Format Friction

Format Friction

EnglishHardback
Williams, Gavin
The University of Chicago Press
EAN: 9780226833248
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The first book to consider the shellac disc as a global format.

With the rise of the gramophone around 1900, the shellac disc traveled the world and eventually became the dominant sound format in the first half of the twentieth century. Format Friction brings together a set of local encounters with the shellac disc, beginning with its preconditions in South Asian knowledge and labor, to offer a global portrait of this format.

Spun at seventy-eight revolutions per minute, the shellac disc rapidly became an industrial standard even while the gramophone itself remained a novelty. The very basis of this early sound reproduction technology was friction, an elemental materiality of sound shaped through cultural practice. Using friction as a lens, Gavin Williams illuminates the environments plundered, the materials seized, and the ears entangled in the making of a sound format. Bringing together material, political, and music history, Format Friction decenters the story of a beloved medium, and so explores new ways of understanding listening in technological culture more broadly.
EAN 9780226833248
ISBN 0226833240
Binding Hardback
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Publication date June 5, 2024
Pages 208
Language English
Dimensions 229 x 152 x 20
Country United States
Authors Williams, Gavin
Illustrations 14 halftones, 2 tables
Series New Material Histories of Music