Phantom Power

Slab trunks feature sound systems and visual displays.

Since the 1990s, many of Houston’s African American residents have customized cars and customized the sound of hip hop. Cars called “slabs” swerve a slow path through the city streets, banging out a distinctive local music that paid tribute to those very same streets and neighborhoods.

Folklorist and Houston native Langston Collin Wilkins studies slab culture and the "screwed and chopped" hip hop that rattles the slabs and serves as the culture's soundtrack. Wilkins shows us how sonic creativity turns a space—a collection of buildings and streets—into a place that is known, respected, and loved.

In this show we hear the slow, muddy, psychedelic sounds of DJ Screw and The Screwed Up Click, including rappers such as Lil Keke, Fat Pat, Big Hawk, and UGK--as well as songs by Geto Boys, Willie Dee, Swishahouse, Point Blank, Biggie Smalls, and MC T Tucker & DJ Irv.

Photos by Langston Collin Wilkins.

Transcript

[low humming and static playing]

[CRIS CHEEK]

This…is…Phantom Power.

[Tamborine beat blends in]

Episode 7: Screwed and Chopped.

[Hip hop music with vocals cuts in]

Parental discretion is advised. Welcome to Phantom Power. I’m cris cheek. Today on the seventh and final episode of our first season, my co-host Mack Hagood converses with Langston Collin Wilkins. Langston is a folklorist an ethnomusicologist active in both academia and the public sector. Working as a traditional art specialist at the Tennessee Arts Commission. Mack spoke with Langston recently about his research into Houston’s unique slab, car culture. The city’s relationship to hip hop and hip hop’s to community. Enjoy.

[Different hip hop music plays]

[MACK HAGOOD]

So before we get into the research of Langston Collin Wilkins, maybe we should get one question out of the way. Why would a folklorist be studying hip hop? Don’t they study things like folk tales or traditional music or quilting? Well, in fact the folklorist I know study things like bodybuilding and fashion and internet memes. Folklorists study everyday creativity. One contemporary definition of folklore is “artistic communication in small groups.” As Langston shows, it’s the way a town like Houston gets a look and a sound all its own, but folklore didn’t lead Langston to hip hop. In fact, it was quite the other way around.

[Hip hop music cuts out]

[LANGSTON COLLINS WILKINS]

Back when I was a kid, around 12 years old, I received my first hip hop record, which was the “Ghetto Boys Resurrection Album”  in 1996.

[A song from the album plays]

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, the south side, where Scarface is from that same area. The Ghetto Boys in my hometown heroes as they are for everyone growing up in Houston in those communities.

Since the 1990s, many of Houston’s African American residents have customized cars and customized the sound of hip hop. Cars called “slabs” swerve a slow path through the city streets, banging out a distinctive local music that paid tribute to those very same streets and neighborhoods.

Folklorist and Houston native Langston Collin Wilkins studies slab culture and the “screwed and chopped” hip hop that rattles the slabs and serves as the culture’s soundtrack. Wilkins shows us how sonic creativity turns a space—a collection of buildings and streets—into a place that is known, respected, and loved.

In this show we hear the slow, muddy, psychedelic sounds of DJ Screw and The Screwed Up Click, including rappers such as Lil Keke, Fat Pat, Big Hawk, and UGK–as well as songs by Geto Boys, Willie Dee, Swishahouse, Point Blank, Biggie Smalls, and MC T Tucker & DJ Irv.

Photos by Langston Collin Wilkins.

Transcript

[low humming and static playing]

[CRIS CHEEK]

This…is…Phantom Power.

[Tamborine beat blends in]

Episode 7: Screwed and Chopped.

[Hip hop music with vocals cuts in]

Parental discretion is advised. Welcome to Phantom Power. I’m cris cheek. Today on the seventh and final episode of our first season, my co-host Mack Hagood converses with Langston Collin Wilkins. Langston is a folklorist an ethnomusicologist active in both academia and the public sector. Working as a traditional art specialist at the Tennessee Arts Commission. Mack spoke with Langston recently about his research into Houston’s unique slab, car culture. The city’s relationship to hip hop and hip hop’s to community. Enjoy.

