Monday, September 14, 2009

IU Mediated Sound Group Presents Patrick Feaster

The IU Mediated Sound Group Presents Patrick Feaster
Wednesday, September 30, 7 p.m.
Department of Communication and Culture(C2)
Room 203, 800 E. Third Street


The IU Mediated Sound Group is a new, interdisciplinary study group that promotes the research and understanding of sound technologies, popular music, and other issues of mediated sound. Meetings are open to all.

This month we will have a presentation and discussion with Patrick Feaster, whose First Sounds group has received wide attention for digitally "recovering" the sounds of recordings made before Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. How are we to understand these new/old sound recordings, which were intended by their creator only as visual representations of sound?

Patrick Feaster researches the culture and technology of early sound media and is a co-founder of the First Sounds initiative known for its pioneering playback of sounds from phonautograms originally recorded for visual analysis in the 1850s and 1860s. Characterized by the New York Times as “an expert in the history of the phonograph,” Feaster received his Ph.D. in Folklore and Ethnomusicology from Indiana University in 2007 and is a two-time Grammy nominee for his work on the album notes for Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings From the 1890s and Debate ’08: Taft and Bryan Campaign on the Edison Phonograph.