Overview

Everyone knows what noise is. Or do they? Can we in fact say that one man's noise is another teenager's music? Is noise in fact only an auditory phenomenon or does it extend far beyond this realm? If our common definitions of noise are necessarily subjective and noise is not just unpleasant sound, then it merits a closer look (or listen). Greg Hainge sets out to define noise in this way, to find within it a series of operations common across its multiple manifestations that allow us to apprehend it as something other than a highly subjective term that tells us very little. Examining a wide range of texts, including Sartre's novel Nausea and David Lynch's iconic films Eraserhead and Inland Empire, Hainge investigates some of the Twentieth Century's most infamous noisemongers to suggest that they're not that noisy after all; and it finds true noise in some surprising places. The result is a thrilling and illuminating study of sound and culture.

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9781441160461

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Reviews

We all know noise is there, but Hainge finds it everywhere. Love it, hate it, damp it, make it, even tame it into art-but escape it? Never. For noise, as Hainge shows, is not mere sound; rather, it names the ontological impedance and affordance of all relations in our emergent cosmos. Read this remarkably stimulating, wide-ranging, original book and you'll never hear or think of noise the same again. -- Ronald Bogue, Distinguished Research Professor, Comparative Literature Department, University Of Georgia Endorsement Skillfully traversing experimental music, media studies, existential literature, horror films, contemporary philosophy and digital culture, among other subjects, Greg Hainge carefully unpacks the topic of noise to expose its deep complexity. His project to map an ontology of this elusive and pertinent topic raises the level precisely on why noise matters, and finally lends to identifying noise as an expansive and vibrant materiality. -- Brandon Labelle, Professor, Bergen Academy Of Art And Design, Norway, And Author Of Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture And Everyday Life And Background Noise: Perspectives On Sound Art Endorsement In the wave of the current resurgence of both popular and scholarly interest in noise, Noise Matters blasts noise out of the realm of the purely sonic and into much stranger and more unexpected territory. From its opening manifesto on noise as essentially a question of the movement and vibration of both material and immaterial bodies, Hainge is just as at home dealing with the noise in Sartre's Nausea as he is with the cinema of David Lynch or the noise music of Merzbow. In all of these spheres, controversial claims are made and arguments undertaken that present noise in terms and genealogies other than the cliches about modernist noise that many of both its proponents and detractors would have us believe, ultimately constituting a form of vital noise in, and in relation to, contemporary noise studies and surrounding fields. -- Dr Michael Goddard, University Of Salford, UK And Co-Editor Of Reverberations And Resonances Endorsement In Noise Matters, we are brought into a world of perceptual yet often hidden noise: noise arises, noise comes to be, noise infiltrates all. Hainge's skill is to trace the filaments of noise into their material expressions, traversing film, fiction, philosophy, music, machinery, digital and analogue. -- Paul Hegarty, Author Of Noise/Music And Co-Author Of Beyond And Before: Progressive Rock Since The 1960s Endorsement

The originality of Hainge's work is in its philosophical method...He systematically unpacks noise to reveal its complexity, and its materiality in the virtual and actual worlds. Traversing many rich and wide-ranging topics, his book moves beyond the potential traps of falling into truisms, offering a highly nuanced reading of noise in all its materializations. -- Sally MacArthur, University of Western Sydney, Australia Musicology Australia

Author Information

Greg Hainge is Reader in French and Head of the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. He is the author of Capitalism and Schizophrenia in the Later Novels of Louis-Ferdinand Céline and has published widely on cinema, music, critical theory and French literature.

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