments and inferences were conducted on all other key concepts and themes. The major components of the field, concentrated areas, and potential development areas have been discovered through the analysis of conceptual relationship networks. The findings will provide future researchers an opportunity to comprehend how the research field has developed, as well as a chance to learn more about new potential fields of study and enhance their research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article studies how the acousmatic experience of literature revises and expands the concept of the voice deposited in poetry. The author analyzes existing interpretations of voice and poetic voice from the perspective of acousmatic theories. These theories redefine Western notions of the agency of voice as a metaphor of power and specific identity (which reduce voice to its representative functions). Therefore, the author states that experiencing the agency of the voice deposited in poetry may resemble experiencing the acousmatic voice. In turn, this allows one to experience the presence of the Other rather than merely its representation. According to the author, we can grasp the influence of the voice in a poem through the category of “excess,” which expresses resistance to the structural logic of language. Referring to examples from contemporary Polish engaged poetry, the author examines the category of excess in three possible configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the latest research on poetry performance in Polish literature. At the outset, the author situates it within the scope of sound studies as well as acoustic philology and audio anthropology. Then, the author focuses on Aleksandra Kremer’s book The Sound of Modern Polish Poetry: Performance and Recording After World War II and the research methods presented there for studying vocal performance. Kremer refers to Charles Bernstein’s concept of close listening, which she enriches with analyses using the computer program Praat, designed for scientific analysis of speech and phonetic phenomena. Kremer analyzes the sound waves of recorded poetic performances. Using this method, she examines recordings of Czesław Miłosz, Julia Hartwig, Miron Białoszewski, Wisława Szymborska, Aleksander Wat, Zbigniew Herbert, Anna Kamieńska, Anna Świrszczyńska, Tadeusz Różewicz, and Krystyna Miłobędzka. The author of the article notes that Kremer’s close listening studies have a hermeneutic character, encompassing biography, history, and culture. This extensive anthropological context, supported by sound visualization, brings us closer to capturing the phenomenon of the poet’s recorded voice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes sound arrangements in intermedial incarnations of Anatol Stern’s avant-garde poem “Europa.” To this end, the article examines two different interwar editions of the poem: the first edition in Reflektor in 1925 and the 1929 edition by Mieczysław Szczuka and Teresa Żarnower. Moreover, the article includes three films inspired by the poem: the 1931–1932 Europa by Franciszka and Stefan Themerson, rediscovered in 2019, the Themersons’ 1983 reconstruction of the lost film, and Europa II by Piotr Zarębski, a 1988 reconstruction of the 1930s film. Furthermore, the article considers the 1976 outdoor spectacle by Akademia Ruchu. Each work organizes the sound layer differently, but the relationship between sound, image, and silence remains significant. This relationship connects to the poem’s arrangement in terms of versification and typography as well as its intermedial history in many ways. The article introduces new or modified terms: intermedial chain, vocal juxtaposition, visual silence, and modality of perception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a compressed examination of sound studies, wherein the author explores the nexus of sound and listening as pivotal junctures intersecting semiotic and phenomenological discourses. At the same time, sound and listening are clarified as perplexing lacunas in the philosophical realm of sound. The study focuses on sound studies as a subject of inquiry to scrutinise its ontological underpinnings. Additionally, the article delves into the conundrum of why investigations into sound-related issues have predominantly occurred within the realms of science and art, often remaining confined within the purview of technology. In addressing these questions, the author seeks to elucidate the limitations of the current discourse on sound. The article explores the dimensions of representational sound, soundscape, and sound installation, thereby broadening the scope of inquiry within the field of sound studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas written texts are often perceived as silent, stable, and solitary, attuning to the sonic dimensions of literatures means recognizing how sound crosses borders and opens ears to multiplicity and simultaneity. In this essay, I propose resonant reading as a way of listening to the voices underlying a literary narrative and amplifying its themes, then I advocate for why this attunement towards aural literacies is especially important for borderlands narratives. I demonstrate resonant reading through a comparative analysis of Valeria Luiselli's 2019 novel Lost Children Archive and two other novelists she references: Cormac McCarthy and Roberto Bolaño. While McCarthy was credited with writing the "Great American Novel" and Bolaño was celebrated as the greatest Latin American literary voice of his generation, both of these writers shared borderlands narratives where characters move between Latin America and the United States. By citing these writers as intertexts in her own exploration of migrant journeys towards and across the U.S.