Embryonic development in a given species is orchestrated by genes regulating growth and differentiation in a stereotyped and conserved manner, resulting in embryos of consistent size and shape. Several signaling pathways, including that of Sonic Hedgehog (SHH), have been implicated in these processes. Recent experiments with Gas1 indicate that it may act as a growth-inducing gene, challenging its previous function as a gene specifically involved in growth arrest. Moreover, GAS1, a GPI-linked membrane protein, can bind SHH, suggesting an (...) interacting link between growth and patterning through SHH and GAS1.(1-4) BioEssays 24:22–26, 2002. © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

The aim of this review is to summarize some of the recent advances in molecular embryology that help to explain the pathogenesis of holoprosencephaly (HPE), or its related malformation in model organisms, cyclopia, and laterality defects in humans, derived from detailed analysis of similar malformations in animal models. Recently, defects in several developmental pathways including those operated by the Sonic hedgehog and Nodal signaling factors have been implicated as causes of HPE or laterality defects in humans. Here we (...) summarize the findings in animal models that indicate that both defects can be explained by mechanisms that relate to the proper development of the axial midline in vertebrates. BioEssays 23:888–900, 2001. Published 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

A ubiquitous feature of the auditory organ in amniotes is the longitudinal mapping of neuronal characteristic frequencies (CFs), which increase exponentially with distance along the organ. The exponential tonotopic map reflects variation in hair cell properties according to cochlear location and is thought to stem from concentration gradients in diffusible morphogenic proteins during embryonic development. While in all amniotes the spatial gradient is initiated by sonic hedgehog (SHH), released from the notochord and floorplate, subsequent molecular pathways are not (...) fully understood. In chickens, BMP7 is one such morphogen, secreted from the distal end of the cochlea. In mammals, the developmental mechanism differs from birds and may depend on cochlear location. A consequence of exponential maps is that each octave occupies an equal distance on the cochlea, a spacing preserved in the tonotopic maps in higher auditory brain regions. This may facilitate frequency analysis and recognition of acoustic sequences. (shrink)

Embryonic development results in animals whose body plans exhibit a variety of symmetry types. While significant progress has been made in understanding the molecular events underlying the early specification of the antero‐posterior and dorso‐ventral axes, little information has been available regarding the basis for left‐right (LR) differences in animal morphogenesis. Recently however, important advances have been made in uncovering the molecular mechanisms responsible for LR patterning. A number of genes (including well‐known signaling molecules such as Sonic hedgehog and (...) activin) are asymmetrically expressed in early chick embryos, well before the appearance of morphological asymmetries. One of these, nodal, is asymmetrically expressed in frogs and mice as well, and its expression is altered in mouse mutants exhibiting defects in laterality. In the chick, these genes regulate each other in a sequential cascade, which independently determines the situs of the heart and other organs. (shrink)

Embryonic development results in animals whose body plans exhibit a variety of symmetry types. While significant progress has been made in understanding the molecular events underlying the early specification of the antero‐posterior and dorso‐ventral axes, little information has been available regarding the basis for left‐right (LR) differences in animal morphogenesis. Recently however, important advances have been made in uncovering the molecular mechanisms responsible for LR patterning. A number of genes (including well‐known signaling molecules such as Sonic hedgehog and (...) activin) are asymmetrically expressed in early chick embryos, well before the appearance of morphological asymmetries. One of these, nodal, is asymmetrically expressed in frogs and mice as well, and its expression is altered in mouse mutants exhibiting defects in laterality. In the chick, these genes regulate each other in a sequential cascade, which independently determines the situs of the heart and other organs. (shrink)

In the mammalian brain dopamine systems play a central role in the control of movement, hormone release, emotional balance and reward. Alteration of dopaminergic neurotransmission is involved in Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders, as well as in some psychotic syndromes. This review summarises recent findings, which shed some light on signals and cellular interactions involved in the specification and maturation of the dopaminergic function during neurogenesis. In particular we will focus on three major issues: (1) the differentiation of dopaminergic (...) neurones triggered by direct contact with the midbrain floor plate cells through the action of sonic hedgehog; (2) the neurotrophic factors acting on dopaminergic neurones; and (3) the role of target striatal cells on the survival and the axonal growth of developing or grafted dopaminergic neurones. (shrink)

