Abstract
Space and music are always already intertwined. But while the two concepts relate to the symbolic order, the time-based (or time-basing) sonic signal rather performs a Möbius loop with “space.” It makes sense, therefore, to clearly differentiate, in the “spatial” context, between acoustics, sound, and music. While the enframing is “spatial” (such as theatre stages and opera houses, as well as the radio apparatus and computing architectures), the sonic event itself is a temporal product(ion). Any “musical” composition is a geometrization of the genuinely temporal fabrics, or woven carpets of sound, while the acoustic signal is a function of time. While musical notation (and its technological equivalent “digitization”, as much as any sound “archive”) is a geometrization of sono-temporal patterns, for the acoustic signal there is no “space” but rather genuine time functions such as delay (known from echolocation). Where sound takes place, there is no space; McLuhan’s term “acoustic space” is an oxymoron. The archaeology of knowledge on the relationship between music and space becomes media-active archaeology when it comes to re-enacting past faded-away acoustics - be it ancient theatres, or the songs of the Homeric Sirens. Sound, here, is no dramaturgial supplement, but becomes genuine media theatre. But with echography, radar, and the sonograph, “space” became a direct product(ion) of signal (re-)transmission.
References
Alloa, Emmanuel. “Metaxu. Figures de la médialité chez Aristote.” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 106, no. 2 (2009): 247–62.
Anders, Günther. “Philosophische Untersuchungen über musikalische Situationen.” In Musikphilosophische Schriften: Texte und Dokumente, edited by Reinhard Ellensohn, 13–140. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2017.
———. “Spuk und Radio.” In Musikphilosophische Schriften: Texte und Dokumente, edited by Reinhard Ellensohn, 248–50. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2017.
———. “The Acoustic Stereoscope.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 10, no. 2 (1949): 238–43.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes toward a Historical Poetics.” In The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited by Michael Holquist, 84–258. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981.
Berressem, Hanjo. Eigenvalue: Contemplating Media in Art. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018.
Berthold, Oswald. EM-Sniffing. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin Seminar für Medienwissenschaft, 2009. https://www.musikundmedien.hu-berlin.de/de/medienwissenschaft/medientheorien/hausarbeiten_essays/pdfs/em-sniffer.pdf.
Blesser, Barry and Linda-Ruth Salter. “Ancient Acoustic Spaces.” In The Sound Studies Reader, edited by Jonathan Sterne, 186–96. London: Routledge, 2012.
Biancorosso, Giorgio and Emilio Sala. “Editorial. Five Keywords and a Welcome.” Sound Stage Screen 1, no. 1 (2021), 5–6.
Borbach, Christoph. “Signal Propagation Delays: Eine Mediengeschichte der Operationalisierung von Signallaufzeiten. 1850–1950.” Diss., University of Siegen, 2022.
Carpenter, Edmund and Marshall McLuhan. “Acoustic Space.” In Explorations in Communication: An Anthology, edited by Edmund Carpenter and Marshall McLuhan, 65–70. Boston: Beacon Press, 1960.
Eno, Brian. “The Studio as Compositional Tool.” In Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music, edited by Christoph Cox and Daniel Warner, 127–30. New York: Continuum, 2004.
Ernst, Wolfgang. Sonic Time Machines: Explicit Sound, Sirenic Voices, and Implicit Sonicity. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016.
———. The Delayed Present: Media-Induced Interventions into Contempor(e)alities. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2017.
———. “Towards a Media-Archaeology of Sirenic Articulation: Listening with Media-Archaeological Ears.” The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, no. 48 (2014): 7–17.
Feld, Steven. “Acoustemic Stratigraphies. Recent Work in Urban Phonography.” Sensate Journal, no. 1 (2011): https://sensatejournal.com/steven-feld-acoustemic-stratigraphies.
Frommolt, Karl-Heinz and Martin Carlé. “The Song of the Sirens.” The Nordic Journal of Aesthetics, no. 48 (2014): 18–33.
Goodman, Steve. Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.
Grulke, Sonja. Sound on Display: Klangartefakte in Ausstellungen. Marburg: Büchner, 2023.
Haberer, Maximilian. “Tape Matters. Studien zu Ästhetik, Materialität und Klangkonzepten des Tonbandes.” PhD diss., Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 2023.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, edited by H. G. Hotho. Vol. 3. Berlin, 1838.
