Multimodal scholarship in world soundscape project composition

toward a different media-theoretical legacy

Jonathan Sterne

pp. 85-109

in: Milena Droumeva, Randolph Jordan (eds), Sound, media, ecology, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

This chapter reconsiders the World Soundscape Project's (WSP) media practices as media theories in action. Sterne listens to and analyzes two canonical works, Hildegard Westerkamp's Kits Beach Soundwalk (1989) and Barry Truax's Riverrun (1986), to consider them as examples of media theory in the sonic register. The chapter argues, anachronistically, that these works are examples of multimodal scholarship before that term came into existence. In doing this, Sterne hopes to help bring sonic histories and practices more fully into discussions of the digital humanities while also offering an alternative to the ways in which media theory coming out of the World Soundscape Project is usually discussed.

Cited authors

Westerkamp Hildegard

Truax Barry