How I passed MCIT with flying colors! For the MCIT course at UvA. Organized by each week's topic, in the order of the reading, quotes by the authors included. Includes summaries of the assigned readings, notes from the lecture and the seminar classes.
01: Speech to Print
Sounds of the city: The soundscape of early modern
European terms.
David Garrioch
Sound: Helped to construct identity and to structure relationships.
Peter Bailey
➔ Examined the changing idea of “noise” sound that was either meaningless or
undesirable.
➔ The distinction between sound and noise changed in tandem with the emergence of
modern mass society and in the nineteenth century with the growing bourgeois fear of
the crowd.
Acoustic World of Early modern England (Bruce Smith): What we hear and the way we
interpret it are historically and culturally determined.
Speech (Voices)
● The most important “medium” of communication until the 1600’s to the 1800’s.
The urban soundscape
● The silence marks night and day.
● The text describes sound through time and space.
● “Church bells” regulating the time, marking space
Acoustic community
● The shared experience of local “sound marks” (Barry Truax)
● The diffused sense of belonging created by familiarity
● Hearing-oriented, face to face communication, impermanence
● Urban sounds as a system of communication
The ability to produce sound and silence. → Power Relations
Church/State wanting to control sound.
“Whoever controlled sound commanded a vital medium of communication and power (rung a
bell without permission, noisy affirmation of popular sovereignty)”
● Sovereignty: supreme power or authority
The sound remained important → It was not replaced by the visual, but its uses and
context changed dramatically.
Sounds call us and busy us with the things they signify… but they start to tire and annoy us
when they are no longer signs of anything. (Antonie Pluche)
, Acoustic → Visual Culture
● 1500’s to 1800’s: Gradual decline
● Factors: Changing political, social practices
● 1700’s to 1800’s: Uses/contexts of sound change
● A new source of information: clocks, watches, newspapers, and maps
Change in orientation in the oral culture. Based off of social and political culture.
Making Sense of Historical Change
There’s a strong obsession with historical themes in media culture.
Technology transfer through socio-cultural factors.
Watch out for:
● Technological determinism
● Social determinism
Choices of focus in an analysis:
➔ Factors (technological or socio-cultural)
➔ Periodization (time-frame)
➔ Themes (speech-print)
What do people do with a mobile phone? Calling, texting, voice mails, social media, filmmaking,
and live streams.
Imagined Communities: The origins of national
consciousness
Benedict Anderson
Printed Book: Kept a permanent form, capable of virtually infinite reproduction, temporary and
spatially.
Access to literature
● Writing did exist, prior to the invention of the printing press
● Impact of writing in Europe ca. 1000 BC
● Medium/tool of communication
● But restricted!
● Latin = International language of the church, administration, and the elite
● Catholic church controls writing, knowledge
● There are knowledge circulation but they’re very precious (prior to the printing press)
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