The field of Sound Studies has changed and developed dramatically over the last two decades involving a vast and dizzying array of work produced by those working in the arts, social sciences and sciences. The study of sound is inherently interdisciplinary and is undertaken both by those who specialize in sound and by others who wish to include sound as an intrinsic and indispensable element in their research. This is the first resource to provide a wide ranging, cross-cultural and interdisciplinary investigation and analysis of the ways in which researchers use a broad range of methodologies in order to pursue their sonic investigations. It brings together 49 specially commissioned chapters that ask a wide range of questions including; how can sound be used in current academic disciplines? Is sound as a methodological tool indispensable for Sound Studies and what can sound artists contribute to the discourse on methodology in Sound Studies? The editors also present 3 original chapters that work as provocative ‘sonic methodological interventions’ prefacing the 3 sections of the book.
Contributors Introduction (Michael Bull and Marcel Cobussen) Section One: Disciplines, Methodologies, Epistemologies. 1. Introduction to Section 1: Sonic Forms and the Temporalities of Silence (Michael Bull, University of Sussex, UK) 2. Sonic Methodologies in Anthropology (Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, University of Victoria, Canada) 3. Sonic Methodologies by Way of Deconstruction (Naomi Waltham-Smith, University of Warwick, UK) 4. Nature’s Music: Sonic Methodologies in the Study of Environmental Biology (Wouter Halfwerk, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands) 5. Hearing With: Researching the Histories of Sonic Encounter (James G. Mansell, University of Nottingham, UK) 6. Sonic Methodologies in Urban Studies (Christabel Stirling, University of Oxford, UK) 7. Sound and Pedagogy: Taking Podcasting into the Classroom (Neil Verma. Northwestern University, USA) 8. Sonic Methodologies in Literature (Justin St. Clair, University of South Alabama, USA) 9. Sonic Materialism and/as Method (Tyler Shoemaker, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) 10. Sonic Methodology In Philosophy (Elvira Di Bona, The University of Turin, Italy) 11. Sonic Methodologies in Science and Technology Studies (Joeri Bruyninckx and Alexandra Supper, University of Maastricht, Holland) 12. The Sonic Environment in Urban Planning, Environmental Assessment and Management (A. Lex Brown, Griffith University, Australia) 13. Sonic Methodologies In Medicine (Jos J. Eggermont, University of Calgary, Canada) 14. Soundscape as Methodology in Psycho-Acoustics and Noise Management (André Fiebig and Brigitte Schulte-Fortkamp, TU, Berlin, Germany) 15. Sonic Methodologies of Sound (Salomé Voegelin, London College of Communication, UK) Section Two: Sound Arts, Musics, Spaces 16. Introduction to Section II: Art – Research – Method (Marcel Cobussen, Leiden University, The Netherlands) 17. Ambulatory Sound-making: Re-writing, Re-appropriating, “Presencing” Auditory Spaces (Elena Biserna, Independent Scholar, France) 18. Sound Installations for the Production of Atmosphere as a Limited Field of Sounds (Jordan Lacey, RMIT University, Australia) 19. Fragile Devices: Improvisation as an Interdisciplinary Research Methodology (Rebecca Caines, York University, Canada) 20. “The Music Comes from Me”: Sound as Auto-ethnography (Darla Crispin. Norwegian Academy of Music) 21. Sound Beyond Representation. Experimental Performance Practices in Music (Lucia D’Errico, Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium) 22. Performing Centrifugal Sound (G Douglas Barrett, Independent Scholar, USA) 23. How to Cut Up a Record? (Paul Nataraj, University of Sussex, UK) 24. Directing Listening: Sound Design Methods from Film to Site-responsive Sonic Art (Ben Byrne, RMIT University, Australia) 25. Sound, Space, and Pneumatic Valves. Using Pneumatic Valves as Sound Sources to Create Spatial Environments (Edwin van der Heide, Leiden University, The Netherlands) 26. The Overheard - An Attuning Approach to Sound Art and Design in Public Spaces (Marie Højlund, Jonas R. Kirkegaard, Michael Sonne Kristensen, Morten Riis, University of Arhus, Denmark) 27. Sound on Sound: Considerations for the Use of Sonic Methods in Ethnographic Fieldwork inside the Recording Studio (Paul Thompson, Leeds Beckett University, UK) 28. Ecological Sound Art (Jonathan Gilmurray, University of the Arts, London, UK) 29. Hydrophonic Fields (Jana Winderen, Sound Artist, interviewed by Stefan Helmreich, MIT, USA) 30. Melt Me Into the Ocean: Sounds from Submarine Spaces (Yolande Harris, Rhode Island School of Design, USA) 31. Attentive Listening in Lo-fi Soundscapes: Some Notes on the Development of Sound Art Methodologies in Vietnam (Stefan Östersjö and Nguy?n Thanh Th?y, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden) Section Three: Geographies, Politics, Histories 32. Introduction to Section III: Listening as Method (Marcel Cobussen, Leiden University, The Netherlands) 33. Auditory Diagramming: A Research/Design Practice (Alex Arteaga, Universität der Kunste, Berlin, Germany) 34. Close Listening: Approaches to Research on Colonial Sound Archives (Annette Hoffman, University of Cape Town, South Africa) 35. Sonic Feminisms: Doing Gender in Neoliberal Times (Marie