scholarly journals ‘There Must Be a Poetry of Sound That None of Us Knows…’: Early British documentary film and the prefiguring of musique concrète

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-186
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Cox

Standard histories of electronic music tend to trace the lineage of musique concrète as lying mainly in the Futurists’ declarations of the 1910s, through Cage’s ‘emancipation’ of noise in the 1930s, to Schaeffer’s work and codifications of the late 1940s and early 1950s. This article challenges this narrative by drawing attention to the work of filmmakers in the 1930s that foreshadowed the sound experiments of Pierre Schaeffer and thus offers an alternative history of their background. The main focus of the article is on the innovations within documentary film and specifically the sonic explorations in early British documentary that prefigured musique concrète, an area ignored by electronic music studies. The theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of the documentary movement’s members, particularly their leader John Grierson, will be compared with those of Pierre Schaeffer, and the important influence of Russian avant-garde filmmaking on the British (and musique concrète) will be addressed. Case studies will focus on the groundbreaking soundtracks of two films made by the General Post Office Film Unit that feature both practical and theoretical correspondences to Schaeffer: 6.30 Collection (1934) and Coal Face (1935). Parallels between the nature and use of technologies and how this affected creative outputs will also be discussed, as will the relationship of the British documentary movement’s practice and ideas to post-Schaefferian ‘anecdotal music’ and the work of Luc Ferrari.

2014 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-88
Author(s):  
Biljana Srećković

This paper is devoted to perceiving the relationship between music and architecture, namely, the discourses which interpret, research, value these two practices in the context of their mutual networking. In that respect it is possible to set aside several problem strongholds which will make the focus of this paper, and which concern: the history of forming and evolution of discourse on the inter-relationship of these two practices; modernist, avant-garde and postmodernist problematization of music and architecture; theories of the artists as a field of music and architecture networking; the interaction of music and architecture on the technical and formal level; spatiality of sound, i.e., sound/music propagation in space and the emergence of the new art concepts based on this principle (sound architecture, aural architecture, sound art).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Browne

"In this paper, I seek to develop an analysis of an aesthetic framework in which my filmmaking practice is situated, through Marshall McLuhan's ideas concerning acoustic space and their resonances within the avant-garde cinema. This may sound at first to be an inherently contradictory formula, given that a visually predominant medium such as the cinema may not be considered to impart experiences beyond this realm, with the exception of its acoustic components. (Sound cinema, similarly, is generally assumed to evoke sense impressions that exist merely in support of the fidelity of its 'realistic' image). However, I seek to demonstrate how the visualization of acoustic space forms a centrally unifying aesthetic strategy within the Canadian avant-garde cinema and many of the perceptual investigations conducted by film artists working during the time of Mcluhan's writings, resulting in a tradition of works which aim to translate visual experience beyond a fragmentary, visually-abstracted field, thus embodying aspects of kinesthetic vision and tactile/acoustic spatial experience. begin by examining the reception of Mcluhan's scholarship from within communication studies, suggesting the most fruitful reading of his often controversial figure as an artist-mystic rather than strictly as a theorist. I will then examine the varied influences from literary and cultural traditions that shaped his unique approach to media analysis and the development of his model of acoustic space-which Richard Cavell proposes as the primary feature that "connects a multiplicity of elements in Mcluhan's large and diverse oeuvre" (2003: xiii)-and consider the relationship of the cinema to Mcluhan's project of a history of the human sensorium."--Introduction.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Browne

"In this paper, I seek to develop an analysis of an aesthetic framework in which my filmmaking practice is situated, through Marshall McLuhan's ideas concerning acoustic space and their resonances within the avant-garde cinema. This may sound at first to be an inherently contradictory formula, given that a visually predominant medium such as the cinema may not be considered to impart experiences beyond this realm, with the exception of its acoustic components. (Sound cinema, similarly, is generally assumed to evoke sense impressions that exist merely in support of the fidelity of its 'realistic' image). However, I seek to demonstrate how the visualization of acoustic space forms a centrally unifying aesthetic strategy within the Canadian avant-garde cinema and many of the perceptual investigations conducted by film artists working during the time of Mcluhan's writings, resulting in a tradition of works which aim to translate visual experience beyond a fragmentary, visually-abstracted field, thus embodying aspects of kinesthetic vision and tactile/acoustic spatial experience. begin by examining the reception of Mcluhan's scholarship from within communication studies, suggesting the most fruitful reading of his often controversial figure as an artist-mystic rather than strictly as a theorist. I will then examine the varied influences from literary and cultural traditions that shaped his unique approach to media analysis and the development of his model of acoustic space-which Richard Cavell proposes as the primary feature that "connects a multiplicity of elements in Mcluhan's large and diverse oeuvre" (2003: xiii)-and consider the relationship of the cinema to Mcluhan's project of a history of the human sensorium."--Introduction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 00 (00) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Nick Stevenson

This article explores the contribution of Cabaret Voltaire to the history of industrial and electronic music in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Heavily influenced by the music of Kraftwerk, the Cabs drew upon the dystopian landscapes of William Burroughs to create a paranoid soundscape. Like Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire’s music was influenced by the artistic movements of the twentieth century (most prominently Dada) and drew upon modernist techniques. Especially significant in this regard was their location within post-industrial Sheffield and the ideologies of post-punk more generally. This discussion offers a critical assessment of Cabaret Voltaire as a form of avant-garde music that sought to carefully position itself in the context of the cultural politics of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Primarily through the work of Marxist aesthetic theory, I seek to offer a critical appreciation of the relationship between Cabaret Voltaire and the influence of Dada and modernism. The aim of the discussion is to reclaim a more critical understanding of Marxism while exploring its arguments in relation to artistic forms of modernism and popular culture. Especially important at this juncture is the rejection of the cultural populism of postmodernism and the reclaiming of a more critical language of evaluation and critique. Here the argument is that whatever Cabaret Voltaire’s limitations they continue to remind us of modernism’s ongoing capacity to offer arresting forms of art and critique.