Early in animal development, gradients of secreted morphogenic molecules, such as Sonic hedgehog (Shh), Wnt and TGFβ/Bmp family members, regulate cell proliferation and determine the fate and phenotype of the target cells by activating well‐characterized signalling pathways, which ultimately control gene transcription. Shh, Wnt and TGFβ/Bmp signalling also play an important and evolutionary conserved role in neural circuit assembly. They regulate neuronal polarization, axon and dendrite development and synaptogenesis, processes that require rapid and local changes in cytoskeletal organization (...) and plasma membrane components. A key question then is whether morphogen signalling at the growth cone uses similar mechanisms and intracellular pathway components to those described for morphogen‐mediated cell specification. This review discusses recent advances towards the understanding of this problem, showing how Shh, Wnt and TGFβ/Bmp have adapted their ‘classical’ signalling pathways or adopted alternative and novel molecular mechanisms to influence different aspects of neuronal circuit formation. (shrink)

New research demonstrates that mechanics can serve as a means of information propagation in developing embryos. Historically, the study of embryonic development has had a dichotomy between morphogens and pattern formation on the one hand and morphogenesis and mechanics on the other. Secreted signals are the preeminent means of information propagation between cells and used to control cell fate, while physical forces act downstream or in parallel to shape tissue morphogenesis. However, recent work has blurred this division of function by (...) demonstrating that mechanics can serve as a means of information propagation. Adhesive or repulsive interactions can propagate through a tissue as a wave. These waves are rapid and directional and can be used to control the flux of cells through a developmental trajectory. Here, two examples are reviewed in which mechanics both guides and mediates morphogenesis and two examples in which mechanics intertwines with morphogens to regulate cell fate. (shrink)

The Hedgehog, the Fox, and the Magister's Pox is a controversial discourse, rich with facts and observations gathered by one of the most erudite minds of our ...

¿The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.¿ This fragment of Archilochus, which gives this book its title, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin¿s masterly essay on Tolstoy. There have been various interpretations of Archilochus¿ fragment; Isaiah Berlin has simply used it, without implying anything about the true meaning of the words, to outline a fundamental distinction that exists in mankind, between those who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things (foxes) and those (...) who relate everything to a central all-embracing system (hedgehogs). When applied to Tolstoy, the image illuminates a paradox of his philosophy of history, and shows why he was frequently misunderstood by his contemporaries and critics. Tolstoy was by nature a fox, but he believed in being a hedgehog. (shrink)

Hedgehog is an important morphogenic signal that directs pattern formation during embryogenesis, but its activity also remains present through adult life. It is now becoming increasingly clear that during the reproductive phase of life and beyond it continues to direct cell renewal (which is essential to combat the chronic environmental stress to which the body is constantly exposed) and counteracts vascular, osteolytic and sometimes oncological insults to the body. Conversely, down‐regulation of hedgehog signalling is associated with ageing‐related diseases (...) such as type 2 diabetes, neurodegeneration, atherosclerosis and osteoporosis. Hence, in this essay we argue that hedgehog signalling is not only important at the start of life, but also constitutes an important anti‐geriatric influence, and that enhanced understanding of its properties may contribute to developing rational strategies for healthy ageing and prevention of ageing‐related diseases.Also watch the Video Abstract. (shrink)

Drawing on Isaiah Berlin's celebrated essay on Tolstoy, this paper poses the question should James Turner Johnson be deemed a hedgehog or a fox? That is, it considers whether Johnson should be regarded as a monist (hedgehog) or a pluralist (fox) in his contribution to the just war tradition. It contends that his commitment to history, while superficially indicative of a hedgehog, serves to conceal a deep-lying pluralism ? or at least the possibility of such ? in (...) his views on the meaning of history. Contrary to initial appearances, then, Johnson's commitment to history is not univocal: it does not speak with one voice, and to one purpose. Rather it suggests a variety of voices or positions, and is amenable to multiple interpretations, not all of which are of a piece with one another. This paper seeks to uncover these various voices or positions, with a view to raising some searching questions pertaining to how we should properly understand the just war tradition today. (shrink)

