The Sound of Undoing

The Sound of Undoing
Author: Paige Towers
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 208
Release: 2023
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1496232879

A memoir in essays, The Sound of Undoing deconstructs the way sound has overwhelmingly shaped Paige Towers's life. Each essay focuses on a different sound, some perceptible--like the sound of a loon call or gunshot--and others abstract--like the sound of awakening. Given a hypersensitivity to noise from which she has both suffered and benefited since childhood, Towers uses these sounds as a starting point for making sense of past events. She reflects on the estrangement of a beloved sister, sexual abuse and assault, and the link between mental illness and noise in her family, as well as nature, religion, violence, and other themes. Experimental in form and provocative in content, The Sound of Undoing also makes use of research on silence, nature and noise pollution, listening, sound art, autonomous sensory meridian response, and the acoustic environment in general. By exploring memories and feelings triggered by certain noises, this lyrical meditation untangles a life infused with meaning through sound. Paige Towers is a freelance writer. Her work has appeared in Hobart, Washington Post, The Guardian, Harvard Review, McSweeney's, and many other publications.

The Sound of Undoing

The Sound of Undoing
Author: Paige Towers
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2023-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1496235908

A memoir in essays, The Sound of Undoing deconstructs the way sound has overwhelmingly shaped Paige Towers’s life. Each essay focuses on a different sound, some perceptible—like the sound of a loon call or gunshot—and others abstract—like the sound of awakening. Given a hypersensitivity to noise from which she has both suffered and benefited since childhood, Towers uses these sounds as a starting point for making sense of past events. She reflects on the estrangement of a beloved sister, sexual abuse and assault, and the link between mental illness and noise in her family, as well as nature, religion, violence, and other themes. Experimental in form and provocative in content, The Sound of Undoing also makes use of research on silence, nature and noise pollution, listening, sound art, autonomous sensory meridian response, and the acoustic environment in general. By exploring memories and feelings triggered by certain noises, this lyrical meditation untangles a life infused with meaning through sound.

Undoing Hours

Undoing Hours
Author: Selina Boan
Publisher: Harbour Publishing
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2021-04-24
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0889713979

Selina Boan’s debut poetry collection, Undoing Hours, considers the various ways we undo, inherit, reclaim and (re)learn. Boan’s poems emphasize sound and breath. They tell stories of meeting family, of experiencing love and heartbreak, and of learning new ways to express and understand the world around her through nêhiyawêwin. As a settler and urban nehiyaw who grew up disconnected from her father’s family and community, Boan turns to language as one way to challenge the impact of assimilation policies and colonization on her own being and the landscapes she inhabits. Exploring the nexus of language and power, the effects of which are both far-reaching and deeply intimate, these poems consider the ways language impacts the way we view and construct the world around us. Boan also explores what it means to be a white settler–nehiyaw woman actively building community and working to ground herself through language and relationships. Boan writes from a place of linguistic tension, tenderness and care, creating space to ask questions and to imagine intimate decolonial futures.

The Undoing Project

The Undoing Project
Author: Michael Lewis
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-10-31
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0393354776

“Brilliant. . . . Lewis has given us a spectacular account of two great men who faced up to uncertainty and the limits of human reason.” —William Easterly, Wall Street Journal Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original papers that invented the field of behavioral economics. One of the greatest partnerships in the history of science, Kahneman and Tversky’s extraordinary friendship incited a revolution in Big Data studies, advanced evidence-based medicine, led to a new approach to government regulation, and made much of Michael Lewis’s own work possible. In The Undoing Project, Lewis shows how their Nobel Prize–winning theory of the mind altered our perception of reality.

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink

Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink
Author: Elvis Costello
Publisher:
Total Pages: 689
Release: 2015
Genre: Autobiography
ISBN: 0399167250

A personal introspective by the influential pop songwriter and performer traces his Liverpool upbringing, artistic influences, creative pursuit of original punk sounds, and emergence in the MTV world.

Erosion

Erosion
Author: Terry Tempest Williams
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2019-10-08
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0374712298

Timely and unsettling essays from an important and beloved writer and conservationist In Erosion, Terry Tempest Williams's fierce, spirited, and magnificent essays are a howl in the desert. She sizes up the continuing assaults on America's public lands and the erosion of our commitment to the open space of democracy. She asks: "How do we find the strength to not look away from all that is breaking our hearts?" We know the elements of erosion: wind, water, and time. They have shaped the spectacular physical landscape of our nation. Here, Williams bravely and brilliantly explores the many forms of erosion we face: of democracy, science, compassion, and trust. She examines the dire cultural and environmental implications of the gutting of Bear Ears National Monument—sacred lands to Native Peoples of the American Southwest; of the undermining of the Endangered Species Act; of the relentless press by the fossil fuel industry that has led to a panorama in which "oil rigs light up the horizon." And she testifies that the climate crisis is not an abstraction, offering as evidence the drought outside her door and, at times, within herself. These essays are Williams's call to action, blazing a way forward through difficult and dispiriting times. We will find new territory—emotional, geographical, communal. The erosion of desert lands exposes the truth of change. What has been weathered, worn, and whittled away is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming. Erosion is a book for this moment, political and spiritual at once, written by one of our greatest naturalists, essayists, and defenders of the environment. She reminds us that beauty is its own form of resistance, and that water can crack stone.

