Earth Sound Earth Signal is a study of energies in aesthetics and the arts, from the birth of modern communications in the nineteenth century to the global transmissions of the present day. Douglas Kahn begins by evoking the Aeolian sphere music that Henry David Thoreau heard blowing along telegraph lines and the Aelectrosonic sounds of natural radio that Thomas Watson heard through the first telephone; he then traces the histories of science, media, music, and the arts to the 1960s and beyond. Earth Sound Earth Signal rethinks energy at a global scale, from brainwaves to outer space, through detailed discussions of musicians, artists and scientists such as Alvin Lucier, Edmond Dewan, Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, James Turrell, Robert Barry, Joyce Hinterding, and many others.
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Thomas Watson: Natural Radio, Natural Theology 2. Microphonic Imagination 3. The Aeolian and Henry David Thoreau's Sphere Music 4. The Aelectrosonic and Energetic Environments 5. Inductive Radio and Whistling Currents 6. Alvin Lucier: Brainwaves 7. Edmond Dewan and Cybernetic Hi-Fi 8. Alvin Lucier: Whistlers 9. From Brainwaves to Outer Space: John Cage and Karl Jansky 10. For More New Signals 11. Sound of the Underground: Earthquakes, Nuclear Weaponry, and Music 12. Long Sounds and Transperception 13. Pauline Oliveros: Sonosphere 14. Thomas Ashcraft: Electroreceptor 15. Black Sun, Black Rain 16. Star-Studded Cinema 17. Robert Barry: Conceptualism and Energy 18. Collaborating Objects Radiating Environments 19. Joyce Hinterding: Drawing Energy 20. Earth-in-Circuit Notes Index