In this commentary, I critically discuss the respective views of Gert and Beauchamp–Childress on the nature of so-called common morality and its promise for enriching ethical reflection within the field of bioethics. Although I endorse Beauchamp and Childress’ shift from an emphasis on ethical theory as the source of moral norms to an emphasis on common morality, I question whether rouging up common morality to make it look like some sort of ultimate and universal foundation for morality, untouched by the (...) dialectics of time and reflective equilibrium, was an equally good move. As for Gert’s magisterial conception of common morality, I conclude that certain elements of his system are controversial at best and woefully inadequate at worst. He has a tendency to find in common morality what he himself put there, and his highly restricted conception of duties of assistance strikes this reader as ad hoc, inadequately defended, and unworthy of a project whose goal is to lessen the amount of misery in the world. (shrink)

Winning essay of the American Society for Aesthetics' inaugural Peter Kivy Prize. Extends Kivy's notion of sonic picturing through engagement with recent work in philosophy of perception. Argues that sonic pictures are more widespread and more aesthetically and artistically important than even Kivy envisioned. Topics discussed include: the nature of sonic pictures; the nature of sounds; what we can (and more importantly, cannot) conclude from musical listening; sonic pictures in film; beatboxing as an art of (...) class='Hi'>sonic picturing; and cover songs as sonic pictures. To be published in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. (shrink)

Two posttranslational lipid modifications present on all Hedgehog (Hh) morphogens—an N‐terminal palmitate and a C‐terminal cholesterol—are established and essential regulators of Hh biofunction. Yet, for several decades, the question of exactly how both lipids contribute to Hh signaling remained obscure. Recently, cryogenic electron microscopy revealed different modes by which one or both lipids may contribute directly to Hh binding and signaling to its receptor Patched1 (Ptc). Some of these modes demand that the established release factor Dispatched1 (Disp) extracts dual‐lipidated (...) Hh from the cell surface, and that another known upstream signaling modulator called Scube2 chaperones the dual‐lipidated morphogen to Ptc. By mechanistically and biochemically aligning this concept with established in vivo and recent in vitro findings, this reflection identifies remaining questions in lipidated Hh transport and evaluates additional mechanisms of Disp‐ and Scube2‐regulated release of a second bioactive Hh fraction that has one or both lipids removed. (shrink)

This essay examines the problem of medial specificity in music and sound art, giving particular attention to Seth Kim-Cohen’s call for a non-cochlear sound art based on the notion of “expansion” that has been decisive in visual arts discourses. I argue that Kim-Cohen’s non-cochlear intervention in In the Blink of an Ear might be productively pressured towards the concept of a “sonic effect” that acknowledges the material-discursive particularity of sound without recourse to the phenomenological claims of authenticity that Kim-Cohen (...) correctly abhors. In service of this argument, the essay extensively discusses a sound and media artwork – Exurbia, created by myself and William Brent – that leverages the metaphorics of sound against existing understandings of specific forms of network communication. I argue that the conceptual and material dimensions of the project stridulate in a hum of recursive vectors for considering the constitution and consequences of networked aural interaction. Exurbia can thus be parsed in terms of medial specificity precisely because its digital aural materials are themselves discursive. (shrink)

Perhaps Archilochus simply meant that the hedgehog’s single defense defeats the fox’s many tricks. Yet, the hedgehog and the fox were turned into metaphors for two types of thinkers and writers by the historian philosopher Isaiah Berlin. All the thinking and actions of the hedgehog revolve around a single vision and are structured by a single set of principles that the hedgehog holds to be universal. Foxes lack such central vision and universal principles; they seize many (...) experiences and pursuit many ends, always holding concrete particulars to be paramount. Each way of thinking has its strength and weakness; neither is superior to the other. Berlin cited Plato, Dante, and Dostoevsky as hedgehogs; Aristotle, Shakespeare, and Pushkin foxes. Tolstoy was diagnosed as a fox who imagined himself a hedgehog. (shrink)

