First published in French in 1998, revised in 2010, and appearing here in English for the first time, Michel Chion's Sound addresses the philosophical, interpretive, and practical questions that inform our encounters with sound. Chion considers how cultural institutions privilege some sounds above others and how spurious distinctions between noise and sound guide the ways we hear and value certain sounds. He critiques the tenacious tendency to understand sounds in relation to their sources and advocates "acousmatic" listening—listening without visual access to a sound’s cause—to disentangle ourselves from auditory habits and prejudices. Yet sound can no more be reduced to mere perceptual phenomena than encapsulated in the sciences of acoustics and physiology. As Chion reminds us and explores in depth, a wide range of linguistic, sensory, cultural, institutional, and media- and technologically-specific factors interact with and shape sonic experiences. Interrogating these interactions, Chion stimulates us to think about how we might open our ears to new sounds, become more nuanced and informed listeners, and more fully understand the links between how we hear and what we do.
Published: Duke University press
Book Pages: 312
Illustrations: 25 illustrations
Published: January 2016
Translator: James A. Steintrager
Contributor: James A. Steintrager
Born in 1947 in Creil, France, Michel Chion is a composer of experimental music. He teaches at several institutions within France and currently holds the post as Associate Professor at the Université de Paris where he is a theoretician and teacher of audio-visual relationships. After studying literature and music he began to work for the ORTF (French Radio and Television Organisation) Service de La recherche as assistant to Pierre Schaeffer in 1970. He was a member of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM) between 1971-1976. His compositional pieces elaborate on schaefferian theories and methodologies which Schaeffer referred to as musique concrète. He has also written a number of books as well as essays expounding his theories of the interaction between sound and image within the medium of film.
