On this month's episode I discuss the recent book Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism with its author, Marie Thompson. We discuss different conceptions of 'noise', as anti-music or the cacophony of industrial society, competing theories of noise and Marie's powerful argument that noise is neither inherently bothersome nor transgressive. We end by discussing some of the musicians and sound artists that Marie argues transcend the dominant morality by which noise is related to.
Marie Thompson is a Lecturer in Lincoln School of Film and Media. Her research centres on the affective, material and gendered dimensions of sound, noise and music. She is the author of Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect and Aesthetic Moralism (Bloomsbury, 2017) and the co-editor of Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience (Bloomsbury, 2013). She has also published a number of chapters and articles on the intersections of noise and femininity.
Tracklist
Bredbeddle – Keep the Salt
Pauline Oliveros and Reynols – Cathedral Juice
Teddy and the Frat Girls– I owe it
to the girls
Vile evil veil – left luck #1
Angel Ho – removals
Henry Cowell – Aeolian Harp and
Sinister Resonance
Klein - Cry Theme
Helen Papaioannou – In the Loop
(performed by Helen Papaioannou and
Hannabiell Sanders)
Mmeellttiinngg – flower
John T. Gast - Sedna
Lamers - Inthro (Breathing exercise)
Torturing Nurse - ncsda
Pole – Modul
Sachiko M – don’t ask
Diamanda Galas – Looks could Kill
Inga Copeland and Dean Blunt - 2
References
R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, Destiny Books, 1994.
Claude Shannon, "The Mathematical Theory of Communication", The Mathematical Theory of Communication, University of Illinois Press, 1949.
Michel Serres, The Parasite (translated by Lawrence R. Schehr), University of Minnesota Press, 2007.
Steven Shaviro, "Accelerationist Aesthetics: Necessary Inefficiency in Times of Real Subsumption", E-Flux, No.13, June 2013.
Tiqqun, "The Cybernetic Hypothesis"