This Will Be My Undoing

This Will Be My Undoing
Author: Morgan Jerkins
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2018-01-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0062666169

From one of the fiercest critics writing today, Morgan Jerkins’ highly-anticipated collection of linked essays interweaves her incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism with her own experiences to confront the very real challenges of being a black woman today—perfect for fans of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, and Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s We Should All Be Feminists. Morgan Jerkins is only in her twenties, but she has already established herself as an insightful, brutally honest writer who isn’t afraid of tackling tough, controversial subjects. In This Will Be My Undoing, she takes on perhaps one of the most provocative contemporary topics: What does it mean to “be”—to live as, to exist as—a black woman today? This is a book about black women, but it’s necessary reading for all Americans. Doubly disenfranchised by race and gender, often deprived of a place within the mostly white mainstream feminist movement, black women are objectified, silenced, and marginalized with devastating consequences, in ways both obvious and subtle, that are rarely acknowledged in our country’s larger discussion about inequality. In This Will Be My Undoing, Jerkins becomes both narrator and subject to expose the social, cultural, and historical story of black female oppression that influences the black community as well as the white, male-dominated world at large. Whether she’s writing about Sailor Moon; Rachel Dolezal; the stigma of therapy; her complex relationship with her own physical body; the pain of dating when men say they don’t “see color”; being a black visitor in Russia; the specter of “the fast-tailed girl” and the paradox of black female sexuality; or disabled black women in the context of the “Black Girl Magic” movement, Jerkins is compelling and revelatory.

The View from Somewhere

The View from Somewhere
Author: Lewis Raven Wallace
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2023-03-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0226826589

A look at the history of the idea of the objective journalist and how this very ideal can often be used to undercut itself. In The View from Somewhere, Lewis Raven Wallace dives deep into the history of “objectivity” in journalism and how its been used to gatekeep and silence marginalized writers as far back as Ida B. Wells. At its core, this is a book about fierce journalists who have pursued truth and transparency and sometimes been punished for it—not just by tyrannical governments but by journalistic institutions themselves. He highlights the stories of journalists who question “objectivity” with sensitivity and passion: Desmond Cole of the Toronto Star; New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse; Pulitzer Prize-winner Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah; Peabody-winning podcaster John Biewen; Guardian correspondent Gary Younge; former Buzzfeed reporter Meredith Talusan; and many others. Wallace also shares his own experiences as a midwestern transgender journalist and activist who was fired from his job as a national reporter for public radio for speaking out against “objectivity” in coverage of Trump and white supremacy. With insightful steps through history, Wallace stresses that journalists have never been mere passive observers. Using historical and contemporary examples—from lynching in the nineteenth century to transgender issues in the twenty-first—Wallace offers a definitive critique of “objectivity” as a catchall for accurate journalism. He calls for the dismissal of this damaging mythology in order to confront the realities of institutional power, racism, and other forms of oppression and exploitation in the news industry. The View from Somewhere is a compelling rallying cry against journalist neutrality and for the validity of news told from distinctly subjective voices.

Remediating Sound

Remediating Sound
Author: Holly Rogers
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2023-09-07
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1501387340

Remediating Sound studies the phenomena of remixing, mashup and recomposition: forms of reuse and sampling that have come to characterise much of YouTube's audiovisual content. Through collaborative composition, collage and cover songs to reaction videos and political activism , users from diverse backgrounds have embraced the democratised space of YouTube to open up new and innovative forms of sonic creativity and push the boundaries of audiovisual possibilities. Observing the reciprocal flow of influence that runs between various online platforms, 12 chapters position YouTube as a central hub for the exploration of digital sound, music and the moving image. With special focus on aspects of networked creativity that remain overlooked in contemporary scholarship, including library music, memetic media, artificial intelligence, the sonic arts and music fandom, this volume offers interdisciplinary insight into contemporary audiovisual culture.

Mathematics and Computation in Music

Mathematics and Computation in Music
Author: Carlos Agon
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 387
Release: 2011-06-18
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3642215904

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Mathematics and Computation in Music, MCM 2011, held in Paris, France, in June 2011. The 24 revised full papers presented and the 12 short papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 62 submissions. The MCM conference is the flagship conference of the Society for Mathematics and Computation in Music. This year’s conference aimed to provide a multi-disciplinary platform dedicated to the communication and exchange of ideas amongst researchers involved in mathematics, computer science, music theory, composition, musicology, or other related disciplines. Areas covered were formalization and geometrical representation of musical structures and processes; mathematical models for music improvisation and gestures theory; set-theoretical and transformational approaches; computational analysis and cognitive musicology as well as more general discussions on history, philosophy and epistemology of music and mathematics.