Compact Disc (Object Lessons)

Robert Barry

ISBN 10: 1501348515 / ISBN 13: 9781501348518

Published by Bloomsbury Academic, 2020

Seller Inventory # 9781501348518

Synopsis:

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.

The story of the compact disc is also the story of the end of physical media. It is the story of how the quest for perfection laid the grounds for the death of a great industry. For in the passage from analogue media, like records and tapes, to digital formats, like CDs, something changed in the nature of media and in the relationship we have with music. Music became code, a sequence of 1s and 0s, a flow of pure information. The material structure of the medium itself was always supposed to disappear. But the physical has proved to possess an uncanny knack for returning.

Today the CD is a zombie medium, still popular amongst certain avant-garde record labels and Japanese consumers. Against all the odds, the spectre endures.

Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

About the Author: Robert Barry is Visual Arts Editor at The Quietus and a Faculty Member at the Institute of Contemporary Music Performance, UK. He is the author of The Music of the Future (2017) and co-editor, with Houman Barekat and David Winters, of The Digital Critic: Literary Culture Online (2017).

Bibliographic Details

Title: Compact Disc (Object Lessons)
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Publication Date: 2020
Binding: Soft cover
Condition: New