Noise resonance: Technological sound reproduction and the logic of filtering

What is it about noise that attracted musicians and listeners over the past century? Noise Resonance: Technological Sound Reproduction and the Logic of Filtering sets out to answer this question through an extensive conceptual revaluation of the role of noise and distortion in sound and music. The book traces the issue of noise in a detailed media archaeological analysis of analogue and digital sound technologies. Noise Resonance does away with the idea that sound reproductions are incomplete copies of some original source and thereby challenges more common conceptualisations that define noise as a marker for failure, violence, excess, transgression or subversion. Instead, on the basis of an assessment of the history of acoustics and the development of sound technology from the nineteenth century onward, it repositions noise as essential for the singular sound of music in the media age. Noise Resonance shows how noise and distortion, introduced by the operations of technical media, have been fundamental for shaping the specific sound of technologically reproduced music. Drawing from disciplines like musicology, media theory, sound studies and contemporary philosophy, it ultimately suggests a way to rethink the relation between music and listeners in the age of technological media