Synopses & Reviews
These days, we take for granted that our computer screensand#151;and even our phonesand#151;will show us images in vibrant full color. Digital color is a fundamental part of how we use our devices, but we never give a thought to how it is produced or how it came about.
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Chromatic Algorithms reveals the fascinating history behind digital color, tracing it from the work of a few brilliant computer scientists and experimentally minded artists in the late 1960s and early and#145;70s through to its appearance in commercial software in the early 1990s. Mixing philosophy of technology, aesthetics, and media analysis, Carolyn Kane shows how revolutionary the earliest computer-generated colors wereand#151;built with the massive postwar number-crunching machines, these first examples of and#147;computer artand#8221; were so fantastic that artists and computer scientists regarded them as psychedelic, even revolutionary, harbingers of a better future for humans and machines. But, Kane shows, the explosive growth of personal computing and its accompanying need for off-the-shelf software led to standardization and the gradual closing of the experimental field in which computer artists had thrived.
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Even so, the gap between the bright, bold presence of color onscreen and the increasing abstraction of its underlying code continues to lure artists and designers from a wide range of fields, and Kane draws on their work to pose fascinating questions about the relationships among art, code, science, and media in the twenty-first century.
Review
andquot;In this authoritative and fascinating book, Jonathan Sterne, a leading scholar of sound studies, traces MP3 technology back to its roots in telephone research. His book is about not only how musical experience became equated with one format but also how subjectivity itself is formatted. Sterne decompresses history to weave a wonderful tale of the many surprising links and twists embedded in those tiny files.andquot;andmdash;Trevor Pinch, coauthor of Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer
Review
andquot;As we continue to inhabit the digital universe created by the invention of the computer, Jonathan Sterne provides us with an important cultural history and theory of the pervasive MP3 audio format. His insights go deep into our basic ideas of hearing and listening, as well as of information, showing how these ideas are tied to twentieth-century media.andquot;andmdash;Pauline Oliveros, composer and improviser, founder of the Deep Listening Institute, and Distinguished Research Professor of Music, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Review
andquot;MP3: The Meaning of a Format is packed with great stories. It's a brilliant book about how we listen and how we make music. It traces the way MP3s have been key to the way technology is revolutionizing music.andquot;andmdash;Laurie Anderson, artist/musician
Review
andldquo;Rigorous and quietly philosophical, MP3 situates this world-conquering format in a broader context than the familiar stories of college kids downloading wild and the death of the recording industry. . . . Sterneandrsquo;s fascination with the MP3 and its possibilities yields a book that is, really, a history of auditory cultureandrsquo;s startling attempts to beam sound across great distances. . . . Sterneandrsquo;s MP3 is an important work in various academic fields, but his probing questions about the future of digital culture have consequences beyond the specialized reader.andrdquo;
Review
“The insights offered here are not only of interest to the study of sound and music but reach beyond to the theorisation of digital media technologies and the understanding of how communication formats develop. . . . [T]his study shows the importance of continuities and the cross-referencing of media formats, offering a fresh entry point in the histories of sound and communications as well as of digital technologies.” - Hillegonda Rietveld, Times Higher Education Supplement
Review
andldquo;Sterne exhaustively and eloquently traces the history of the mp3 from the initial hearing model developed in Bell Labs to the current debates about piracy. As the author argues, each time we rip a CD to our hard drives, we're not only saving space in our living rooms or ensuring we have the appropriate gym soundtrack, but also reaffirming a fundamental idea about the limits of human perception.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Unzip an MP3 and the weirdest stuff starts popping out.
