After speaking to Milo in a feedback session he advised that I read Eco Sonic Media. I read through the first chapter as I felt the green vinyl section was really relevant to my portfolio 1 project. Here are some reflections and quotes.
Can an ecological critique be brought to sound media in a way that still allows us to hear them? Can we have a sound media that is ecologically sound?
It’s interesting to think that perhaps eco-sonic media can mean a silence of sorts. but I think this quote makes a great point that perhaps there is a good middle balance, where electronic amplified media is still eco-friendly.
The fact that sound media can be an energy-efficient alternative to screens is the beginning, not the end of the discussion.
This constant battle between ocularcentrism and sound is funny to me. But also seriously, I think it makes a great point that I never thought of, speakers take less energy than screens.
this book is guided by a few central questions: How can we evaluate sound- media technologies and practices from an eco-critical perspective? What might a sustainable sound-media culture look and sound like? How can sound media be mobilized to increase environmental awareness? In short, how can sound media become eco-sonic media?
I completely agree that there needs to be a reformed structure to sonic media, how its built, distributed and recorded. I think that fact that the canon of sonic media is dictated by the users, and the users are dictated almost I’d say by the manufacturers who create the sound objects and then the music industry. Commodification means that eco products won’t succeed unless they are profitable.
Historians also distinguish between an era when discs were made out of shellac and spun at the rate of 78 rotations per minute (rpm) and the era when long-playing records (LPs) were made of the synthetic plastic polyvinyl chloride (popularly known as PVC or vinyl) and rotated at either 331⁄3 or 45 rpm. The period when phonography was acoustic and when discs were made with shellac is what I call the “Green Disc” era, green to the extent that its media infrastructure was “unplugged,” incorporated human and nonhuman industry, and facilitated a culture of resource conservation.
I never knew that shellac discs came from bugs. Really interesting to think about this process of a green disc, that it was acoustic and unplugged, spun through a handle that gave the players the power to spin. I’m curious to see if a modern version of that would work, I don’t see why not.
Vinyl is notoriously difficult to recycle, with the result being that vinyl records are “hyperobjects”: a term Timothy Morton uses to describe substances such as Styrofoam and plutonium that exist on an “almost unthinkable” timescale.
This idea of hyperobjects, something Timothy Morton describes is correct. I never considered that it could not be recycled or reused as such, a record is created and never destroyed in a way that it takes hundreds of years to decompose, unlike the shellac disc.
Eco-Sonic Media aims to make sound media negotiable in a way that hears a future in the sustainable media practices of the past, that listens to more of the world with less environmentally harmful technology, and that orchestrates an ecologically sound media that is also a feast for the ears.
To listen to the environmental practices of the past and reconsider them for the 21st century is correctly assumed as a good practice I’d say. Just how we can create a better product is a good way of thinking also. To really make a difference one would have to convince the consumers that it’s better and just as good as the Vinyl record.
vinyl is generally made from petroleum, which is a nonrenewable resource. Nonrenewable resources like minerals and mineral fuels can only be used once, and the geological processes that form them are too slow to be sustainable. By contrast, shellac is a potentially renewable resource, given that the forest ecology that supports it is allowed to regenerate faster than the rate at which it is consumed. The shift from shellac to vinyl records thus speeds the depletion of nonrenewable fossil fuels.
The contrast between these two vinyl records or shellac and vinyl is disturbing to know, I now even consider the use of sampling to be good for the environment, we are putting these records to use. Instead of purchasing new records, typically only older records that are in second-hand stores are used.