1st Edition

Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture Unsettled Matter

By Elodie A. Roy Copyright 2023
240 Pages
by Routledge

240 Pages
by Routledge

240 Pages
by Routledge

This book charts the unsettled media cultures and deep time of shellac, retracing its journey from the visual to the sonic, and back again. Each chapter unveils a situated moment in the long history of shellac – travelling from its early visual culture to Emile Berliner’s discovery of its auditory properties through to its recycling in contemporary art and design practices. Unforeseen... Read more
Introduction: From material culture to the materials of culture, Chapter 1. Sheen: Early stories and circulation of shellac, Chapter 2. Crackle: Assembling the record, Chapter 3. Mirrors: Phono-fetishism and intersensory visions, Chapter 4. Detonations: Shellac at war, Chapter 5. Shards: Waste, obsolescence, and contemporary remediations, Conclusion: Sonic sculptures, Index.

Biography

Elodie A. Roy is a media and material culture theorist with a specialism in the history of phonography. She is the author of Media, Materiality and Memory: Grounding the Groove, and the co-editor (with Eva Moreda Rodríguez) of Phonographic Encounters: Mapping Transnational Cultures of Sound, 1890-1945.