Musicians and theorists such as the radiophonic pioneer Pierre Schaeffer, view the products of new audio technologies as devices whereby the experience of sound can be displaced from its causal origins and achieve new musical or poetic resonances. Accordingly, the listening experience associated with sonic art within this perspective is ‘acousmatic’; the process of sound generation playing no role in the description or understanding of the experience as such. In this paper I shall articulate and defend a position according (...) to which an adequate phenomenology of auditory experience must refer to mechanisms of sound generation. This position is shown to follow from a phenomenology of sounds as located events and a physicalist account of auditory properties as features of the temporal development of such events. (shrink)

There is a strong disconnect between humans and other species in our societies. Zoos particularly expose this disconnect by displaying the asymmetry between visitors in search of entertainment, and animals often suffering from a lack of meaningful interactions and natural behaviors. In zoos, many species are unable to mate, raise young, or exhibit engagement behaviors. Enrichment is a way to enhance their quality of life, enabling them to express natural behaviors and reducing stereotypies. Prior work on sound-based enrichment and interactivity (...) suggest that a better understanding of animals’ sensory needs and giving them options to shape their surroundings can yield substantial benefits. However, current zoo management and conservation practices lack tools and frameworks to leverage innovative technology to improve animal well-being and zookeepers’ ability to care for them. Ethical considerations are called for in developing such interventions as human understanding of animals’ worlds is still limited, and assumptions can have detrimental consequences. Based on several interventions, four principles are proposed to guide a more systematic implementation of sonic enrichment in zoos. The goal is to lay the groundwork for the design of the zoos of the future, with a focus on sounds, for the benefit of the animals. (shrink)

Sonic Persuasion is predominantly a history of sound in twentieth-century American culture that offers examples of how sound functions argumentatively in specific historical contexts. Goodale argues that sound can be read or interpreted in a manner similar to words and images but that the field of communication has largely neglected sound and its relationship to words and images. He shows how dialect, accents, and intonations in presidential speeches; ticking clocks, rumbling locomotives, and machinic hums in literary texts; and the (...) sound of sirens and bombs in cartoons and war propaganda all function persuasively in rhetorical ecologies that contain words, images, and technologies. The book opens with an anecdote .. (shrink)

Baedeker -- Independence. Truth in morals -- External skepticism -- Morals and causes -- Internal skepticism -- Interpretation. Moral responsibility -- Interpretation in general -- Conceptual interpretation -- Ethics. Dignity -- Free will and responsibility -- Morality. From dignity to morality -- Aid -- Harm -- Obligations -- Politics. Political rights and concepts -- Equality -- Liberty -- Democracy -- Law -- Epilogue. Dignity indivisible.

From Edison’s invention of the phonograph through contemporary field recording and sound installation, artists have become attracted to those domains against which music has always defined itself: noise, silence, and environmental sound. Christoph Cox argues that these developments in the sonic arts are not only aesthetically but also philosophically significant, revealing sound to be a continuous material flow to which human expressions contribute but which precedes and exceeds those expressions. Cox shows how, over the course of the twentieth and (...) twenty-first centuries, philosophers and sonic artists have explored this “sonic flux.” Through the philosophical analysis of works by John Cage, Maryanne Amacher, Max Neuhaus, Christian Marclay, and many others, Sonic Flux contributes to the development of a materialist metaphysics and poses a challenge to the prevailing positions in cultural theory, proposing a realist and materialist aesthetics able to account not only for sonic art but for artistic production in general. (shrink)

