Anthony Dunne: Hertzian Tales: Electronic Products, Aesthetic Experience, and Critical Design (1999/2005)
Filed under book | Tags: · design, electromagnetism, industrial design, radio, semiotics, technology
As our everyday social and cultural experiences are increasingly mediated by electronic products—from “intelligent” toasters to iPods—it is the design of these products that shapes our experience of the “electrosphere” in which we live. Designers of electronic products, writes Anthony Dunne in Hertzian Tales, must begin to think more broadly about the aesthetic role of electronic products in everyday life. Industrial design has the potential to enrich our daily lives—to improve the quality of our relationship to the artificial environment of technology, and even, argues Dunne, to be subverted for socially beneficial ends.
The cultural speculations and conceptual design proposals in Hertzian Tales are not utopian visions or blueprints; instead, they embody a critique of present-day practices, “mixing criticism with optimism.” Six essays explore design approaches for developing the aesthetic potential of electronic products outside a commercial context—considering such topics as the post-optimal object and the aesthetics of user-unfriendliness—and five proposals offer commentary in the form of objects, videos, and images. These include “Electroclimates,” animations on an LCD screen that register changes in radio frequency; “When Objects Dream…,” consumer products that “dream” in electromagnetic waves; “Thief of Affection,” which steals radio signals from cardiac pacemakers; “Tuneable Cities,” which uses the car as it drives through overlapping radio environments as an interface of hertzian and physical space; and the “Faraday Chair: Negative Radio,” enclosed in a transparent but radio-opaque shield.
Very little has changed in the world of design since Hertzian Tales was first published by the Royal College of Art in 1999, writes Dunne in his preface to this MIT Press edition: “Design is not engaging with the social, cultural, and ethical implications of the technologies it makes so sexy and consumable.” His project and proposals challenge it to do so.
Publisher MIT Press, 2005
ISBN 0262042320, 9780262042321
Length 174 pages
Daniel Gilfillan: Pieces of Sound: German Experimental Radio (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · early media art, germany, pirate radio, public broadcasting, radio, sound, streaming, tactical media
A cultural history of German radio broadcasting from the 1920s to today
Since the rise of film and television, radio has continued to evolve, with satellite radio and podcasts as its latest incarnations. Any understanding of the development of radio, like its visual counterparts, depends on closely examining the artistic ventures that preceded commercial acceptance.
In Pieces of Sound, Daniel Gilfillan offers a cultural history that explores these major aspects of the medium by focusing on German radio broadcasting, providing a context that sees beyond programming to consider regulations, cultural politics, and social standardization. Gilfillan showcases the work of radio pioneers and artists over the past century, including Brecht’s work with the form, and how radio was employed before and after World War II. He traces how German radio broadcasters experimented with networked media not only to expand the artistic and communicative possibilities of radio, but also to inform perceptions about the advantages and direction of newer telecommunications media like Internet broadcasting and pirate radio, which artists are using today to engage with a medium that is increasingly under corporate control.
Gilfillan astutely observes how claims made for the Internet today echo those made for radio in its infancy and puts forth a broad and incisive historical analysis of German cultural broadcasting.
Publisher U of Minnesota Press, 2009
ISBN 0816647720, 9780816647729
Length 240 pages
Kristen Haring: Ham Radio’s Technical Culture (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · history of technology, radio, technology
Decades before the Internet, ham radio provided instantaneous, global, person-to-person communication. Hundreds of thousands of amateur radio operators—a predominantly male, middle- and upper-class group known as “hams”—built and operated two-way radios for recreation in mid twentieth century America. In Ham Radio’s Technical Culture, Kristen Haring examines why so many men adopted the technical hobby of ham radio from the 1930s through 1970s and how the pastime helped them form identity and community.
Ham radio required solitary tinkering with sophisticated electronics equipment, often isolated from domestic activities in a “radio shack,” yet the hobby thrived on fraternal interaction. Conversations on the air grew into friendships, and hams gathered in clubs or met informally for “eyeball contacts.” Within this community, hobbyists developed distinct values and practices with regard to radio, creating a particular “technical culture.” Outsiders viewed amateur radio operators with a mixture of awe and suspicion, impressed by hams’ mastery of powerful technology but uneasy about their contact with foreigners, especially during periods of political tension.
