daily.billtron.org

A Visual Timeline of the Era of the Boombox

Feast your eyes on the result of weeks of work using the various remains of over a dozen cars — from 80's BMW's to a 1990 Toyota Tercel — it's the glorious Turbo II Junkyard Boogaloo boombox. For those of you who want the gearhead nitty-gritty, the full "How To" is here. For those who just want to see this baby in all of its radical goodness, below you'll find some documentation of what the Turbo II is and does …

Precisely when the term was coined we're not sure. Department stores such as Sears and K-Mart began used it in their marketing as early as 1983. Merriam-Webster pins it at 1981, and defines the boom box as "a large portable radio and often tape player with two attached speakers". Initially, it became identified with a certain group of society, hence adopting epithetic nicknames, like ghetto blaster, and jam box. But as the masses began to embrace this assemblage of electronics gadgets as an indespensible form of portable entertainment, it became an icon of popular culture, and we've yet to let go. Your hosts of Pocket Calculator Show endeavor here to provide a retrospective, including as many photos, facts and accounts as we can provide, during your tour of the Vintage Boombox Museum.

The last thing you'd expect to hear from anyone who's flown recently is that planes are too quiet. But that's exactly what Airbus is hearing from pilots who say the A380 super-jumbo makes so little noise they're having trouble getting to sleep.

The last thing you'd expect to hear from anyone who's flown recently is that planes are too quiet. But that's exactly what Airbus is hearing from pilots who say the A380 super-jumbo makes so little noise they're having trouble getting to sleep.

"Hz vs Church" aims to use Churches [or other big sized public buildings] as post loudspeakers in order to create, unfold and play live various sounds which appear in the "aural surface" by using and manipulating in real time, different kinds of frequencies. The frequencies and sounds have been created by using tone generators. This project builds on the phenomenon of resonance [Hermann von Helmholtz], when one of the core ideas, is to use the pure sounds in a way that Pierre Schaeffer described as objects sonores [musical objects]. This, enables the audience to re-decode, perceive and redefine music by listening profoundly to some elements that obviously appear in numerous audio outputs, but not individually and instantaneously like in "Hz vs Church". Some of the sounds are amplified ultrasound and infrasound frequencies. I also use various kinds of noise such as white, pink, brown and blue noise.

This paper deals with my fascination for acoustic feedback. From an artistic point of view, I will describe several types of feedback, and give descriptions, drawings and images of works we made based upon these different types, as well as links to videos and mp3s. Besides that, I want to express my doubts, theories, and questions, as well as our motives and enthusiasm for using this medium.

“Can I ask you something, Mr. McCluhan? If you run into an average person sitting on the subway, can you have a conversation with them?”

That’s Dick Cavett’s last question for Marshall McCluhan during McLuhan’s appearance on Cavett’s talk show in December 1970. Cavett is not being rude, just good-naturedly flip. But, to anyone who’s familiar with McLuhan’s writing or public appearances—heck, to anyone who’s just watched or listened to the conversation leading up to the question—it’s also a fair point to raise.

I'm astonished at how much both you and the Journal make of “Pearls Before Breakfast”. I wouldn't have stopped for Joshua Bell either, but the reason is simple: I don't like classical music.
Both their article and your response hinge on two basic assumptions.

Sound studies performed by a Federal team measuring elevated railway noise throughout the country measured the 18th Avenue station between 98 and 106 decibels. (A jackhammer is rated at 95 decibels). Any sound above 85 dB can cause hearing loss; you know that you are listening to an 85-dB sound if you have to raise your voice to be heard by somebody else.

Methodologically, this study draws on African American, Black Feminist, and Feminist critical approaches, reader-response and Reception Studies, as well as Complexity Theory and the emerging field of Sound Studies as a way to explain how sound and listening culturally and materially mediate notions of difference. It combines analysis of literary texts with discussions of sound recordings, historical testimony, and photographs. This material in turn provides a foundation for examining how and why listening matters so profoundly in select African American literary texts. Ultimately, in isolating listening and listening culture, this dissertation aims towards a more precise understanding of the connections and conflicts between perceptions of sound and ideas about racialized, gendered and classed bodies.

Methodologically, this study draws on African American, Black Feminist, and Feminist critical approaches, reader-response and Reception Studies, as well as Complexity Theory and the emerging field of Sound Studies as a way to explain how sound and listening culturally and materially mediate notions of difference. It combines analysis of literary texts with discussions of sound recordings, historical testimony, and photographs. This material in turn provides a foundation for examining how and why listening matters so profoundly in select African American literary texts. Ultimately, in isolating listening and listening culture, this dissertation aims towards a more precise understanding of the connections and conflicts between perceptions of sound and ideas about racialized, gendered and classed bodies.

Die Aural City Hearings am 1. November 2008 - mit nahmhaften Referenten und internationalen Sound-Experten, Diskussionen und Präsentationen - werden ab kurz vor 10 Uhr live per mp3-stream aus Berlin übertragen.

Gleichzeitig werden die einzelnen Vorträge an dieser Stelle als Mitschnitt bereitgestellt.

Here is an unabridged version of the interview I recently had with Barry Blesser, author of “Spaces Speak, are you listening? Experiencing Aural Architecture”. More information on Barry Blesser can be found here: http://blesser.net/

This interview will appear in abridged form in the next edition of the Sound Studies Newsletter, slated for July 1, 2008.

Sound Studies is not fields of study […]
Sound Studies is compilation of interests and skills, sensory perception, knowledge and experience that are incorporated and conveyed by the four areas of study […]
1. Communicate a listening experience
2. Perform Sonic Experiments
3. Direct the Sound of the Media
4. Design Sonic Environments

Holger Schulze,Talk for the 1st Symposium on Sound Studies,
Medienhaus at the Berlin University of the Arts October 2003.

I just began "The SoundScape :: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the the World" by R. Murray Schafer. This is a really interesting book with very compelling observations on how one might hear the world. The underlying notion to me seems to imply listening as something more active, less passive. So I thought it would be a nice idea to put the glossary terms here in order that they might be considered.

armed with nothing more than old boomboxes, thugs have gone on an attack spree through Shalton, allegedly targeting those in disagreement with their musical tastes.

How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio

In Soviet times the underground train stations were praised as masterpieces of art by Russian society. Each one was in depth planned in the smallest detail by the best Russian architects and artists. All the stations were decorated with the best sorts of stone and marble. There were large mosaic art works devoted to the Soviet life on the walls on the floor and on the ceilings. People coming from Russian countryside were astonished when they first time entered the Russian metro, it looked even more triumphantly than the museum of Communist party.

Now, the times have changed. If in Moscow they still try to preserve those magnificent interior looks, in Kiev, Ukraine they decided that no any Soviet art work is worth of displaying, when you can earn one more dollar by placing the advertisements on almost every square inch of the free surface. Who needs marble when you can put SNICKERS ad on it?

David Lee Roth's vocal track to "Runnin With the Devil" run through Microsoft's Songsmith.

And going home one Sunday night, I go down on the subway and something happened that has never happened before — ask any New Yorker, they'll agree with me — there was nobody, I mean no single person on the subway platform.

You're on the subway listening
to a pair of thugs argue about who makes the best chili. They lob
increasingly venomous insults back and forth for three stops, jostling
strap-hangers with their arm-waving and chest-thumping.