Underwater Music: Tuning Composition to the Sounds of Science
Name
helmreich_underwater_music.pdf
Size
1.16 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
26504f86e01e4546e846d086e115582b
Author(s)
Helmreich, Stefan
Date Issued
December 2011
Journal
The Oxford Handbook of Sound Studies
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Citation
Helmreich, Stefan. “Underwater Music: Tuning Composition to the Sounds of Science.” Oxford Handbooks Online (December 2, 2011).
Version
Original manuscript
Abstract
This article attempts to audit underwater music. There are two primary venues for underwater music: field settings of the ocean and lab settings of swimming pools. For the field tradition, underwater music emerges from the noise of the Cold War, revealing the songs of whales and harboring evidence of global warming, of sea creatures under stress, etc. For the lab tradition, the pool is a stage to realize the aesthetic of Cagean modernism. It becomes a space to play with meanings of water. While the field setting is “wild” and entangled with nonhuman sounds and the lab setting is more social, cultural, or anthropocentric, artists working in both settings seek to evoke an “immersive” experience. In both settings the transductive properties of water must be managed to invoke water as a material accomplice in this enterprise, this aim of soaking listeners in the sublime surround of sound submerged.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Anthropology Program
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Humanities
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195388947.013.0044
