Research Catalog

Title

Listening in the field : recording and the science of birdsong / Joeri Bruyninckx.

Author

Bruyninckx, Joeri

Publication

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2018]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 237 pages, 4 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 24 cm.

Summary

"The transformation of sound recording into a scientific technique in the study of birdsong, as biologists turned wildlife sounds into scientific objects. Scientific observation and representation tend to be seen as exclusively visual affairs. But scientists have often drawn on sensory experiences other than the visual. Since the end of the nineteenth century, biologists have used a variety of techniques to register wildlife sounds. In this book, Joeri Bruyninckx describes the evolution of sound recording into a scientific technique for studying the songs and calls of wild birds and asks, what it means to listen to animal voices as a scientist. The practice of recording birdsong took shape at the intersection of popular entertainment and field ornithology, turning recordings into objects of investigation and popular fascination. Shaped by the technologies and interests of amateur naturalism and music teaching, radio broadcasting and gramophone production, hobby electronics and communication engineering, birdsong recordings traveled back and forth between scientific and popular domains, to appear on gramophone recordings, radio broadcasts, and movie soundtracks. Bruyninckx follows four technologies--the musical score, the electric microphone, the portable magnetic tape recorder, and the sound spectrograph--through a cultural history of field recording and scientific listening. He chronicles a period when verbal descriptions, musical notations, and onomatopoeic syllables represented birdsong and shaped a community of listeners; later electric recordings struggled with notions of fidelity, realism, objectivity, and authenticity; scientists, early citizen scientists, and the recording industry negotiated recording exchange; and trained listeners complemented the visual authority of spectrographic laboratory analyses. This book reveals a scientific process fraught with conversions, between field and laboratory, sound and image, science and its various audiences" -- From the publisher.

Series Statement

Inside technology

Uniform Title

Inside technology.

Subject

• Birdsongs > Recording and reproducing
• Birds > Vocalization
• Songbirds > Research

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-225) and index.

Contents

Eavesdropping in the wild -- Scientific scores and musical ears : sound diagrams in field recording -- Staging sterile sound : producing and reproducing natural field recordings -- Sampling assets : economies of scientific exchange at the Cornell Library of Natural Sounds -- Patterned sound : inscriptions and the trained ear in birdsong analysis -- Conclusion.

Call Number

*LE 21-3297

ISBN

• 9780262037624
• 0262037629

LCCN

• 2017032849
• 40028159338

OCLC

1002293911

Author

Bruyninckx, Joeri, author.

Title

Listening in the field : recording and the science of birdsong / Joeri Bruyninckx.

Publisher

Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2018]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Inside technology

Inside technology.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-225) and index.

Other Standard Identifier

40028159338

Research Call Number

*LE 21-3297