[Different hip hop music plays]

[MACK HAGOOD]

So before we get into the research of Langston Collin Wilkins, maybe we should get one question out of the way. Why would a folklorist be studying hip hop? Don’t they study things like folk tales or traditional music or quilting? Well, in fact the folklorist I know study things like bodybuilding and fashion and internet memes. Folklorists study everyday creativity. One contemporary definition of folklore is “artistic communication in small groups.” As Langston shows, it’s the way a town like Houston gets a look and a sound all its own, but folklore didn’t lead Langston to hip hop. In fact, it was quite the other way around.

[Hip hop music cuts out]

[LANGSTON COLLINS WILKINS]

Back when I was a kid, around 12 years old, I received my first hip hop record, which was the “Ghetto Boys Resurrection Album”  in 1996.

[A song from the album plays]

Born and raised in Houston, Texas, the south side, where Scarface is from that same area. The Ghetto Boys in my hometown heroes as they are for everyone growing up in Houston in those communities. I just became obsessed with hip hop, and not just the music, but just the larger culture and community surrounding it. I was reading everything I could get my hands on about hip hop, I was watching everything,

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On July 18th this year, Teresa Barrozo's question -- What might the Future sound like? -- will be opened to global participation. We bring news of World Listening Day, and speak with Teresa about her intervention.

We also hear of data archival developments in acoustic ecology. And we speak with Leah Barclay, the editor of Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, about her Biosphere Soundscapes project and some of the challenges of developing accessible apps for mobile platforms.

Cris grapples inadequately with the terminology of the anthropophone, the biophone and the geophone in his everyday life.

The audio work heard in this episode can be found on the Soundclouds of Leah Barclay and Teresa Barrozo.

Transcript

[low humming and static playing][CRIS CHEEK]This…is…Phantom Power. Episode 6.[squeaking sounds][CRIS]Data streams.[sound of flowing water fades in as squeaking continues][MACK HAGOOD]Welcome to Phantom Power, I’m Mack Hagood. Today,  My co-host cris cheek prepares us for World Listening Day, an annual global event held every July 18th and sponsored by the World Listening Project with events held all over the planet. We’ll get you tuned in to acoustic ecology and World Listening Day with plenty of time to find an event near you, or perhaps to start one of your own. cris has a show for us in three parts. First, we’ll meet Teresa Barrozo, a sound artist, composer and sound designer for film, theater and dance, and the creator of the theme for this year’s World Listening Day. Next, cris does some close listening of his own in a meditation on the sounds of humans, animals and earth in his neighborhood. Finally, we meet Leah Barclay, who made the recording we’re hearing right now in dolphin code on the great Sandy Biosphere Reserve in Queensland, Western Australia. She’s the president of the Australian forum on acoustic ecology, the editor of Soundscape Magazine and the Vice President of the World Acoustic Ecology forum. Leah spoke with Chris from a remote biosphere reserve when it was still summer in the southern hemisphere.[sounds fade out, ethereal music fades in][CRIS]World Listening Day enters its second decade in 2018. This year’s theme is future listening, created by Filipino sound artist, Teresa Barrozo. Phantom Power caught up with Teresa amidst her preparations.[ethereal music continues with drum rolls, wooden chimes, and traffic noises periodically playing][TERESA BARROZO]I’m Teresa Barrozo, and I’m a composer and a curious listener from the Philippines. [CRIS]Whereabouts in the Philippines are you?[TERESA]Carson City, Manila.[sounds continue][CRIS]Theresa, how did you get involved with the World Listening Project?[TERESA]It’s quite popular every year. I get to read up on it. For this year, I got invited by Eric Leonardo and Leah Barclay to create a theme for this year’s World Listening Day. I’m actually surprised that they invited me, because I’m starting out as a sound artist.  My day job is that I’m a composer for film and theater and sound designer for theater, but this since that’s my background, I’ve been very fascinated with how sound and music is used in storytelling. How we use sound and music to manipulate our audience.[sounds are distorted, sped up and slowed down, with an occasional car honk being heard over the noise. Technological sounds are added.]That’s where my interest began. Here in the Philippines, there’s no such thing as sound studies,

On July 18th this year, Teresa Barrozo‘s question — What might the Future sound like? — will be opened to global participation. We bring news of World Listening Day, and speak with Teresa about her intervention.

