Sonic Persuasion: Recording Sound in the Recorded Age

摘要

There is increasing recognition that auditory aspects of culture have been neglected or at least sidelined by comparison with the visual, the inclusion of the definite article before the otherwise adjectival 'visual' itself signifying the ascendancy of sight above hearing. We understand far less of voices, music, noises and silence, and of how they culturally operate, because of this analytical deaf spot in our scholarly attention. Think of the ink spilt in attending to images, still or moving; there is nothing like this for the semiotics of sound, despite the introduction of the telephone, the phonograph and the radio over the past century or so, and despite the sonic dimension of visual media.