Mechanical Sound by Karin Bijsterveld Mechanical Sound by Karin Bijsterveld Mechanical Sound by Karin Bijsterveld Mechanical Sound by Karin Bijsterveld
This book explains how we ended up like this. It focuses on four crucial episodes in the Western history of noise between the late nineteenth and the late twentieth century: public discussions of industrial noise, of city traffi c noise, of neighborly noise of gramophones and radios, and of aircraft noise. A fi fth chapter highlights the celebration of noise in the avant- garde music
of the interwar period, and thus serves as a counterpoint to the other chapters. It both illustrates how such reverence embodied the positive connotations of mechanical sound that antinoise activists had to cope with, and shows how the introduction of machines in music re-enacted the issue of who was to control sound. The remaining chapters explore the decades immediately succeeding the rise of the public debate over the roar of new, or recently ubiquitous, machines.
In doing so, this book centers on society’s struggle and occasional success with controlling mechanical sounds. It also underscores how the strategies for solving earlier noise problems—embedded in law, scholarship, scientifi c instruments, and techniques—recurred in and often structured the approaches to newer ones, which at times created new problems. How can we account for such continuities?
Mechanical Sound
of the interwar period, and thus serves as a counterpoint to the other chapters. It both illustrates how such reverence embodied the positive connotations of mechanical sound that antinoise activists had to cope with, and shows how the introduction of machines in music re-enacted the issue of who was to control sound. The remaining chapters explore the decades immediately succeeding the rise of the public debate over the roar of new, or recently ubiquitous, machines.
In doing so, this book centers on society’s struggle and occasional success with controlling mechanical sounds. It also underscores how the strategies for solving earlier noise problems—embedded in law, scholarship, scientifi c instruments, and techniques—recurred in and often structured the approaches to newer ones, which at times created new problems. How can we account for such continuities?
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