Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listner

Toop, David

ISBN 10: 1441155872 / ISBN 13: 9781441155870

Published by Contiuum, 2011

About this Item

First softcover edition. Size: Octavo (standard book size). 256 pages. Text body is clean, and free from previous owner annotation, underlining and highlighting. Binding is tight, covers and spine fully intact. No foxing in this copy. All edges clean, neat and free of foxing. Quantity Available: 1. Shipped Weight: Under 1 kilogram. Category: Music; ISBN: . ISBN/EAN: 9781441155870. All our pictures shown here are of the actual item, not stock photos. Inventory No: 30930: 295 For further info on this title, click on the "Contact Seller" button within this listing. We will try to reply within 24 hours. Otherwise you can order right now (inclusive of shipping options) from the "Add to Basket" button to the right.

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Sinister Resonance: The Mediumship of the Listner
• Publisher: Contiuum
• Publication Date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1441155872
• ISBN 13: 9781441155870
• Binding: Softcover
• Edition: First Edition.
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Dust Jacket
• Seller catalogs:
  • Music

About this title

Synopsis

Sinister Resonance begins with the premise that sound is a haunting, a ghost, a presence whose location is ambiguous and whose existence is transitory. The intangibility of sound is uncanny – a phenomenal presence in the head, at its point of source and all around. The close listener is like a medium who draws out substance from that which is not entirely there.

The history of listening must be constructed from the narratives of myth and fiction, 'silent' arts such as painting, the resonance of architecture, auditory artefacts and nature. In such contexts, sound often functions as a metaphor for mystical revelation, forbidden desires, formlessness, the unknown, and the unconscious. As if reading a map of hitherto unexplored territory, Sinister Resonance deciphers sounds and silences buried within the ghostly horrors of Arthur Machen, Shirley Jackson, Charles Dickens, M.R. James and Edgar Allen Poe, Dutch genre painting from Rembrandt to Vermeer, artists as diverse as Francis Bacon and Juan Munoz, and the writing of many modernist authors including Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, and James Joyce.

About the Author

David Toop is a musician, author and professor of Audio Culture and Improvisation at London College of Communication, UK. He has published five books including Ocean of Sound, Rap Attack and Sinister Resonance. Exhibitions curated include Sonic Boom for the Hayward Gallery, and Playing John Cage for Arnolfini Bristol. His first album, New and Rediscovered Musical Instruments, was released on Brian Eno's Obscure label in 1975 and he has collaborated with many improvising musicians and artists.