This article offers a thorough and critical reading of Husserl’s Thing and Space. This reading is principally motivated by the effort to methodologically design a phenomenological–topological approach to the research of lived sonic environments. In this book, Husserl lays foundations of phenomenological topology by understanding perceptions as places and defining, consequently, the space as a system of places. The critical reading starts with pointing out the ambiguity of location in Thing and Space, which consists mainly in the insufficient implementation (...) of the distinction between the location and the localization. Further investigations then reveal the roots of this ambiguity in both the preference of visual perception and the omission of subjective aspects of kinesthesia. The article critically examines Husserl’s notion of the appended localization that expresses the marginalization of acoustic experience. In conclusion, the article utilizes the critical findings to formulate the project of a place-based, medium-centered, and multi-sensory approach to sonic environments. (shrink)

The close link between signaling by the developmental regulators of the Hedgehog family and cholesterol biochemistry has been known for some time. The morphogen is covalently attached to cholesterol in a peculiar autocatalytic reaction and embryonal disruption of cholesterol synthesis leads to malformations that mimic Hh signaling defects. Recently, it was furthermore shown that secreted Hh could hitchhike on lipoprotein particles to establish its morphogenic gradient in the developing embryo. Additionally, there is new evidence that the Hh‐receptor Patched transmits (...) the Hh signal by modulating the secretion of an inhibitory sterol molecule from the receiving cells. Here we present some of the most recent discoveries on the Hh–sterol link and discuss their implications from a systems design perspective. We predict that a robust functioning of the Hh pathway will require the involvement of more sterol metabolites, and these should be the subject of future research. BioEssays 29:1085–1094, 2007. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In this paper I take Rorty’s self-description as a “hedgehog” as the starting point for a portrait of his intellectual temperament. I re-examine in the first instance Isaiah Berlin’s contrast between hedgehogs and foxes as inspired by the proverb of Archilocus. I then analyze, in philosophical terms, some differences between foxes and hedgehogs. I distinguish different types of hedgehogs in order to make clear exactly what kind of hedgehog Rorty was. In spite of his multiple interests and conversations, (...) I argue, Rorty portrayed himself as a hedgehog with only one important idea: the need to overcome notions such as Truth and Reason and to promote a less cruel and more anti-authoritarian way of living. I claim that this single idea is better understood when we pay special attention as to why Rorty gave priority to literature over philosophy, why he made distinctions between different types of writers, and why one of his favorite writers, Nabokov, was only apparently a fox. (shrink)

Hedgehog proteins are of pivotal importance for development and maintenance of tissue patterns in adult organisms. Despite the role of Hedgehogs in differentiation and tumorigenesis, signal transduction of Hedgehog remains a relatively uncharted area of signalling biochemistry. For proper Hedgehog distribution into tissues, two highly unusual covalent modifications are necessary, palmitoylation of a secreted protein and the attachment of a cholesterol group, making Hedgehog the only established sterolated protein in nature. Hedgehog exerts its function via (...) two membrane‐bound receptors, Patched and Smoothened; presumably, Patched transports a cholesterol derivate out of cells which inhibits Smoothened. Binding of Hedgehog to Patched impedes this proposed pump function and thus Inhibition of Smoothened, which leads to expression of genetic Hedgehog targets via relief of transcriptional repression. These atypical features make Hedgehog physiology unique in biology and may explain why this field has attracted such significant attention. BioEssays 26:387–394, 2004. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. (shrink)

In a number of papers, including the one published in this journal, Robert Sparrow has mounted attacks on consequentialism using principally what he takes to be an important fact, which he believes constitutes a reductio ad absurdum of consequentialism in its many forms and of this author's approach to enhancement and disability in particular (see page 276). This fact is the current longer life expectancy of women when compared with men. Here the author argues that Sparrow's arguments and entire approach (...) utterly fail. In doing so the author hopes to shed further light on the role of normalcy, normal species functioning and species-typical functioning in debates about enhancement and disability. (shrink)

