Picturing Sound and Sounding History

What do we see in sound? Picturing Sound and Sounding History focuses on the important intersection between sight and the way visual items such as as paintings, drawings, and diagrams stimulate our auditory imagination. Though, as Marcel Duchamp says, “one can look at seeing, one can't hear hearing”, the media and mechanisms for sound making – its propagation, transmission, recording and reception – are clearly visible. This book explores the relationships between sound, sight and image chronologically, in a variety of historical contexts across the arts and sciences. With reference to the phenomenon of synesthesia, it examines the way sights and sounds affect us physically, socially and emotionally, and highlights the important role that sound and sound-making have had historically from pre-history to the present.