Editor: Arie Altena
Copy Editors: Arie Altena, Mark Poysden
Design: Femke Herregraven
304 pp., 700 g, 17 x 24 cm, English, February 2012
ISBN: 9789081047043

Time is a complex and multifaceted concept. Since the early 20th century, relativity theorists and quantum mechanics have delved into its intricacies, challenging our intuitive understanding of linear progression. Meanwhile, art, film, and music have illuminated abstract notions, making the intangible tangible and reshaping how we perceive the sequencing of events. The relentless pace of technological innovation continues to disrupt and redefine our sense of the everyday, transforming everything from daily routines to cultural narratives. Published as a reader for Sonic Acts Festival 2012, this anthology pays homage to humanity’s evolving relationship with temporality, providing a dual perspective. One half features articles and essays that explore how time is conceptualised and reimagined in the realms of technology, culture, and literature. The other presents interviews with composers and musicians, offering an intimate glimpse into their creative processes and the ways they engage with time as both a constraint and a medium.

Contents

Introduction – Arie Altena

Point Source Solution (Excerpt from Turing’s Cathedral) – George Dyson

The Time of Roland Kayn’s Cybernetic Music – Thomas W. Patteson

Affective and Effective Cultural Technologies Before the Media: A Minimal Encyclopedia of Sound Apparatuses and Automata – Siegfried Zielinski

Innovation, Technology, or History: What Is the History of Technology About? – David Edgerton

Joel Ryan: Knowledge of Musical Time – Interview by Arie Altena

Mark Fell: ‘I Generally Work with Milliseconds, Not Beats per Minute’ – Interview by Arie Altena

★ Pauline Oliveros: ‘There Is No Physics of Experience’ – Interview by Nick Cain

★ Catherine Christer Hennix: ‘Sound Must Work as More Than Just a Signifier’– In Conversation with Bill Dietz

Robin Hayward: Pitches Treated as Noise – Interview by Arie Altena

Hilary Jeffery: Opening Up New Spaces, Exploring Time – Interview by Arie Altena

Keith Fullerton Whitman: You Can Make Extremely Loose Music With Computers – Interview by Arie Altena

Gilles Aubry: The Amplification of the Soul Through Technology – Interview by Arie Altena

Out of Time & the Buzz – Hillel Schwartz

Ulysses Becomes Electra: Electric Energy In Joyce’s Novel – Enda Duffy

Arrest and Movement – Timothy Druckrey

Trapped in Time – Omar Muñoz-Cremers

Function of the Machine (Excerpt From How To Construct A Time Machine) – Alfred Jarry