Conevery Bolton Valencius
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226053899
- eISBN:
- 9780226053929
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226053929.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Animated, widespread discussion of the New Madrid earthquakes demonstrates the vitality of early American science, which has long been dismissed as derivative and inconsequential. Scientific ...
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Animated, widespread discussion of the New Madrid earthquakes demonstrates the vitality of early American science, which has long been dismissed as derivative and inconsequential. Scientific inquiry, conversation, and thinking thrived—but not in the elite scientific journals that already characterized European science. Instead, creative and well-informed discussion of scientific concepts filled newspapers, commercial journals, and everyday correspondence. Through networks of communication, exchange of objects, and quantification of exact timing and measurement, Americans such as physician Daniel Drake debated principles of causation and attempted to understand the resources of their growing nation (and often disagreed with European authorities such as Constantin Volney). This vernacular science sought to draw broad connections: how were earthquakes related to electricity and lightning? Volcanoes? Earthquake weather? Earthquake sounds? What connected events across global distances? What was the role of Indian knowledge? Earthquake theorizing points to a new history of science in the United States.Less
Animated, widespread discussion of the New Madrid earthquakes demonstrates the vitality of early American science, which has long been dismissed as derivative and inconsequential. Scientific inquiry, conversation, and thinking thrived—but not in the elite scientific journals that already characterized European science. Instead, creative and well-informed discussion of scientific concepts filled newspapers, commercial journals, and everyday correspondence. Through networks of communication, exchange of objects, and quantification of exact timing and measurement, Americans such as physician Daniel Drake debated principles of causation and attempted to understand the resources of their growing nation (and often disagreed with European authorities such as Constantin Volney). This vernacular science sought to draw broad connections: how were earthquakes related to electricity and lightning? Volcanoes? Earthquake weather? Earthquake sounds? What connected events across global distances? What was the role of Indian knowledge? Earthquake theorizing points to a new history of science in the United States.
Douglas Kahn
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520257801
- eISBN:
- 9780520956834
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520257801.003.0012
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
The sounds and seismological signals of earthquakes and nuclear weapons are related to the sublime, to sensing the earth at a global scale, and to music. The seismological sublime is shown to be ...
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The sounds and seismological signals of earthquakes and nuclear weapons are related to the sublime, to sensing the earth at a global scale, and to music. The seismological sublime is shown to be transportable once recorded on a tape recorder and sped up to render subaudible sounds audible. The sounds associated with the US atomic bombs are extended to seismological sounds, and the intersection of music is examined through the popular science LP Out of this World, Hugo Benioff’s electric instruments based upon his seismometer technology, Sheridan Speeth’s use of musicians for discrimination of underground testing signals, and Gordon Mumma’s Mograph compositions.Less
The sounds and seismological signals of earthquakes and nuclear weapons are related to the sublime, to sensing the earth at a global scale, and to music. The seismological sublime is shown to be transportable once recorded on a tape recorder and sped up to render subaudible sounds audible. The sounds associated with the US atomic bombs are extended to seismological sounds, and the intersection of music is examined through the popular science LP Out of this World, Hugo Benioff’s electric instruments based upon his seismometer technology, Sheridan Speeth’s use of musicians for discrimination of underground testing signals, and Gordon Mumma’s Mograph compositions.
Douglas Kahn
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520257801
- eISBN:
- 9780520956834
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520257801.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Grounded ...
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Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Grounded in the Aeolian sphere music that Henry David Thoreau heard blowing in telegraph lines and in the Aelectrosonic sounds of natural radio that Thomas Watson heard in telephone lines, the book moves through the histories of science, media, music, and the arts to the 1960s, when the composer Alvin Lucier worked with the “natural electromagnetic sounds” present from “brainwaves to outer space,” through the urban electromagnetism in the conceptual art of Robert Barry, to the energy-scavenging drawings and antennas by the artist Joyce Hinterding. From the sounds of auroras at high latitudes and atmospheric electricity in the mountains to the underground music of earthquakes and nuclear explosions and to music bounced off the moon and the sounds of the sun, Earth Sound Earth Signal rethinks energy at a global scale through detailed discussions of artists and scientists such as Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, James Turrell, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Paul DeMarinis, Semiconductor, Thomas Ashcraft, Katie Paterson, Edmond Dewan, Ludwik Liszka, and many others.Less
Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Grounded in the Aeolian sphere music that Henry David Thoreau heard blowing in telegraph lines and in the Aelectrosonic sounds of natural radio that Thomas Watson heard in telephone lines, the book moves through the histories of science, media, music, and the arts to the 1960s, when the composer Alvin Lucier worked with the “natural electromagnetic sounds” present from “brainwaves to outer space,” through the urban electromagnetism in the conceptual art of Robert Barry, to the energy-scavenging drawings and antennas by the artist Joyce Hinterding. From the sounds of auroras at high latitudes and atmospheric electricity in the mountains to the underground music of earthquakes and nuclear explosions and to music bounced off the moon and the sounds of the sun, Earth Sound Earth Signal rethinks energy at a global scale through detailed discussions of artists and scientists such as Gordon Mumma, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, James Turrell, Karl-Birger Blomdahl, Paul DeMarinis, Semiconductor, Thomas Ashcraft, Katie Paterson, Edmond Dewan, Ludwik Liszka, and many others.
