Nicholas Burman
, May 8th, 2021 08:16
From the stethoscope to contemporary sound art via wartime psychoacoustics, a new book dives into the strange history of binaural sound
The history of sound and music has often been told from the performer s point of view. Gascia Ouzounian’s
Stereophonica instead places listeners and the act of listening front and centre, drawing particular attention to the way in which sound and space have become conceptually wedded.
While reading Ouzounian’s book I often found myself thinking about Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film
The Conversation. In it, Gene Hackman’s character surveils the world by attempting to listen to what people are saying. It is generally understood as a depiction of the paranoia which permeated Western culture, especially in America, throughout the 1970s.