Drawing on a wealth of personal accounts found in radio magazines and newsletters and from technical manuals, trade journals, and government documents, Haring describes how ham radio culture rippled through hobbyists’ lives. She explains why hi-tech employers recruited hams and why electronics manufacturers catered to these specialty customers. She discusses hams’ position within the military and civil defense during World War II and the Cold War as well as the effect of the hobby on family dynamics. By considering ham radio in the context of other technical hobbies—model building, photography, high-fidelity audio, and similar leisure pursuits—Haring highlights the shared experiences of technical hobbyists. She shows that tinkerers influenced attitudes toward technology beyond hobby communities, enriching the general technical culture by posing a vital counterpoint.
Publisher MIT Press, 2007
Series: Inside technology
ISBN 0262083558, 9780262083553
Length 220 pages
Tim Crook: International Radio Journalism: History, Theory and Practice (1998)
Filed under book | Tags: · audience, journalism, public broadcasting, radio
Radio journalists have witnessed much of the history of the twentieth century. From early documentary recordings , to the ground-breaking war reporting of Ed Murrow and Richard Dimbleby, to the sophisticated commentaries of Alistair Cooke and reporters such as Fergal Keane, International Radio Journalism explores the way radio has covered the most important stories this century and the way in which it continues to document events in Britan, America, Europe and many other countries around the world.
International Radio Journalism is both a theoretical textbook and a practical guide for students of radio journalism, reporters, editors and producers. The book details training and professional standards in writing, presentation, technology, editorial ethics and media law in America, Britain, Australia and other English speaking countries and examines the major public sector broadcast networks such as the BBC, CBC, NPR and ABC as well as the work of commercial and small public radio stations.
Timothy Crook investigates the way in which news reporting has been influenced by governments and media conglomerates and identifies an undercurrent of racial and sexual discrimination throughout the history of radio news. There are chapters on media law for broadcast journalists, the implications of multi-media and new technologies, digital applications in radio news, and glossaries which cover the skills of voice presentaion, writing radio news and broadcast vocabulary.
Publisher Routledge, 1998
Series: Communication and society
ISBN 0415096731, 9780415096737
Length 308 pages
Sungook Hong: Wireless: From Marconi’s Black-Box to the Audion (2001)
Filed under book | Tags: · communication technology, history of communications, history of technology, radio, technology, telegraphy, wireless networks
By 1897 Guglielmo Marconi had transformed James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetic waves into a workable wireless telegraphy system, and by 1907 Lee de Forest had invented the audion, a feedback amplifier and oscillator that opened the way to practical radio transmission. Fifteen years after Marconi’s invention, wireless had become an essential means of communication, as well as a hobby for many.
This book offers a new perspective on the early days of wireless communication. Drawing on previously untapped archival evidence and recent work in the history and sociology of science and technology, it examines the substance and context of both experimental and theoretical aspects of engineering and scientific practices in the first years of this technology. It offers new insights into the relationship between Marconi and his scientific advisor, the physicist John Ambrose Fleming (inventor of the vacuum tube). It includes the full story of the infamous 1903 incident in which Marconi’s opponent Nevil Maskelyne interfered with Fleming’s public demonstration of Marconi’s syntonic (tuning) system at the Royal Institution by sending derogatory messages from his own transmitter. The analysis of the Maskelyne affair highlights the struggle between Marconi and his opponents, the efficacy of early syntonic devices, Fleming’s role as a public witness to Marconi’s private experiments, and the nature of Marconi’s “shows.” It also provides a rare case study of how the credibility of an engineer can be created, consumed, and suddenly destroyed. The book concludes with a discussion of de Forest’s audion and the shift from wireless telegraphy to radio.
Publisher MIT Press, 2001
Series: Transformations: Studies in the History of Science and Technology
ISBN 0262082985, 9780262082983
Length 248 pages
Vinod Pavarala, Kanchan K. Malik: Other Voices. The Struggle for Community Radio in India (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · alternative media, civil society, community media, community radio, india, public broadcasting, radio
This book is a significant study of an emerging alternative media scene in India in the larger context of the globalization of mass communication. It explores community radio in India. When the trend globally is toward mergers, acquisitions, and concentration of ownership in fewer and fewer corporate hands, civil society organizations all over the world have been promoting such alternative, community-owned media.