We also hear of data archival developments in acoustic ecology. And we speak with Leah Barclay, the editor of Soundscape: The Journal of Acoustic Ecology, about her Biosphere Soundscapes project and some of the challenges of developing accessible apps for mobile platforms.

Cris grapples inadequately with the terminology of the anthropophone, the biophone and the geophone in his everyday life.

The audio work heard in this episode can be found on the Soundclouds of Leah Barclay and Teresa Barrozo.

Transcript

[low humming and static playing]

[CRIS CHEEK]

This…is…Phantom Power. Episode 6.

[squeaking sounds]

[CRIS]

Data streams.

[sound of flowing water fades in as squeaking continues]

[MACK HAGOOD]

Welcome to Phantom Power, I’m Mack Hagood. Today,  My co-host cris cheek prepares us for World Listening Day, an annual global event held every July 18th and sponsored by the World Listening Project with events held all over the planet. We’ll get you tuned in to acoustic ecology and World Listening Day with plenty of time to find an event near you, or perhaps to start one of your own. cris has a show for us in three parts. First, we’ll meet Teresa Barrozo, a sound artist, composer and sound designer for film, theater and dance, and the creator of the theme for this year’s World Listening Day. Next, cris does some close listening of his own in a meditation on the sounds of humans, animals and earth in his neighborhood. Finally, we meet Leah Barclay, who made the recording we’re hearing right now in dolphin code on the great Sandy Biosphere Reserve in Queensland, Western Australia. She’s the president of the Australian forum on acoustic ecology, the editor of Soundscape Magazine and the Vice President of the World Acoustic Ecology forum. Leah spoke with Chris from a remote biosphere reserve when it was still summer in the southern hemisphere.

[sounds fade out, ethereal music fades in]

[CRIS]

World Listening Day enters its second decade in 2018. This year’s theme is future listening, created by Filipino sound artist, Teresa Barrozo. Phantom Power caught up with Teresa amidst her preparations.

[ethereal music continues with drum rolls, wooden chimes, and traffic noises periodically playing]

[TERESA BARROZO]

I’m Teresa Barrozo, and I’m a composer and a curious listener from the Philippines.

[CRIS]

Whereabouts in the Philippines are you?

[TERESA]

Carson City, Manila.

[sounds continue]

[CRIS]

Theresa, how did you get involved with the World Listening Project?

[TERESA]

It’s quite popular every year. I get to read up on it. For this year, I got invited by Eric Leonardo and Leah Barclay to create a theme for this year’s World Listening Day. I’m actually surprised that they invited me, because I’m starting out as a sound artist.  My day job is that I’m a composer for film and theater and sound designer for theater, but this since that’s my background, I’ve been very fascinated with how sound and music is used in storytelling. How we use sound and music to manipulate our audience.

[sounds are distorted, sped up and slowed down, with an occasional car honk being heard over the noise. Technological sounds are added.]

That’s where my interest began.

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This episode, we talk with Jennifer Lynn Stoever–editor of the influential sound studies blog Sounding Out!–about her new book, The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (NYU Press, 2016). We tend to think of race and racism as visual phenomena, but Stoever challenges white listeners to examine how racism can infect our ears, altering the sound of the world and other people. We discuss the history of American prejudicial listening since slavery and learn how African American writers and musicians have pushed back against this invisible “sonic color line.”

Works discussed include Richard Wright’s Native Son and music by Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly), Fishbone, and Lena Horne.

Additional music by Graeme Gibson and Blue the Fifth.

Transcript

[low humming playing]

 

[CRIS CHEEK]

This…is…Phantom Power.

 

[COMPUTERIZED VOICE]

Episode 5.

 

[CRIS]

Ears racing.

 

[low humming and contemporary music fades in]

 

[MACK HAGOOD]

Race. We think of it as a visual phenomenon.

 

[CRIS]

But race has sound too.

 

[DIFFERENT VOICES GIVING GREETINGS]

Hey guys, welcome back. Hi sisters. Hey Jim, (inaudible). Hey everyone. Hey!

