In The Sonic Persona, Holger Schulze undertakes a critical study of some of the most influential studies in sound since the 19th century in the natural sciences, the engineering sciences, and in media theory, confronting them with contemporary artistic practices, with experimental critique, and with disturbing sonic experiences.From Hermann von Helmholtz to Miley Cyrus, from FLUXUS to the Arab Spring, from Wavefield Synthesis to otoacoustic emissions, from premillennial clubculture to postdemocratic authoritarianism, from signal processing to human echolocation: This book presents a fundamental critique concerning recent sound theories and their anthropological concepts – and proposes an alternate, a more plastic, a visceral framework for research in the field of a cultural anthropology of sounding and listening.This anthropology of sound takes its readers and listeners on a research expedition to the multitude of alien humanoids and their surprising sonic personae: in dynamic and generative tension between predetermined auditory dispositives, miniscule and not seldomly ignored sound practices, and idiosyncratic sensory corpuses: a critique of the senses.I’m going to prove the impossible really exists.
Holger Schulze is full professor in musicology at the University of Copenhagen and principal investigator at the Sound Studies Lab. He is the author of numerous volumes, articles, radio features on the field of Sound & Sensory Studies.
I. The Materialization of Sound: A Research History1. Quantifying Sound2. Materializing Listening 3. Corporealizing the SensesII. The Sonic Persona: An Anthropology of Sound4. In Auditory Dispositives5. The Sonic Persona 6. A Sensory CorpusIII. The Precision of Sensibility: A Political Critique7. The Precision of Sensibility 8. Resistance and Resonance 9. Generativity
[The Sonic Persona] is well-written and discusses important issues in a manner that is thoroughly thought-provoking ... [It] opens up so many new ways of dealing with sound and sensory experience, that I regularly almost yelled at the pages: “Yes! Tell me more!"