Ost- und westeuropäische Hörkulturen zu Beginn der elektrischen Lautreproduktion

The subject of this book is Eastern and Western European acoustic culture at the beginning of electric sound reproduction. The term acoustic culture includes the idea of sensory and social activities, such as perception, interpretation and mediation of auditory events. For a hundred years now (a very short time, historically speaking) people have been presented with new possibilities of perception due to the rapid development in the field of audio technology. The author tries to grasp the social use of these possibilities laying a special emphasis on the interconnection between psychoacoustic, historical and cross-cultural perspectives on auditory perception. First the reconstruction of perception contexts that assigned significances in the past will be addressed. Next you will find out how the cultural significance of sound sources is captured verbally, in other words how do technical, religious and gender-related descriptions of sound sources get included in public discourses. Thirdly it will be determined, how material sound objects and voices get represented in audiovisual media, in particular sound film. By a more sophisticated discussion of how early methods of electrical voice and sound reproduction could be rooted in the traditional cultures of Germany, Great Britain and Russia, the present study attempts to set a counterpoint to the popular concept of a technological globalization.