Kim Cascone Lecture bibliography

[K9 Kai Niggemann]

As some of you know, I teach a class on sound design at the Münster Academy of FIne Arts. In connection with this I was able to invite Kim Cascone for a lecture (he is curently touring Europe) and he was at the academy yesterday. he spoke about his approach to field recording and how he likes (and dislikes) field recordings to be presented in front of audiences.

I thought it was a very inspiring talk and compiled a list of all the books he mentioned, and I thought I should share this list with you as inspiring reading:

I researched the synopses and the years sloppily and quick like the wind, about 5 minutes before taking off to class this morning, so they might not all the correct (especially the dates may sometimes be editions, not the original's release date) The order is chronological from Kim's talk.

Enjoy!
Kai


Remainder. Tom McCarthy. (2007)
McCarthy's debut novel, set in London, takes a clever conceit and pumps it up with vibrant prose to such great effect that the narrative's pointlessness is nearly a nonissue. The unnamed narrator, who suffers memory loss as the result of an accident that "involved something falling from the sky," receives an £8.5 million settlement and uses the money to re-enact, with the help of a "facilitator" he hires, things remembered or imagined. He buys an apartment building to replicate one that has come to him in a vision and then populates it with people hired to re-enact, over and over again, the mundane activities he has seen his imaginary neighbors performing. He stages both ordinary acts (the fixing of a punctured tire) and violent ones (shootings and more), each time repeating the events many times and becoming increasingly detached from reality and fascinated by the scenarios his newfound wealth has allowed him to create—even though he professes he doesn't "want to understand them." McCarthy's evocation of the narrator's absorption in his fantasy world as it cascades out of control is brilliant all the way through the abrupt climax. (Feb.) 

Ways of World making. Nelson Goodman. (1978)
'In a way reminiscent of Einstein, Goodman leads us to the very edge of relativism, only then to step back and to suggest certain criteria of fairness and rightness. More so than any other commentator, he has provided a workable notion of the kinds of skills and capacities that are central for anyone who works in the arts' - Howard Gardner, Harvard University.

Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound. Don Idhe. (2007)
(...)

The Grain of the Voice. Roland Barthes. (1981)
Collected here are many previously published interviews with Barthes, which give him a forum for discussing his work. He also comments on a wide variety of issues, arguing, for example, that de Sade is a great writer, that laziness is the student's rebellion against academic rigidity. PW called the text "candid and pointed." January

Rhythmanalysis. Henry LeFebre. (1992)
Rhythmanalysis is a collection of essays by Marxist sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre. The book outlines a method for analyzing the rhythms of urban spaces and the effects of those rhythms on the inhabitants of those spaces. It builds on his past work, with which he argued space is a production of social practices.
The book is considered to be the fourth volume in his series Critique of Everyday Life. Published in 1992 after his death, Rhythmanalysis is the last book Lefebvre wrote.

The Open Work. Umberto Eco (1989)
This collection of newly translated essays presents Eco's response to the aesthetics of Benedetto Croce, which have had considerable influence in Italian thought for several decades. Eco's idea of "open" works of art, those that "have in common . . . the artist's decision to leave the arrangement of some of their constituents either to the public or to chance" is challenging and will disturb traditionalists. Nevertheless, as with his other books, Eco writes insightfully and forcefully, and the variety of subjects tackled here is illuminating, ranging from language and communication in general, to television and mass culture. Highly recommended for academic libraries and informed readers.