-Mexico border, Luiselli demonstrates how multiple texts create thematic resonances together, beyond what each text achieves individually. I argue that an attunement towards resonance in literature offers a new way of understanding intertextuality as sharing more complete and inclusive stories of peoples and places. In conclusion, this essay, by synthesizing Transnational American Studies and Literary Sound Studies, sheds new light on how sonic methodologies change how the reception and reputation of literatures are understood across the Americas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces the phenomenon of opera by telephone in late nineteenth-century British Columbia, with a focus on a local 1895 production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance (1879). Examining the scrapbooks of prominent New Westminster figure, William Andrew DeWolf-Smith, this research centres on an "ingenious telephone arrangement" that allowed remote audience members to listen to live theatrical performances via telephone (or "theatre phone"). This study considers the historical, technological, and theoretical aspects of the theatre phone, including its impact on theatre reception. With reference to sound studies scholar Adrian Curtin's work, this study investigates how the theatre phone created a novel listening experience, enabling a new form of private audio theatre among a network of synchronous "shadow audiences." The theatre phone represents a significant turning point in local media history, which is linked to broader developments in communications technologies during the period. In addition to examining its role as an emerging business venture, the author also explores its significance as an accessibility tool that enabled remote audiences to access theatrical performances from a distance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I trace the resonances of the alarido in numerous nineteenth-century Argentine nation-building texts, with a specific focus on Lucio V. Mansilla's Una excursión a los indios ranqueles. I analyze the recurrence of the racialised stereotype of the "Indigenous war cry" or "alarido", in numerous literary and critical texts around the so-called "Conquest of the Desert", not in order to uncover the "truth" of such voices but to instead study the dynamics underlying the gap between their inscription and audition and how they interrupt colonial logics of listening and sense-making. By situating such texts within the historical context of phono-ethnography and sound recording - inscriptive modes which presented similar anxieties around preserving disappearing voices - I argue that the alarido emerges not from a single source but instead resounds as an acousmatic, ghostly multi-vocality that these writers already locate in a melancholic past, foreclosing the futurity of the Indigenous voice in the demand for national integration. I then contend that such discordant vocalities resist gestures of inclusion into national literature and politics. I finally turn to the poet Cecilia Vicuña's listening to Selk'nam chants recorded by the ethnologist Anne Chapman, where I advance a poetic mode of listening that resists capture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses Wrocław’s beach bars, i.e. open-air riverside facilities which (as the name suggests) mostly possess artificial sandy beaches. This importance of this type of venue, relatively new in Wrocław, for the local music life is constantly growing. The text characterises these urban spaces (which have been of only marginal interest to Polish scholars to date) and defines their place in the city’s popular music scene in relation to traditional forms of that repertoire’s presence. In his survey of local musical practice, the author refers to the city’s sonic identity (soundscape), which is co-created by urban artists. The paper covers the period of the author’s field research in 2019–2021 as well as his later observations which indicate potential directions of beach bars’ development and confirm their growing role in shaping Wrocław’s local music scene.

Overlooking the ocean, near the town of Ōtsuchi, Japan, a white telephone booth containing a disconnected rotary phone sits within the Bell Gardia Kujira-Yama garden. Itaru Sasaki, its creator, named this booth kaze no denwa, or the wind phone. Sasaki built the wind phone in 2011 to “call” his cousin, who had recently died of cancer. He built the wind phone for personal use; however, after the March 11, 2011, earthquake/tsunami that claimed the lives of nearly twenty thousand people and left around twenty-five hundred missing, the wind phone unexpectedly became a destination for others mourning the loss of their loved ones. This essay examines how the wind phone reinvents the communication technology of the telephone as a technology of mourning that helps the living feel heard by and connected to the dead. Taking on multiple forms, the wind phone offers an interactive sensorial encounter that is not necessarily available through traditional material objects associated with mourning, such as gravestones, statues, and plaques.