 

[CRIS]

When you heard those voices, did you give them a race, a class, perhaps some kind of assignation of character and if so, why do we do this? Where does this discriminating ear come from?

 

[MACK]

I’m Mack Hagood,

 

[CRIS]

and I’m cris cheek.

 

[MACK]

Today on Phantom Power we listen, to race or to put it more correctly, we examine how we are always listening to race. Our guide is Jennifer Lynn Stoever, Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York Binghamton. Stover is the author of the “Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening” a book that argues that white racism depends just as much on the ear as it does the eye. She shows how listening has been used since slavery to distinguish and separate black and white and how African American artists and critics like Richard Wright Leadbelly and Lena Horne have identified, critiqued, and push the boundaries of this sonic color line.

 

[techno-like music and a choir play in the background, then fade out]

 

[MACK]

Cris, when I spoke to Jennifer, she reminded me of a story that really shows how high the stakes of this kind of listening can be.

 

[JENNIFER STOEVER]

You know, I talk  in the opening of the book about the case of Jordan Davis.

 

[piano music fades in]

 

[MALE NEWS REPORTER]

It happened November 23rd, 47-year-old Michael Dunn told investigators he felt threatened at a gas station. Parked side by side with an SUV full of teenagers, the alleged gunman complained they were playing their music too loud.

 

[JENNIFER]

Jordan and his friends are playing hip hop at the gas pump. They were driving they had their music on. They were getting gas. Gas stations in theory (are) a transitory shared space where we all come in with our music we pump our gas and we leave.

 

[MALE NEWS REPORTER]

Detective say Dunn confronted Davis who was in the backseat and told him to turn the music down.

 

[JENNIFER]

The white man at question felt a proprietary access to the soundscape both it if he decided it was too loud, is too loud for everybody there,

This episode, we talk with Jennifer Lynn Stoever–editor of the influential sound studies blog Sounding Out!–about her new book, The Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening (NYU Press, 2016). We tend to think of race and racism as visual phenomena, but Stoever challenges white listeners to examine how racism can infect our ears, altering the sound of the world and other people. We discuss the history of American prejudicial listening since slavery and learn how African American writers and musicians have pushed back against this invisible “sonic color line.”

Works discussed include Richard Wright’s Native Son and music by Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly), Fishbone, and Lena Horne.

Additional music by Graeme Gibson and Blue the Fifth.

Transcript

[low humming playing]

 

[CRIS CHEEK]

This…is…Phantom Power.

 

[COMPUTERIZED VOICE]

Episode 5.

 

[CRIS]

Ears racing.

 

[low humming and contemporary music fades in]

 

[MACK HAGOOD]

Race. We think of it as a visual phenomenon.

 

[CRIS]

But race has sound too.

 

[DIFFERENT VOICES GIVING GREETINGS]

Hey guys, welcome back. Hi sisters. Hey Jim, (inaudible). Hey everyone. Hey!

 

[CRIS]

When you heard those voices, did you give them a race, a class, perhaps some kind of assignation of character and if so, why do we do this? Where does this discriminating ear come from?

 

[MACK]

I’m Mack Hagood,

 

[CRIS]

and I’m cris cheek.

 

[MACK]

Today on Phantom Power we listen, to race or to put it more correctly, we examine how we are always listening to race. Our guide is Jennifer Lynn Stoever, Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York Binghamton. Stover is the author of the “Sonic Color Line: Race and the Cultural Politics of Listening” a book that argues that white racism depends just as much on the ear as it does the eye. She shows how listening has been used since slavery to distinguish and separate black and white and how African American artists and critics like Richard Wright Leadbelly and Lena Horne have identified, critiqued, and push the boundaries of this sonic color line.

 

[techno-like music and a choir play in the background, then fade out]

 

[MACK]

Cris, when I spoke to Jennifer, she reminded me of a story that really shows how high the stakes of this kind of listening can be.

 

[JENNIFER STOEVER]

You know, I talk  in the opening of the book about the case of Jordan Davis.

 

[piano music fades in]

 

[MALE NEWS REPORTER]

It happened November 23rd, 47-year-old Michael Dunn told investigators he felt threatened at a gas station. Parked side by side with an SUV full of teenagers, the alleged gunman complained they were playing their music too loud.

