Abstract
This chapter reconsiders the World Soundscape Project’s (WSP) media practices as media theories in action. Sterne listens to and analyzes two canonical works, Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989) and Barry Truax’s Riverrun (1986), to consider them as examples of media theory in the sonic register. The chapter argues, anachronistically, that these works are examples of multimodal scholarship before that term came into existence. In doing this, Sterne hopes to help bring sonic histories and practices more fully into discussions of the digital humanities while also offering an alternative to the ways in which media theory coming out of the World Soundscape Project is usually discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
Thanks to the editors for the opportunity and their patience; to Carrie Rentschler, Andy Stuhl, and Rachel Bergmann for readings of a draft; to Mara Mills for many hours of rich conversation about sound, media, and time; to Tara McPherson for an opportunity to really think through sound and the digital humanities; to Neil Verma and Jake Smith and the SSLG at Northwestern University for a place to be heard; to Andra McCartney for some helpful exchanges about the WSP; and to Barry Truax and Hildegard Westerkamp for talking with me and for their work.
- 2.
At the risk of ruining the joke by explaining it for nonnative speakers, or for readers who stumble across this work in the future: “O.G.” is a slang term from hip hop, short for “original gangsta,” which refers to practice that is authentic, “old school,” or the basis of something that others developed upon.
- 3.
As of this writing, the piece is currently available to hear at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg96nU6ltLk. It is also available on Westerkamp’s Transformations CD.
- 4.
This is not strictly correct. Andra McCartney (1999, p. 217) discusses score for the spoken part of the piece. NB: the digital copy of McCartney’s dissertation lacks on-page pagination. Thus, I have cited the pages as displayed in a PDF reader so they are easier to find, even though they clearly do not conform to the original pagination for the paper document as suggested by the Table of Contents. I am using this copy: http://hildegardwesterkamp.ca/resources/PDFs/writings-pdf/Andradiss.pdf
- 5.
From a definitional standpoint, Rutherford-Johnson is certainly correct, though from the standpoint of practice, the institutions of Western Art Music are still relatively impermeable for a wide swath of people and practices and remain overwhelmingly male (Born & Devine 2015). One hopes a new generation of composers, with ears for soundscapes, sound art, pop, funk, metal, and electronic music, might change this.
- 6.
I am certain the company would hate this decidedly uncool comparison, but it illustrates Live’s ubiquity in electronic music and sound art settings. In my experience, Live is a deeper and more engaging program in terms of its creative potential. That said, its “clip view” is sort of like an audio slide deck, where sounds can be played in sequence, in sync with one another, or—and this is where it far surpasses slideware—out of sequence.
- 7.
I discuss the line from Truax’s granular synthesis and sampling to modern software applications like Live more fully in a book I am currently co-writing with Mara Mills, entitled Tuning Time: Histories of Sound and Speed.
- 8.
The earliest version of these technologies was developed in the 1930s and 1940s, using magnetic tape and optical sound-on-film technologies, so it is not an inherently digital process.
- 9.
Wavelet synthesis works on an analogous principle (see, e.g., Kronland-Martinet, Morlet, & Grossman, 1987).
- 10.
As of this writing, it is currently available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u81IGEFt7dM
- 11.
This is my reconstruction of it from notes taken at the time, then turned into an account a few hours after the fact and edited here.
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Sterne, J. (2019). Multimodal Scholarship in World Soundscape Project Composition: Toward a Different Media-Theoretical Legacy (Or: The WSP as OG DH). In: Droumeva, M., Jordan, R. (eds) Sound, Media, Ecology. Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16569-7_5
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