The sounds of the college campus raise important questions of participation, identity, privilege, disability, and marginalization. During the 2019–2020 academic year, three university instructors from distinct disciplines (music, history, and political science) and a student research assistant (history) used sound as a method for inquiring into contested and erased sites on the campus of Western Carolina University, a regional comprehensive university located in the southeastern United States. The project came to be called Sonic Histories. Paid student volunteers were led (...) on a soundwalk and completed three online questionnaires that engaged questions of race and belonging on campus. This study presents findings on how students experience and interpret contested and erased sites through sounds heard and imagined. Sonic Histories explores two central questions. Historically, whose voices have been included and whose have been excluded on college campuses? How can sound promote awareness of racialized spaces and, in turn, achieve social engagement? The authors challenge the triumphant narrative of campus histories, which highlights racial reconciliation and progress while eliding the ways predominantly white campuses still exclude minorities. By re-centering minority voices in campus spaces, the authors explore the systemic exclusion of minorities that has occurred on college campuses across the country. At a time when places of higher education are refining and developing their commitment to diversity and inclusivity—while assessing their past in honest ways—the Sonic Histories project builds upon ongoing initiatives to position the college campus as a scholarly community that lives up to its democratic ideals of inclusion. (shrink)

In this article we examine the sonic framing of place. Our theoretical approach combines Goffman’s microsociology (and its sociology of music/sound studies off-shoots) with an account of sound in the urban atmospheres literature. Drawing on the work of French urban sociologist Jean-Paul Thibaud and associated work on sound in urban environments by the CRESSON research centre, we propose that sound frames activity in particular ways, including by infusing self and space with a certain tone, and by rendering places more (...) or less hospitable. In the latter part of the article, we examine Quiet Hour shopping as a case study in the sonic constitution and transformation of places. We conclude by reflecting on whether the social and cultural theoretical analysis of sound has suffered from a ‘noise bias’, and whether the ‘resonances’ of public places is a new frontier in both sociological research and in the politics of cities. (shrink)

I argue that sound-centric scholarship can be of use to feminist theorists if and only if it begins from a non-ideal theory of sound; this article develops such a theory. To do this, I first develop more fully my claim that perceptual coding was a good metaphor for the ways that neoliberal market logics (re)produce relations of domination and subordination, such as white supremacist patriarchy. Because it was developed to facilitate the enclosure of the audio bandwidth, perceptual coding is especially (...) helpful in centring the ways that patriarchal racial capitalism structures our concepts and experiences of both sound and technology. The first section identifies sonic cyberfeminist practices that function as a kind of perceptual coding because they subject ‘sound’ and/or ‘women’ to enclosure and accumulation by dispossession. The second section identifies a type of sonic cyberfeminism that tunes into the parts of the spectrum that this perceptual coding discards, building models of community and aesthetic value that do not rely on the exclusion of women, especially black women, from both humanist and posthuman concepts of personhood. Here I focus especially on Alexander Weheliye’s ‘phonographic’ approach to sound, technology and theoretical text. This approach, which he develops in his 2005 book of that title and in recent work in collaboration with Katherine McKittrick, avoids fetishising tech and self-transformation and focuses on practices that build registers of existence that hegemonic institutions perceptually code out of circulation. I conclude with examples of such phonographic compression, including Masters At Work’s ballroom classic ‘The Ha Dance’ and Nicki Minaj’s ‘Anaconda’. (shrink)

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." This ancient Greek aphorism, preserved in a fragment from the poet Archilochus, describes the central thesis of Isaiah Berlin's masterly essay on Leo Tolstoy and the philosophy of history, the subject of the epilogue to War and Peace. Although there have been many interpretations of the adage, Berlin uses it to mark a fundamental distinction between human beings who are fascinated by the infinite variety of things and (...) those who relate everything to a central, all-embracing system. Applied to Tolstoy, the saying illuminates a paradox that helps explain his philosophy of history: Tolstoy was a fox, but believed in being a hedgehog. One of Berlin's most celebrated works, this extraordinary essay offers profound insights about Tolstoy, historical understanding, and human psychology. This new edition features a revised text that supplants all previous versions, English translations of the many passages in foreign languages, a new foreword in which Berlin biographer Michael Ignatieff explains the enduring appeal of Berlin's essay, and a new appendix that provides rich context, including excerpts from reviews and Berlin's letters, as well as a startling new interpretation of Archilochus's epigram. (shrink)

