The Dimension of Sound in Flusser: Implications for a Sonic Media Archaeology
Annie Goh · University of the Arts London Research Online (University of the Arts London) · 2016
Introduction: The missing dimension?It is unsurprising that the role of sound and music in the work of Vilém Flusser has long been considered marginal.While the number of essays that directly address sound and music is indeed relatively small, 1 recent scholarship exploring the meanings of sound and music in his work has asserted their previously overlooked importance. 2 Attempting to understand how Flusser used ideas of music and sound is part of these recent scholarly undertakings, and an emerging body of work tries to gauge their limited place in his writings.An alternative approach from the field of sound studies might instead attempt to think through sound and apply this to Flusser"s oeuvre.In the following, this thinking through sound will be used as "a matter of working through the medium of sound as thought" ( Henriques 2011: xviii).It asks what epistemic gains can be made via thinking through sound.Research in the growing field of sound studies often draws on work of sensory studies to demonstrate how the hierarchy of the senses has historically emerged in Western modernity, with vision taking on the status of the primary source of knowledge, and hearing, smell, touch and taste following lower down.3 Scholars provide many historical examples where the auditive has been neglected in favour of the visual.However, the reiteration of clichéd attributes of the auditive and the visual, points to the limitations of this approach; Jonathan Sterne"s formulation of an "audiovisual litany" is the most notable problematisation of this (Sterne 2003: 15).Sterne"s suggestion to approach sound as a modality for understanding relations of power and subjectivity does not involve attempting to simply prioritize the ear over the eye, but rather promotes a method for doing sound studies which seeks to describe and redescribe "what sound does in the human world, and what humans do in the sonic world" (Sterne 2012: 9; ibid.: 2).In order to create a fruitful dialogue with Flusser"s work and its "neglected" sonic dimension, the aim of this paper is not to replicate a simplistic approach of preaching the lost sonic dimension of his work and proclaim his previous ignorance.Instead, thinking through sound draws on Julian Henriques" emphasis on sound as a "dynamic model of thinking" and as enabling the crossing of traditional barriers "between thinking and doing, or interior and exterior worlds, or mind and © Annie Goh: The Dimension of Sound in Flusser: Implications for a Sonic Media Archaeology MAP 7 (April 2016) | www.perfomap.de2/14