2007 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angel Kwolek-Folland ◽  
Margaret Walsh

The purpose of this special issue is to explore the relationship of gender in several national contexts to the service industriesbusinesses that provide benefit to others or produce items or infrastructure that support others. Several questions have guided our overall purpose. What do we learn about business history generally, and the service sector specifically, by taking gender into account? Is what we learn the same in different national contexts? If not, why not? We hope that the answers suggested in the essays will stimulate dialogue on both national case studies and comparative themes and will illuminate transnational patterns and perspectives in the history of women, gender, and business.


Paleobiology ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 146-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Oliver

The Mesozoic-Cenozoic coral Order Scleractinia has been suggested to have originated or evolved (1) by direct descent from the Paleozoic Order Rugosa or (2) by the development of a skeleton in members of one of the anemone groups that probably have existed throughout Phanerozoic time. In spite of much work on the subject, advocates of the direct descent hypothesis have failed to find convincing evidence of this relationship. Critical points are:(1) Rugosan septal insertion is serial; Scleractinian insertion is cyclic; no intermediate stages have been demonstrated. Apparent intermediates are Scleractinia having bilateral cyclic insertion or teratological Rugosa.(2) There is convincing evidence that the skeletons of many Rugosa were calcitic and none are known to be or to have been aragonitic. In contrast, the skeletons of all living Scleractinia are aragonitic and there is evidence that fossil Scleractinia were aragonitic also. The mineralogic difference is almost certainly due to intrinsic biologic factors.(3) No early Triassic corals of either group are known. This fact is not compelling (by itself) but is important in connection with points 1 and 2, because, given direct descent, both changes took place during this only stage in the history of the two groups in which there are no known corals.


Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter

The first chapter of Hieroglyphic Modernisms exposes the complex history of Western misconceptions of Egyptian writing from antiquity to the present. Hieroglyphs bridge the gap between modern technologies and the ancient past, looking forward to the rise of new media and backward to the dispersal of languages in the mythical moment of the Tower of Babel. The contradictory ways in which hieroglyphs were interpreted in the West come to shape the differing ways that modernist writers and filmmakers understood the relationship between writing, film, and other new media. On the one hand, poets like Ezra Pound and film theorists like Vachel Lindsay and Sergei Eisenstein use the visual languages of China and of Egypt as a more primal or direct alternative to written words. But Freud, Proust, and the later Eisenstein conversely emphasize the phonetic qualities of Egyptian writing, its similarity to alphabetical scripts. The chapter concludes by arguing that even avant-garde invocations of hieroglyphics depend on narrative form through an examination of Hollis Frampton’s experimental film Zorns Lemma.


Author(s):  
Ted Geier

Covers the long history of the Smithfield animal market and legal reform in London. Shows the relationship of civic improvement tropes, including animal rights, to animal erasure in the form of new foodstuffs from distant meat production sites. The reduction of lives to commodities also informed public abasement of the butchers.


Author(s):  
Terence Young ◽  
Alan MacEachern ◽  
Lary Dilsaver

This essay explores the evolving international relationship of the two national park agencies that in 1968 began to offer joint training classes for protected-area managers from around the world. Within the British settler societies that dominated nineteenth century park-making, the United States’ National Park Service (NPS) and Canada’s National Parks Branch were the most closely linked and most frequently cooperative. Contrary to campfire myths and nationalist narratives, however, the relationship was not a one-way flow of information and motivation from the US to Canada. Indeed, the latter boasted a park bureaucracy before the NPS was established. The relationship of the two nations’ park leaders in the half century leading up to 1968 demonstrates the complexity of defining the influences on park management and its diffusion from one country to another.


1990 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-90
Author(s):  
Dennis Michael Warren

The late Dr. Fazlur Rahman, Harold H. Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Islamic Thought at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, has written this book as number seven in the series on Health/Medicine and the Faith Traditions. This series has been sponsored as an interfaith program by The Park Ridge Center, an Institute for the study of health, faith, and ethics. Professor Rahman has stated that his study is "an attempt to portray the relationship of Islam as a system of faith and as a tradition to human health and health care: What value does Islam attach to human well-being-spiritual, mental, and physical-and what inspiration has it given Muslims to realize that value?" (xiii). Although he makes it quite clear that he has not attempted to write a history of medicine in Islam, readers will find considerable depth in his treatment of the historical development of medicine under the influence of Islamic traditions. The book begins with a general historical introduction to Islam, meant primarily for readers with limited background and understanding of Islam. Following the introduction are six chapters devoted to the concepts of wellness and illness in Islamic thought, the religious valuation of medicine in Islam, an overview of Prophetic Medicine, Islamic approaches to medical care and medical ethics, and the relationship of the concepts of birth, contraception, abortion, sexuality, and death to well-being in Islamic culture. The basis for Dr. Rahman's study rests on the explication of the concepts of well-being, illness, suffering, and destiny in the Islamic worldview. He describes Islam as a system of faith with strong traditions linking that faith with concepts of human health and systems for providing health care. He explains the value which Islam attaches to human spiritual, mental, and physical well-being. Aspects of spiritual medicine in the Islamic tradition are explained. The dietary Jaws and other orthodox restrictions are described as part of Prophetic Medicine. The religious valuation of medicine based on the Hadith is compared and contrasted with that found in the scientific medical tradition. The history of institutionalized medical care in the Islamic World is traced to awqaf, pious endowments used to support health services, hospices, mosques, and educational institutions. Dr. Rahman then describes the ...


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