Our studies of aesthetics and knowledge have long tended to privilege the visual - at the expense, Wolfgang Ernst argues, of the aural. 'Sonic Time Machines' aims to correct that, presenting a striking new approach to theorising sound that investigates its split existence: as a temporal effect in a techno-cultural context and as a source of knowledge and information. Ernst creates a new term for the concept at the heart of the book, "sonicity," a flexible and powerful term that (...) allows him to consider sound with all its many physical, philosophical, and cultural valences."--Page 4 de la couverture. (shrink)

David Rothenberg, a philosophy professor and Jazz musician, has been improvising with nonhuman animals for years, among his playing partners are birds and whales, known to be territorial animals. As Deleuze and Guattari propose that the origin of art is precisely the territorialising animal and more a function of nature than a specifically human cultural achievement, their concept of territory and rhythm offers a non-anthropocentric way of looking at these encounters. Rothenberg’s sonic experiments in resonance and interspecies interaction do (...) not rely on language, thus I argue that the human and the nonhuman animals form a temporary joint territory via sonic rhythms and engage in a mutual becoming by forming a rhizome. His sound thinking practice thus also helps in decentralising further anthropocentric models of music and art. (shrink)

This book offers an overview of the emerging SID research, discussing theories, methods, and practices, with a focus on the multisensory aspects of sonic experience.

Kermani traces the history of mankind from the origins of society and language to the present, and un-mutes the silence that resulted from the moment man began to write his history instead of listening to history's story.

Blanchot’s rejection of vision as the fundamental philosophical metaphor is well known: “Seeing is not speaking” (The Infinite Conversation (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1993) 25). Furthermore, his central idea of the limit-experience (borrowed from Bataille) is a “detour from everything visible and invisible” (210). As part of his Heideggerian heritage, the increased importance of hearing (and aurality in general) lacks the critical appraisal it deserves. Pari passu for voice. Blanchot’s investigation of voice, spoken, interior, literary, is extensive. Various works (...) of fiction, notably The One Who Was Standing Apart From Me, explore the meme, which is intensified in critical essays on Hölderlin, Kafka, Rilke, and Valéry, where the voice’s musicality is given to performance. The studies exemplify the operation of “pure voice,” voice no longer in relation to and under the constraints of the interlocutor: its rhythm, tempo, and melody. His clearest, though lapidary, remarks on voice appear in discussion of the Narcissus mythomeme. There, voice is related not only to Narcissus’ love of an (unrecognized) self but also to the intrigue of Echo and her mimetic reproduction of voice. I give a close reading of Blanchot’s rendition of Ovid’s story to show the central role that voice plays in his “great refusal” of philosophy and concomitant opening to the outside, the “beyond being,” its nomadism and messianism. (shrink)

An exploration of the production, transmission, and mutation of affective tonality—when sound helps produce a bad vibe.

The spaces between the modernist categories of human and nonhuman, or nature and culture, are collapsing in the Anthropocene. As human technological influence continues become evidenced as a global geologic force, ‘liminal spaces’ expand. Liminal spaces are spaces at the intersections and aggregations of human- and nonhuman-animal umwelten mediated by technology. Soundscapes, the collection of human and nonhuman created sounds of a particular place and time, give us unique access to the semiotic exchanges that constitute those spaces. Soundscape ecology, the (...) study of ecosystemic relations through sound, is a method by which to engage and understand those liminal spaces. Understanding liminal spaces in this context of soundscape ecology offers insights into new ways in which organisms relate to and within their environments through sign exchange; or, new ways animals engage complex worlds of experience. In this paper I articulate this argument and define ‘sonic liminality’ as a biosemiotic process of the creation and engagement in hybrid natures. I examine umwelt engagement through a specific case study: analysis of soundscapes at a local zoological park in the southeastern United States. I argue that the digital technology-driven empirical work of soundscape ecology gives semioticians access to informational ecosystems, and therefore to the ways in which information transforms the boundaries between individual organisms and their built and natural environments. (shrink)