life in text and stereo sound
the taiwan soundscapes project documents and analyzes the sonic environment of contemporary taiwan. the goals of the project are to motivate further research on taiwanese public culture, religious practices, and vernacular aesthetics. eventually, the project will approach historical questions as well as current ones. the project will contribute to understandings of sound and subjectivity, mass media and citizenship, popular music and placemaking.
one of the most powerful examples of the colonial circulation of malikoda can be found in a 1942 film produced by the governor general’s office, “southward advance from taiwan.” a Continue Reading →
i’m working these days on a paper for IASPM’s inter-asia music conference. the next few postings will be drafts, ideas, and other work toward the paper. please comment! —— the Continue Reading →
on taiwan, a definition of the street as a place for vehicular traffic has not displaced other possibilities, in which the street serves as a medium of display, leisure, performance, or commerce. while taiwanese religious processions express these possibilities of street life most flamboyantly, more humble conveyances of street life give to the street its quotidian values. Continue Reading →
music–particularly discourses about good versus bad musics–feature in many discussions of urban planning; perhaps this sonic connection to urban planning is more evident in the developing (or in the case Continue Reading →
although anthropologists would not generally confuse ethnography with documentary presentation, such a definition guides most sound work in the discipline. to broaden definitions of ethnographic sound work, i have been exploring what one could call a conceptual soundscape: rather than aiming for verisimilitude, these pieces create fantastic or impossible sounds that nonetheless explore an historically specific way of hearing Continue Reading →