Holger Rindel, Jens and Claus Lynge Christensen. “Room Acoustic Simulation and Auralization: How Close Can We Get to the Real Room?” Keynote lecture, The Eighth Western Pacific Acoustics Conference, Melbourne, 2–9 April 2003. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/292140865_Room_Acoustic_Simulation_and_Auralization_-_How_Close_can_we_get_to_the_Real_Room_Keynote_lecture.
Holmes, Thom. Electronic and Experimental Music: Technology, Music, and Culture. 6th ed. New York: Routledge, 2020.
Howard, Deborah and Laura Moretti. Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009.
Hunt, Frederick V. Electroacoustics: The Analysis of Transduction, and its Historical Background. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954.
Kaden, Christian. “Was hat Musik mit Klang zu tun?!: Ideen Zu Einer Geschichte Des Begriffs Musik Und Zu Einer Musikalischen Begriffsgeschichte.” Archiv Für Begriffsgeschichte, no. 32 (1989): 34–75.
Kant, Immanuel. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1997.
Kittler, Friedrich. “Weltatem: Über Wagners Medientechnologie.” In Diskursanalysen 1: Medien, edited by Friedrich A. Kittler, Manfred Schneider and Samuel Weber, 94–107. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1987.
Langhans, Carl Ferdinand. Ueber theater oder Bemerkungen über Katakustik in Beziehung auf Theater. Berlin: Gedruckt bei Gottfried Hayn, 1810.
Laske, Otto E. Music, Memory, and Thought: Explorations in Cognitive Musicology. Ann Arbor: University Microfilm International, 1977.
McMurray, Peter. “Once Upon Time: A Superficial History of Early Tape.” Twentieth-Century Music 14, vol. 1 (2017): 25–48.
Miyazaki, Shintaro. “Algorhythmics: Understanding Micro-Temporality in Computational Cultures.” Computational Culture, no. 2 (2012): http://computationalculture.net/algorhythmics-understanding-micro-temporality-in-computational-cultures.
———. “Urban Sounds Unheard-of: A Media Archaeology of Ubiquitous Infospheres.” Continuum 27, no. 4 (2013): 514–22.
Nake, Frieder. “Das doppelte Bild.” Bildwelten des Wissens 3, no. 3 (2005): 40–50.
Price, Peter. Resonance: Philosophy for Sonic Art. New York: Atropos Press, 2011.
Riis, Morten. “Where are the Ears of the Machine? Towards a Sounding Micro-Temporal Object-Oriented Ontology.” Journal of Sonic Studies, vol. 10 (October 2015): https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/219290/219291.
Sanio, Sabine. “Ein Blick hinter den Vorhang? Zum Verhältnis von Musik und Medienästhetik.” In Akusmatik als Labor. Kunst – Kultur – Medien, edited by Sven Spieker and Mario Asef, 39–58. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2023.
Schaeffer, Pierre. Traité des objets musicaux. Paris: Seuil, 1966.
Schafer, R. Murray. The Tuning of the World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.
Thiermann, Alfredo. “Radio as Architecture: Notes toward the Redefinition of the Berlin Walls.” In War Zones: gta papers 2, edited by Samia Henni, 69–83. Zurich: gta Verlag, 2019.
Tkaczyk, Viktoria. Thinking with Sound: A New Program in the Sciences and Humanities around 1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2023.
Völz, Horst. “Versuch einer systematischen und perspektivischen Analyse der Speicherung von Informationen,” Die Technik 20, vol. 10 (1965): 650–59.
Weinzierl, Stefan, Paolo Sanvito, Frank Schultz and Clemens Büttner. “The Acoustics of Renaissance Theatres in Italy.” Acta Acustica united with Acustica volume 101, no. 3 (May/June 2015): 632–41.
Woodward, Philip M. “Theory of Radar Information.” Transactions of the IRE Professional Group on Information Theory 1, no. 1 (1953): 108–113.
Zuse, Konrad. “Calculating Space (Rechnender Raum).” In A Computational Universe: Understanding and Exploring Nature as Computation, edited by Hector Zenil, 729–86. Singapore: World Scientific, 2013.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright (c) 2024 Wolfgang Ernst