Marie Thompson – författare

Interrogating the recent proliferation of audio apps, smart speakers, sleep aids, and prenatal sound systems that promise a better life through sound, this book explores how these technologies came to be promoted as a cheap solution for capitalism’s inevitable crisis of reproduction. Marie Thompson shows how—at a time when, for many, accessing and providing care are increasingly under pressure—sound and music are sold as tools to support caregiving, child rearing, domestic management, and pregnancy. Connecting this phenomenon to shifting gendered, racial, and global divisions of labor, the making of the modern family, the changing political economy of music, and evolving discourses of automation, The Sonic Surrogate sheds light on the many reproductions implicated in sound reproduction.

Interrogating the recent proliferation of audio apps, smart speakers, sleep aids, and prenatal sound systems that promise a better life through sound, this book explores how these technologies came to be promoted as a cheap solution for capitalism’s inevitable crisis of reproduction. Marie Thompson shows how—at a time when, for many, accessing and providing care are increasingly under pressure—sound and music are sold as tools to support caregiving, child rearing, domestic management, and pregnancy. Connecting this phenomenon to shifting gendered, racial, and global divisions of labor, the making of the modern family, the changing political economy of music, and evolving discourses of automation, The Sonic Surrogate sheds light on the many reproductions implicated in sound reproduction.

Sound, Music, Affect features brand new essays that bring together the burgeoning developments in sound studies and affect studies. The first section sets out key methodological and theoretical concerns, focussing on the relationships between affective models and sound. The second section deals with particular musical case studies, exploring how reference to affect theory might change or reshape some of the ways we are able to make sense of musical materials. The third section examines the politics and practice of sonic disruption: from the notion of noise as 'prophecy', to the appropriation of 'bad vibes' for pleasurable aesthetic and affective experiences. And the final section engages with some of the ways in which affect can help us understand the politics of chill, relaxation and intimacy as sonic encounters. The result is a rich and multifaceted consideration of sound, music and the affective, from scholars with backgrounds in cultural theory, history, literary studies, media studies, architecture, philosophy and musicology.

Noise is so often a ‘stench in the ear’ – an unpleasant disturbance or an unwelcome distraction. But there is much more to noise than what greets the ear as unwanted sound. Beyond Unwanted Sound is about noise and how we talk about it. Weaving together affect theory with cybernetics, media histories, acoustic ecology, geo-politics, sonic art practices and a range of noises, Marie Thompson critiques both the conservative politics of silence and transgressive poetics of noise music, each of which position noise as a negative phenomenon. Beyond Unwanted Sound instead aims to account for a broader spectrum of noise, ranging from the exceptional to the banal; the overwhelming to the inaudible; and the destructive to the generative. What connects these various and variable manifestations of noise is not negativity but affectivity. Building on the Spinozist assertion that to exist is to be affected, Beyond Unwanted Sound asserts that to exist is to be affected by noise.

Noise is so often a ‘stench in the ear’ – an unpleasant disturbance or an unwelcome distraction. But there is much more to noise than what greets the ear as unwanted sound. Beyond Unwanted Sound is about noise and how we talk about it. Weaving together affect theory with cybernetics, media histories, acoustic ecology, geo-politics, sonic art practices and a range of noises, Marie Thompson critiques both the conservative politics of silence and transgressive poetics of noise music, each of which position noise as a negative phenomenon. Beyond Unwanted Sound instead aims to account for a broader spectrum of noise, ranging from the exceptional to the banal; the overwhelming to the inaudible; and the destructive to the generative. What connects these various and variable manifestations of noise is not negativity but affectivity. Building on the Spinozist assertion that to exist is to be affected, Beyond Unwanted Sound asserts that to exist is to be affected by noise.