Conference Grants: Harry Burson on the Sound of Globalization
Harry Burson received a Fall 2019 BCNM Conference Grant to help cover his costs attending the Media Matter: Media-Archaeological Research and Artistic Practice conference at Stockholm University. Burson presented "The Sound of Globalization: An Archaeology of Immersive Media at the World’s Fair." Read more about his experience in his own words below.
I am again extremely grateful for the Berkeley Center for New Media’s support to share my research at the Media Matter: Media-Archaeological Research and Artistic Practice conference at Stockholm University in November. I presented a paper, “The Sound of Globalization: An Archaeology of Immersive Media at the World’s Fair” that explored early development of stereophonic sound in the context of the exposition culture of nineteenth century Europe. I situated these early demonstrations of stereo as part of a broader colonial project of the European exposition and the martial ambitions of its inventor (and would-be aviator) Clément Ader. Ultimately, I connect this early stereophonic technology to later immersive sound installations at expos including Le Corbusier’s Phillips pavilion in 1958 and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s spherical concert hall in 1970 to examine how stereophonic sound shapes and challenges contemporary conventions of representing and shaping global space.
On my panel, I was honored to present alongside two sound artists who shared how their work explores the links between art practice and the historical methods of media archaeology. Over the three days of the conference, I heard numerous stimulating papers that indicated the breadth of contemporary media archaeological work. Keynote presenters included Berkeley’s own Trinh T. Minh-ha—who discussed how her filmmaking excavates layers of history and memory—as well as Wolfgang Ernst and Erkki Huhtamo, whose presentations bookended the conference. The collegial methodological disagreement between Ernst’s anti-humanist “radical media archaeology” and Huhtamo’s Warburgian investigation of reoccurring cultural motifs—or topoi—suggested the continued vitality of the field for the study of the history of old and new media.