MP3: The Meaning Of A Format is not a dry technical or economic analysis of
the Moving Picture Experts Group Audio Layer III audio format . . . . Instead, Jonathan Sterneandrsquo;s book unravels the paradigms and ideas that underpin theand#160;MP3. . . . Itandrsquo;s an unruly, obsessive and oddly fascinating book, as befits Duke University Pressandrsquo;s eclectic and original texts on music and sound.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Sterneandrsquo;s preoccupation is with the fallacy of what one might call the official, Whig history of sound recordingandmdash;a constant ascension to better fidelity, the triumph of signal over noise, Instead, he emphasizes the double movement where technology makes the musical signal more and more compressed, more andlsquo;lousyandrsquo; than it ever was before, as is the case with the information in an MP3. . . . [T]here is no denying that it adds a necessary historical dimension to the study of musicandrsquo;s workings.andrdquo;
Review
“The last decade has been a truly exciting one in cultural studies of sound, largely due to the generous and catalytic contributions of Jonathan Sterne...the importance of this book for critical sound studies is undeniable.” - Carolyn Elerding, Reviews in Cultural Theory
Review
andldquo;As it turned out, the most rewarding music book of 2012 wasn't about an artist, a genre, or (thank the lord) the glory days of punk. Instead, it told the story of MP3, the digital audio standard that author and communications professor Jonathan Sterne traces from early-20th-century telephone research up through contemporary debates over piracy and file-sharing. Along the way, we're taken on fascinating detours through the invention of perceptual coding, the construction (and critique) of the ideal hearing subject, international corporate debates, and an extended discussion over whether or not music should be considered a andlsquo;thing.andrsquo; All file formats should be so lucky.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;This book is valuable for anyone thinking about music in our society, and by extension, the production, dissemination and political economy of any digital arts.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;This is an audiophileandrsquo;s dream resource. . . . This is a book for historians of music and technology, technology scholars, and those with a love of music and audio recording. Highly recommended.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Rooting the MP3 within the broader history of pychoacoustic research, Sterne provides an extensive chronicle of experiments, methodological shifts and innovations in telegraph and telephone technology.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Notwithstanding the tininess of its subject, this is a major work on the political economy of sound and ideas about hearing and communication in the twentieth and early twenty-first century.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Despite, or perhaps because of, the rather dystopic scene that Sterne sketches at the end of MP3, the book falls nicely into the space between sound studies and critical information studies. It joins humanistic scholarship on embodied listening practices to a critique of the economic interests that have funded much of the scientific research on the phenomenology of sound. To that end, MP3 reveals much about the social construction of hearing and how the familiar mythology of audio fidelity has been produced, discussed, and exploited by communications industries. Though the eponymous MP3 may have been eclipsed by the recording industry as Sterneandrsquo;s main object of inquiry, MP3 details admirably how the ideologies of corporate capitalism are deeply embedded in the listening practices of our everyday lives.andrdquo;
Review
“Sterne’s MP3 is an exemplary history of the present. . . . MP3 serves as a needed corrective—if not an outright refutation—of the varieties of techno-optimism that have flourished in response to the format’s widespread circulation.” Aaron Trammell - American Quarterly
Review
and#8220;Kaneand#8217;s fascinating book is the perfect example of what twenty-first century media history and theory should beand#8212;wide-reaching; attentive to the details of media and software technologies; bringing into conversation art, science, and code; and combining analysis of particular artifacts and artworks with institutional history. This is one book you must read, both for its methodology and ideas and the histories Kane uncovers. A fantastic achievement from a brilliant young scholar.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;To read Chromatic Algorithms is to dive into a hidden history of wild inventions and dramatic standardizations, of artist-engineers whose names are treasured by too few, and of corporations whose norms are praised by too many. Using media archaeology to unpack the mystery and commerce of electronic color that now dominate twenty-first century-perception, Kane communicates lucidly and with passion the joy of discovering lost art and lost ideas, and the euphoria of thinking through them with the most brilliant of contemporary thinkers and artists. From Frieder Nake and Shuya Abe to Eduardo Kac and Jeremy Blake, the book bursts with the struggle for and over color that formed the new digital sensorium. Chromatic Algorithms is a history whose pages could be written only by a scholar who cares equally and passionately about past and future color.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Theory is gray, said Goethe, but in Chromatic Algorithms, a secret history of how computers and art came together since the 1960s, Kane begs to differ. This jelly bean bowl of colorful and flavorful characters, ideas, and facts promises to cure us all of colorblindness.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Chromatic Algorithms promises to set the fields of color study and new media in a completely new direction. Not only does Kane offer us an important history of the development of digital color technologies and their uptake in video art, she also tells a remarkable story of the relation between art and commerce in her finely detailed study of Bell Labs, which is importantly identified as a site of radical aesthetic experimentation. Kaneand#8217;s study upends the facile oppositional logics of the relation of art and industry that plague so many discussions of the avant-garde and aesthetic autonomy. Moreover, the digital color aesthetic that Kane elaborates hereand#8212;which moves from historical accounts of technological development to broader ontological considerations of media, mediation, and aesthetic experienceand#8212;makes clear the complications of both color and code that any general theory of aesthetic experience in the twenty-first century will have to account for.and#8221;
Review
andldquo;Sterneandrsquo;s MP3 is an exemplary history of the present. . . . MP3 serves as a needed correctiveandmdash;if not an outright refutationandmdash;of the varieties of techno-optimism that have flourished in response to the formatandrsquo;s widespread circulation.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;A gorgeous and fascinating study of color, technology, visualization, the digital, and beyond.andquot;
Review
andquot;Thrusts color aesthetics into the realm of computer technology, uncovering surprising connections among color theory, chemical mixes, and contemporary digital light applications. . . . [Kane] explores complicated relationships among standardized dyes, Day-Glo shades, and the synthesis of color television, mirroring the sixties counterculture of psychedelic images, a recharged surrealism, and the emerging youth culture. Kane juxtaposes cool, controlled, computer design with the and#39;dirt styleand#39; of the collective Paper Red, whose works in video, web design, and installations bring into collision bright hues, composite color blends, rainbows, psychedelic peace signs, a healthy sense of satire, and an investigation of media design protocols. However, underlying modern color experiments are submerged political concerns regarding conformity, corporatism, and a growing uniformity of web 2.0. Kane describes present color as the and#39;photoshop cinemaand#39;andmdash;an era of processed, determined, mediated art, such as Jeremy Blakeandrsquo;s time-based paintings and the highly saturated film experiences of Pleasantville (1998) and Speed Racer (2008). and#160;They appear extravagant and bright but suggest a dark culture of color used to obscure and provide opacity to smooth, inscrutable surfaces. . . . Recommended.andquot;
Review
andquot;In documenting how we came to standardize and codify color, Kane opens up new ways of seeing our algorithmic culture as a whole. . . . There is a great wealth of material in this book that scholars of the digital, well beyond art historians, will find valuable.andquot;
Synopsis
Marking a significant turn in media and communications studies, this extraordinary sonic history connects the world’s most popular format for recording audio to ideas about ears, media, and technology as they have emerged and developed since the early twentieth century. Jonathan Sterne contends that everything we think we know about hearing in the state of nature is a result of the interaction between ears and technologies in twentieth-century science and engineering. The model of hearing built into the MP3 format reveals the extent to which compression, rather than verisimilitude, is a driving force in the history and ongoing development of communication technology, sonic culture, and aesthetics.