Thompson, University of Lincoln, UK) 36. Sound as City Maker: Developing Participatory Collaborative Process to Work With Sound as an Urban Resource. The Case of Mr. Visserplein (Amsterdam, NL) (Edda Bild, Michiel Huijsman, Renate Zentschnig, University of Amsterdam/Soundtrackcity, The Netherlands) 37. Dropping Down Low: Online Soundmaps, Critique, Genealogies, Alternatives (Angus Carlyle, University of the Arts, London, UK) 38. Listening as Methodological Tool: Sounding Soundwalking Methods (John L. Drever, Goldsmiths, London, UK) 39. Sounding Wild Spaces: Inclusive Mapmaking Through Multispecies Listening Across Scales (Alice Eldridge, Jonathan Carruthers-Jones, Roger Norum, University of Sussex, UK) 40. The Emergence of Voices in an Indian Bus Stand: An Ethnographic and Acoustic Approach (Christine Guillebaud, University of Paris Ouest, France) 41. Historical Sounds: A Case Study (Aimee Boutin, Florida State University, USA) 42. Sonic Writing(Holger Schulze, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) 43. Silence of Maua: An Atmospheric Ethnography of Urban Sounds (Jean-Paul Thibaud, CRESSON, France) 44. Sound Design Methodologies: Between Artistic Inspiration and Academic Perspiration (Nicolas Misdariis, IRCAM, Paris, France, and Daniel Hug, ZHDK, Zurich, Switzerland) 45. The Sounds of the 2001 Argentine Crises: Soundscapes of Protest, Music, and Sound Art (Violeta Nigro Giunta, EHESS-CRAL, Paris, France) 46. The Sound System of the State: Listening for Ideology in the Soundscape of Conflict (Tom Tlalim, The University of Winchester, UK) 47. Sonifications Sometimes Behave So Strangely (Paul Vickers, Northumbria University, UK) 48. The Conflicting Sounds of Urban Regeneration in Liverpool (Jacqueline Waldock, University of Liverpool, UK) 49. Ethnographies Sounded on What? Methodologies, Sounds, and Experience in Cairo (Vincent Battesti, CNRS, Paris, France) 50. Podcase Preservation and the Noise of Saved Sounds (Jeremy Wade Morris, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) 51. The Earview as a Border Epistemology: An Analytical and Pedagogical Proposition for Design (Pedro J.S. Vieira de Oliveira, Sound Designer, Brazil) 52. Hacking Composition: Dialogues with Musical Machines (Ezra J. Teboul, Independent Artist and Writer, USA)
Michael Bull is Professor of Sound Studies at the University of Sussex, UK. He is series editor of the Study of Sound series with Bloomsbury and author of the book in the series, Sirens (2020). He is a founding editor of the Senses and Society Journal and the Sound Studies Journal and is author of numerous academic books including, Sound Moves (2007), Sounding Out the City (Bloomsbury, 2000) and editor of the Routledge Companion to Sound Studies (2018). Marcel Cobussen is Professor of Auditory Culture at Leiden University, the Netherlands. He is author of Engaging With Everyday Sounds (2022), The Field of Musical Improvisation (2017), Thresholds: Rethinking Spirituality through Music (2008), and co-editor of The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art (2016).
Reviews for The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies
"The juxtaposition of such a large number of different and even contradictory approaches allows us to compose, by ""diffraction"", a multifaceted and complex picture that teaches us a lot about the interrelationships between listening regimes and discursive regimes as well as about the inevitable and at the same time fruitful precariousness of any sound methodology. * Drammaturgia * Sound studies is a disruptor. Sound cuts across the arts, sciences, engineering, history and the academy, reconfiguring things as it goes along. Its only rule is that it’s about the sound. This means its methods are as varied as can be and are often pitched as anti-methods. This vast methodological smorgasbord is like a sound walk. You hear echoes of standard methodologies from ethnomusicology, sound art and cultural and science studies and places like the exhibition, the archive, the studio and the field and you learn about new methods finely tuned to sound. The book and the editorial vignettes, set in a fascinating dialogical form because of the pandemic, are always smart and reflective. If you want to learn to think systematically about how sound is studied this is the place to begin your journey. * Trevor Pinch, pioneer in sound studies and Goldwin Smith Professor of Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University, USA * From music to geography, historical debate to epistemological arguments, the study of sound finds footing within a compelling range of academic and artistic contexts. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sonic Methodologies offers a comprehensive, situated and deeply enriching view onto such diversity, capturing how researchers and practitioners approach sound as a topic and material. Such a compendium affords greater understanding of sound as the basis for a radical transdisciplinarity. * Brandon LaBelle, Professor, Art Academy, University of Bergen, Norway, and author of Acoustic Justice (Bloomsbury, 2021) * [The book], because of its vast scope -- I have only scratched the surface of its richness in this review -- may be very helpful in deciding if, and if so when, sonic method may be best suited to act as the ""what"" in research projects that in some way involve sound. * Journal of Sonic Studies *"
