Haunted Audio: Spectres of Sound Reproduction
Exploring themes such as time, presence, desire, preservation and decay in sound reproduction techniques from the Victorian era to recent digital recording and re-mastering. This talk examines how the spectre of death culture continues to haunt contemporary listening practices and our understandings of analogue and digital sound reproduction. In particular the talk will focus on how analogue recordings are fetishised because they occasion presence and the return of things that are out of time – the voices of the dead and lost time.
About the speaker
Rachel O’Dwyer teaches on the MSC for Interactive Digital Media in the Computer Science Department of Trinity College Dublin and is currently undertaking a PhD in the Department of Engineering of TCD on mobile networks, funded by the Irish Research Council for Science, Engineering and Technology (IRCSET).
She is founder and Editor in Chief of Interference, an online peer reviewed journal of audio culture.
She is co-facilitator of the Dublin Art and Technology association DATA 2.0., an organisation for the presentation and discussion of digital art practices within Ireland and abroad.
She has curated various panel discussions, workshops and exhibitions on subjects such as mobile computing, contemporary soundscape ecology, and electromagnetic spectrum within Dublin and internationally. Her practice-based work includes experiments with locative media, audio installation and electroacoustic composition. She has published papers on audio culture and various aspects of technology studies with a particular focus on mobile sound and network cultures.