This study investigates the ideologies and communication practices of various community-based organizations that have been using community radio as a means for empowerment at the grassroots. Adopting the case-study method, the authors do an in-depth analysis of four community radio projects in India-Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat and Jharkhand.
This book provides documentation of best practices in community broadcasting, and also appropriate frameworks for policy-making as it includes a comparative study of the policies related to community radio in liberal, democratic countries and a comprehensive assessment of the history of Indian policy-making in broadcasting.
Publisher Sage Publications, 2007
ISBN 0761936025, 9780761936022
Length 318 pages
Susan J. Douglas: Listening In. Radio and the American Imagination (2004)
Filed under book | Tags: · audience, networks, radio
Few inventions evoke such nostalgia, such deeply personal and vivid memories as radio—from Amos ’n’ Andy and Edward R. Murrow to Wolfman Jack and Howard Stern. Listening In is the first in-depth history of how radio culture and content have kneaded and expanded the American psyche.
But Listening In is more than a history. It is also a reconsideration of what listening to radio has done to American culture in the twentieth century and how it has brought a completely new auditory dimension to our lives. Susan Douglas explores how listening has altered our day-to-day experiences and our own generational identities, cultivating different modes of listening in different eras; how radio has shaped our views of race, gender roles, ethnic barriers, family dynamics, leadership, and the generation gap. With her trademark wit, Douglas has created an eminently readable cultural history of radio.
Publisher U of Minnesota Press, 2004
ISBN 0816644233, 9780816644230
Length 415 pages
Ellen Mickiewicz: Split Signals: Television and Politics in the Soviet Union (1990)
Filed under book | Tags: · communism, mass media, politics, public broadcasting, radio, soviet union, television
Television has changed drastically in the Soviet Union over the last three decades. In 1960, only five percent of the population had access to TV, but now the viewing population has reached near total saturation. Today’s main source of information in the USSR, television has become Mikhail Gorbachev’s most powerful instrument for paving the way for major reform.
Containing a wealth of interviews with major Soviet and American media figures and fascinating descriptions of Soviet TV shows, Ellen Mickiewicz’s wide-ranging, vividly written volume compares over one hundred hours of Soviet and American television, covering programs broadcast during both the Chernenko and Gorbachev governments. Mickiewicz describes the enormous significance and popularity of news programs and discusses how Soviet journalists work in the United States. Offering a fascinating depiction of the world seen on Soviet TV, she also explores the changes in programming that have occurred as a result of glasnost .
Publisher Oxford University Press US, 1990
ISBN 0195063198, 9780195063196
Length 304 pages
Allen S. Weiss (ed.): Experimental Sound & Radio (2000)
Filed under book | Tags: · listening, noise, public broadcasting, radio, radioart, sound, sound art, voice
Art making and criticism have focused mainly on the visual media. This book, which originally appeared as a special issue of TDR/The Drama Review, explores the myriad aesthetic, cultural, and experimental possibilities of radiophony and sound art. Taking the approach that there is no single entity that constitutes “radio,” but rather a multitude of radios, the essays explore various aspects of its apparatus, practice, forms, and utopias. The approaches include historical, political, popular cultural, archeological, semiotic, and feminist. Topics include the formal properties of radiophony, the disembodiment of the radiophonic voice, aesthetic implications of psychopathology, gender differences in broadcast musical voices and in narrative radio, erotic fantasy, and radio as an electronic memento mori.
The book includes a new piece by Allen Weiss on the origins of sound recording.
Contributors:
John Corbett, Tony Dove, René Farabet, Richard Foreman, Rev. Dwight Frizzell, Mary Louise Hill, G. X. Jupitter-Larsen, Douglas Kahn, Terri Kapsalis, Alexandra L. M. Keller, Lou Mallozzi, Jay Mandeville, Christof Migone, Joe Milutis, Kaye Mortley, Mark S. Roberts, Susan Stone, Allen S. Weiss, Gregory Whitehead, David Williams, Ellen Zweig.
Publisher MIT Press, 2000
ISBN 0262731304, 9780262731300
Length 188 pages
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