 

[JENNIFER]

Jordan and his friends are playing hip hop at the gas pump. They were driving they had their music on. They were getting gas. Gas stations in theory (are) a transitory shared space where we all come in with our music we pump our gas and we leave.

 

[MALE NEWS REPORTER]

Detective say Dunn confronted Davis who was in the backseat and told him to turn the music down.

 

[JENNIFER]

The white man at question felt a proprietary access to the soundscape both it if he decided it was too loud, is too loud for everybody there,

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This time we talk with a fascinating sound artist and composer Mack met at a recent meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. As his website puts it, "Brian House is an artist who explores the interdependent rhythms of the body, technology, and the environment. His background in both computer science and noise music informs his research-based practice. Recent interests include AI, telegraphy, and urban rats." If that description looks a little daunting on the screen, the work itself sounds really cool to cris and Mack. We'll listen to three pieces of Brian's: a composition that imprints motion-tracking data on collectible vinyl, a field recording from the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and an encounter with the wildlife that put the "burrows" in New York's five boroughs.Links to works discussed: Quotidian Record (2012), Urban Intonation (2017).Mack notes that it was incredible to edit this episode using Daniel Fishkin's daxophone arrangement of John Cage's "Ryoanji" (1983).The other music on today's episode is by Brian House and Graeme Gibson.

Transcript

[♪ ethereal music playing ♪][CRIS CHEEK]This… is… Phantom Power.[FEMALE COMPUTERIZED VOICE]Episode 3.[CRIS]Dirty Rat.[unidentified sounds raising and lowering in pitch, banging noises][CRIS]So, what are we listening to here, Mack?[MACK HAGOOD]What do you think we’re listening to here, Cris?[noises continue, Mack laughing][CRIS]I don’t know, what is that? Is that an owl, put through a filtering device or something?[MACK, still laughing]You think it sounds like an owl put through a filtering device? Let’s listen to some more.[CRIS]Oh, wow. So synthetic.[MACK]It sounds like an old theatre organ having a bad day.[CRIS]Oh, yeah, no, I’m hearing that now. A pipe organ.[MACK]Yeah.[CRIS]Or something that hasn’t got a lot of wheeze left in it.[MACK]Something sad is happening in the silent film.[CRIS]Something very sad is happening.[MACK]Harold Lloyd fell off the clock.[both laughing][CRIS]And so he did.[MACK]Alright, so… it’s… it’s rats.[CRIS]That’s a rat?![MACK]That’s a rat.[clanging noises begin, rat noises stop][MACK]So today we’re gonna meet the guy behind the rat recordings that you just heard a moment ago:  Brian House. He’s a composer and sound artist I met last November at the Conference for the Society of Literature, Science, and the Arts, which is this really crazy conference for interdisciplinary scholarship and creative experimentation. I met Brian, and when I heard about what he was working on, I just knew we had to have him on the show. His work uses sound to express relationships between bodies, human and nonhuman bodies, social relationships, geographic relationships, temporal relationships, and sonic relationships. So we’ll be hearing three different pieces of his:  a musical composition that traces human, urban, and transatlantic movement, a field recording from the wetlands of Botswana, and an installation that will take us into the underground boroughs of New York City. This is work that helps us make sense of relationships we normally can’t sense at all.[BRIAN HOUSE]Well, my name is Brian House, and I’m an artist based right now up here in Providence, though I frequently do work down in New York. Yeah, I’m up here at Brown University at the moment, working on my PhD in music.[♪ upbeat technological music ♪][CRIS]So, Mack – how does Brian get interested in rats when he’s working on music?[MACK]Well, I think in order to get into that, we need to understand more of his previous work and some of the themes tha...

This time we talk with a fascinating sound artist and composer Mack met at a recent meeting of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. As his website puts it, “Brian House is an artist who explores the interdependent rhythms of the body, technology, and the environment. His background in both computer science and noise music informs his research-based practice. Recent interests include AI, telegraphy, and urban rats.” If that description looks a little daunting on the screen, the work itself sounds really cool to cris and Mack. We’ll listen to three pieces of Brian’s: a composition that imprints motion-tracking data on collectible vinyl, a field recording from the Okavango Delta in Botswana, and an encounter with the wildlife that put the “burrows” in New York’s five boroughs.

