Title: Karin Bijsterveld and Jose van Dijck, eds. 2009. Sound Souvenirs: Audio Technologies, Memory and Cultural Practices. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Abstract: that foreground technologies as central to cultural memory; they argue in their introduction that the sound souvenirs lining our shelves still have yet to receive significant scholarly attention, and this book at tempts to address that gap. Its contributors explore the cultural practices of archiving, collecting, resuscitating, and restoring past sounds in order to probe the links between and memory; this includes examining the ephemera surrounding recorded sound-reel-to-reel tapes, vinyl records, and so on-along with the sound-making devices themselves, old and new, from transistor radios to cassette recorders to iPods. The ambitious collection encompasses twelve chapters in four sections-Storing Sound, Auditory Nostalgia, Technostalgia, and Earwitnessing-each attending to different aspects of the connections between memory, cultural practices, and audio technologies. The first sec tion, Storing Sound, explores the history of archiving recordings, from the supposed permanence of digital file storage to the practice of creating mix tapes. Auditory Nostalgia explores the connection between memory and portable audio technologies such as radios, Walkmans, and iPods. Technostalgia, refers to the nostalgia for the of antiquated technologies: that special analog amplifier, that vintage 1970s synthesizer. Earwitnessing;' the final section, is titled after another word Schafer de fined (1994 [1977]: 2 72), the aural counterpart to being an eyewitness; the
Publication Year: 2010
Publication Date: 2010-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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