Sirens

ISBN-13: 9781501304996 / Angielski / Miękka / 2020 / 144 str.

Michael Bull

Opis

Sirens are sounds that confront us in daily life, from the sounds of police cars, fire engines and less often - tornado warnings. In World War Two in London during the Blitz sirens warned people to move into the safety of air-raid shelters. Yet in parallel to this 'Sirens' also have a mythical reality as embodied in the meeting between Odysseus and the Sirens in Greek myth whereby the specter of the 'Sirens' embodied the seductive, but ultimately destructive power of sound over the human subject.Ideologies of the Sirens embody both the protective and the dangerous elements of Siren sounds - from the Cold War public training exercises in the US in the 1950s and 60s warning of imminent nuclear attack to the seductive power of the Sirens entrenched in popular culture through popular song, from the music of Roxy Music to Tom O'Dell and in filmic representations of the 'femme-fatale' in Film Noir and beyond. The book argues that we should understand 'Siren sounds' both as myth and as materiality embodying both danger and protectiveness. It then poses the question as to whether we can rely on the sirens both in their mythic meanings or in their material meanings in contemporary culture. This question is addressed via the notion of the 'silencing of the sirens'"

Recenzje

With sirens, both technological and mythical, sound studies pioneer and cultural theorist Michael Bull mashes up genre and periodization, fact and fiction, pop and classical, sound and silence, in this wonderful little book. The siren call, when rendered through the ear of sound studies, leads to the retelling of the part played by sirens in the stories of Homer, Kafka and Vonnegut - and there are even bit parts for Friedrich Kittler, Nancy Sinatra and Stormy Daniels. Trevor Pinch, Goldwin Smith Professor of Science & Technology Studies, Cornell University, USA, and co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies (with Karin Bijsterveld, 2012)

Spis treści

Siren BeginningsSounding Out the SirensSiren Traces1. Prolegomena to the Sirens2. Eclipsing the Acousmatic: The Story of the Sirens3. Sonic Sleepwalkers: Sirens Myths from Homer, to Bach, to Nancy Sinatra4. Remembering the Forgotten Sounds of Air-Raid Sirens: Charlie Hebdo, Dresden and Beyond5. Urban Sirens: 9/11, Dizzee Rascal and Varese6. Timing the Sirens: Kurt Vonnegut Meets Theodor Adorno7. Siren Spaces: A Different Colonization?8. Hearing the Sirens: A Tale of Sonic Exclusivity?9. Sirens for the Young: From Fénelon to Disney 10. Kafka's Sirens and the Story of Silencing11. Sonic Aftermaths: Sirens and Stormy Daniels12. Sonic Fallibility: Kittler's SirensAfterword: Let's Sing Another Song Boys. This One Has Grown Old and Bitter (Leonard Cohen)NotesBibliographyIndex

O autorze

Michael Bull is Professor of Sound Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. His many authored books include Sirens (Bloomsbury 2020) and Sound Moves, iPod Culture and Urban Experience (Routledge, 2007). He is editor of the Routledge Companion to Sound Studies (2018) and The Auditory Culture Reader (Bloomsbury 2003, and 2016), and co-editor of the Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies (Bloomsbury, 2020). He is a founding editor of the journals, The Senses and Society and Sound Studies.