LIVE EVENT, SUNDAY 24 OCTOBER 2021, 2–5PM
Cafe OTO is thrilled to launch Stereophonica: Sound and Space in Science, Technology, and the Arts (MIT Press) by Gascia Ouzounian. Described as ‘an extraordinary journey through the archaeology of acoustic and auditory spatialization’ (Aura Satz), Stereophonica grapples with the question ‘how did our understanding of sound become spatial’?
To celebrate the release of Stereophonica, Cafe OTO will host an afternoon of conversations and performances. To open the event, Gascia Ouzounian will be joined by Isobel Anderson, host of the critically acclaimed feminist music tech podcast Girls Twiddling Knobs. Following a conversation and Q&A, there will be performances of electronic music by Gerard Gormley (aka being strangers) and Matilde Meireles. The event will close with a DJ set by Crease.
Ouzounian draws on both the history of science and technology and the history of music and sound art. She investigates the development of military technologies for sound location during the First World War; revisits experiments in stereo sound at Bell Labs in the 1930s; the development of spatial music in the 1950s and sound installation art in the 1960s; analyzes the mapping of soundscapes; and investigates contemporary approaches to sonic urbanism. Mara Mills calls Stereophonica ‘An ambitious and brilliant work’, writing, ‘Ouzounian traces the propagation of ideas and tools from science to war to art (and back again) with true virtuosity.’