Sound Synthesis, Representation and Narrative Cinema in the Transition to Sound (1926-1935)

Since the beginnings of western media culture, sound synthesis has played a major role in articulating cultural notions of the fantastic and the uncanny. As a counterpart to sound reproduction, sound synthesis operated in the interstices of the original/copy correspondence and prefigured the construction of a virtual reality through the generation of novel sounds apparently lacking any equivalent with the acoustic world. Experiments on synthetic sound crucially intersected cinema\u2019s transition to synchronous sound in the late 1920s, thus configuring a particularly fertile scenario for the redefinition of narrative paradigms and the establishment of conventions for sound film production. Sound synthesis can thus be viewed as a structuring device of such film genres as horror and science fiction, whose codification depended on the constitution of synchronized sound film. More broadly, sound synthesis challenged the basic implications of realism based on the rendering of speech and the construction of cinematic soundscapes.Depuis les d\ue9buts de la culture m\ue9diatique occidentale, la synth\ue8se sonore a largement contribu\ue9 \ue0 fa\ue7onner notre conception culturelle du fantastique et de l\u2019\ue9trange. Contrepartie de la reproduction sonore, la synth\ue8se sonore venait brouiller la distinction entre copie et original tout en pr\ue9figurant la r\ue9alit\ue9 virtuelle gr\ue2ce \ue0 sa capacit\ue9 de cr\ue9er des sons in\ue9dits, sans \ue9quivalent dans le monde acoustique. \uc0 la fin des ann\ue9es 1920, la recherche sur le son synth\ue9tique entre dans une p\ue9riode cruciale, alors que s\u2019op\ue8re la transition du cin\ue9ma vers le son synchrone et que le contexte s\u2019av\ue8re particuli\ue8rement propice \ue0 une red\ue9finition des paradigmes narratifs en place et \ue0 l\u2019\ue9laboration de standards pour la production de films sonores. La synth\ue8se sonore appara\ueet d\ue8s lors comme un principe structurant au sein de genres tels que l\u2019horreur et la science-fiction, dont la codification reposait largement sur l\u2019usage d\u2019une trame sonore synchronis\ue9e. Plus largement, la synth\ue8se sonore questionne les implications fondamentales d\u2019un r\ue9alisme qui serait fond\ue9 sur la transmission de la parole et la construction de paysages sonores