Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture

Unsettled Matter
Erscheinungsjahr 2023
ISBN: 978-94-6372-954-3
Verlag: Amsterdam University Press

Buch, Englisch, 240 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

This book charts the unsettled media cultures and deep time of shellac, retracing its journey from the visual to the sonic, and back again. Each chapter unveils a situated moment in the long history of shellac – travelling from its early visual culture to Emile Berliner’s discovery of its auditory properties through to its recycling in contemporary art and design practices. Unforeseen correspondences between artefacts as diverse as mirrors, seals, gramophone discs and bombs are revealed. With its combinatory approach and commitment to material thinking, Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture insists on moments of contact, encounter, and transformation. The book notably addresses the colonial unconscious underpinning the early transnational recording industry, highlighting the multiple gestures and forms of labour entombed within the production of the 78rpm disc. Roy explores shellac as a concrete substance, as well as the malleable stuff of which stories, histories and modern imaginings were made – and unmade.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Roy, Elodie A.

Fachgebiete

• Technische Wissenschaften Elektronik | Nachrichtentechnik Elektronik Elektronische Baugruppen, Elektronische Materialien
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Materielle Kultur, Wirtschaftsethnologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: From material culture to the materials of culture

Chapter 1. Sheen: Early stories and circulation of shellac

Chapter 2. Crackle: Assembling the record

Chapter 3. Mirrors: Phono-fetishism and intersensory visions

Chapter 4. Detonations: Shellac at war

Chapter 5. Shards: Waste, obsolescence, and contemporary remediations

Conclusion: Sonic sculptures

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Roy, Elodie A.
Elodie A. Roy is a media and material culture theorist with a specialism in the history of phonography. She is the author of Media, Materiality and Memory: Grounding the Groove, and the co-editor (with Eva Moreda Rodríguez) of Phonographic Encounters: Mapping Transnational Cultures of Sound, 1890-1945.