Sterne argues that formats, standards, infrastructures, and protocols are displacing the boxes that we call "media" as the technological keys to understanding the history and future of communication. Every MP3 bears the imprint of a theory of human hearing or, rather, its gaps and absences. Investigating the theories of hearing built into the format, he sheds new light on twentieth-century ideas about ears and media, the surprising ways that those ideas functioned both technologically and culturally, and their implications for future studies of media, technology, and the senses.
Synopsis
MP3: The Meaning of a Format recounts the hundred-year history of the world's most common format for recorded audio. Understanding the historical meaning of the MP3 format entails rethinking the place of digital technologies in the larger universe of twentieth-century communication history, from hearing research conducted by the telephone industry in the 1910s, through the mid-century development of perceptual coding (the technology underlying the MP3), to the format's promiscuous social life since the mid 1990s.
MP3s are products of compression, a process that removes sounds unlikely to be heard from recordings. Although media history is often characterized as a progression toward greater definition, fidelity, and truthfulness, MP3: The Meaning of a Format illuminates the crucial role of compression in the development of modern media and sound culture. Taking the history of compression as his point of departure, Jonathan Sterne investigates the relationships among sound, silence, sense, and noise; the commodity status of recorded sound and the economic role of piracy; and the importance of standards in the governance of our emerging media culture. He demonstrates that formats, standards, and infrastructuresandmdash;and the need for content to fit inside themandmdash;are every bit as central to communication as the boxes we call andquot;media.andquot;
Synopsis
Jonathan Sterne shows that understanding the historical meaning of the MP3, the world's most common format for recorded audio, involves rethinking the place of digital technologies in the broader universe of twentieth-century communication history.
Synopsis
The first computer-generated color was developed in the late 1960s, and many viewed these electronic hues as revolutionary, psychedelic vehicles to fuse human and machine consciousness and expand the perceptual field in art, science, and industry.
Chromatic Algorithms explores the ways in which a few brilliant computer scientists and experimentally minded artists transformed postwar number crunching machines into tools for producing luminous colors. Their radical new and#147;Computer Artand#8221; seemed to open the doors onto an unlimited field of aesthetic possibility. However, with the advent of personal computing, the Graphical User Interface (GUI), and the standardization of digital color, this experimental field all but closed.
By the 2000s, luscious and automated hyper-colors enticed artists, designers, architects, animators, and others to work with digital colors in many creative ways. Yet in this shift to industry standard digital color, a gap emerged between the colors, growing brighter and bolder on screens and in public spaces, and their corresponding abstraction in code. How and why did the user interface become more transparent just as its underlying operations became more complex and opaque? Can this fundamental disparity be located in new media art, and if so, what critical value does it offer? To answer these questions and more, Carolyn L. Kane boldly moves across the philosophy of technology, aesthetics, color studies, and new media history and theory.
About the Author
Jonathan Sterne teaches in the Department of Art History and Communication Studies, and the History and Philosophy of Science Program at McGill University. He is the author of the award-winning book The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction, also published by Duke University Press, and the editor of The Sound Studies Reader. Sterne has written for Tape Op, Punk Planet, Bad Subjects, and other alternative press venues. He also makes music and other audio works. Visit his website at http://sterneworks.org.
Table of Contents
Introduction. How Color Became Code
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Part 1. Chromatic Visions (400 B.C.-1969)
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Colors Sacred and Synthetic
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Classical and Modern Color: Plato through Goethe
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Industrial Color: Synthetics through Day-Glo Psychedelics
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Synthetic Color in Video Synthesis
and#160;
Part 2. Disciplining Color: Encounters with Number and Code (1965-1984)
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Informatic Color and Aesthetic Transformation in Early Computer Art
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Collaborative Computer Art and Experimental Color Systems
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; From Chromakey to the Alpha Channel
and#160;
Part 3. and#147;Transparentand#8221; Screens for Opaque Ontology (1984-2007)
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Digital Infared as Algorithmic Lifeworld
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Photoshop Cinema
and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Postscript. A New Dark Age
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Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
Index