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The negative environmental effects of media culture are not often acknowledged: the fuel required to keep huge server farms in operation, landfills full of high tech junk, and the extraction of rare minerals for devices reliant on them are just some of the hidden costs of the contemporary mediascape. Eco-Sonic Media brings an ecological critique to the history of sound media technologies in order to amplify the environmental undertones in sound studies and turn up the audio in discussions of greening the media. By looking at early and neglected forms of sound technology, Jacob Smith seeks to create a revisionist, ecologically aware history of sound media. Delving into the history of pre-electronic media like hand-cranked gramophones, comparatively eco-friendly media artifacts such as the shellac discs that preceded the use of petroleum-based vinyl, early forms of portable technology like divining rods, and even the use of songbirds as domestic music machines, Smith builds a scaffolding of historical case studies to demonstrate how green media archaeology can make sound studies vibrate at an ecological frequency while opening the ears of eco-criticism.
List of contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Green Discs
2. Birdland Melodies
3. Subterranean Signals
4. Radio’s Dark Ecology
The Run-Out Groove
Index
About the author
Jacob Smith is Assistant Professor at the School of Communications at Northwestern University. He is the author of Vocal Tracks: Performance and Sound Media, and Spoken Word: Postwar American Phonograph Cultures (both UC Press).
Summary
Offers an ecological critique to the history of sound media technologies in order to amplify the environmental undertones in sound studies and turn up the audio in discussions of greening the media. By looking at early and neglected forms of sound technology, the author seeks to create a revisionist, ecologically aware history of sound media.
Report
"Eco-Sonic Media is a brilliant book: impressively researched, wonderfully written, timely, and innovative. Drawing on the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities, Jacob Smith rewrites the history of recorded sound in terms of its contributions to electronic waste and associated environmental problems, highlighting the role of media in our current ecological crisis. Eco-Sonic Media will make a huge mark on sound studies and media studies, but it deserves a significant readership beyond these fields." - Toby Miller, coauthor of Greening the Media