Links to works discussed: Quotidian Record (2012), Urban Intonation (2017).

Mack notes that it was incredible to edit this episode using Daniel Fishkin’s daxophone arrangement of John Cage’s “Ryoanji” (1983).

The other music on today’s episode is by Brian House and Graeme Gibson.

Transcript

[♪ ethereal music playing ♪]

[CRIS CHEEK]

This… is… Phantom Power.

[FEMALE COMPUTERIZED VOICE]

Episode 3.

[CRIS]

Dirty Rat.

[unidentified sounds raising and lowering in pitch, banging noises]

[CRIS]

So, what are we listening to here, Mack?

[MACK HAGOOD]

What do you think we’re listening to here, Cris?

[noises continue, Mack laughing]

[CRIS]

I don’t know, what is that? Is that an owl, put through a filtering device or something?

[MACK, still laughing]

You think it sounds like an owl put through a filtering device? Let’s listen to some more.

[CRIS]

Oh, wow. So synthetic.

[MACK]

It sounds like an old theatre organ having a bad day.

[CRIS]

Oh, yeah, no, I’m hearing that now. A pipe organ.

[MACK]

Yeah.

[CRIS]

Or something that hasn’t got a lot of wheeze left in it.

[MACK]

Something sad is happening in the silent film.

[CRIS]

Something very sad is happening.

[MACK]

Harold Lloyd fell off the clock.

[both laughing]

[CRIS]

And so he did.

[MACK]

Alright, so… it’s… it’s rats.

[CRIS]

That’s a rat?!

[MACK]

That’s a rat.

[clanging noises begin, rat noises stop]

[MACK]

So today we’re gonna meet the guy behind the rat recordings that you just heard a moment ago:  Brian House. He’s a composer and sound artist I met last November at the Conference for the Society of Literature, Science, and the Arts, which is this really crazy conference for interdisciplinary scholarship and creative experimentation. I met Brian, and when I heard about what he was working on, I just knew we had to have him on the show. His work uses sound to express relationships between bodies, human and nonhuman bodies, social relationships, geographic relationships, temporal relationships, and sonic relationships. So we’ll be hearing three different pieces of his:  a musical composition that traces human, urban, and transatlantic movement, a field recording from the wetlands of Botswana, and an installation that will take us into the underground boroughs of New York City. This is work that helps us make sense of relationships we normally can’t sense at all.

[BRIAN HOUSE]

Well, my name is Brian House,

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This episode we have a single longform interview with a media scholar of note--The New School's Shannon Mattern. We have teamed up with Mediapolis, a journal that places urban studies and media studies into conversation with one another, to interview Mattern about her new book, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media (U of Minnesota Press: 2018).

And lucky for us on Phantom Power, a large portion of Mattern’s story is about sound, from the echoes of ancient caves to Roman amphitheaters to telephone wires and radio towers—she shows us how sonic infrastructures allow us to communicate and form communities, cultivating forms of intelligence that are embodied and affective, as well as informatic. Before there was the smart city, there was the sonic city—and the sonic city isn’t going anywhere soon.

Some topics discussed: Patrick Feaster and First Sounds; Neil Postman; Harold Innis; Marshall McLuhan; John Durham Peters' The Marvelous Clouds; Carolyn Birdsall's Nazi Soundscapes. 

Transcript

[♪ ethereal music ♪]

cris cheek:        This is Phantom Power.

Female computer voice:                       Episode two.

cris cheek:        City of Voices.

[♪ fade out ethereal music ♪]

Shannon Mattern:         When we reduce the city to a computer, we think that everything can be ‘datified,’ everything can be fed through an algorithm. There are actually a lot of really important dimensions, human dimensions in particular, historical dimensions, things that resist ‘datification,’ that don’t really fit into that model. So, there’s a lot about a city that sort of leaks through those algorithms, that isn’t captured when you equate the entire city with a computational machine.

Mack Hagood:             That’s Shannon Mattern, an associate professor of media studies at The New School in New York City. Thanks for joining us on Phantom Power, a podcast about the sonic arts and humanities. I’m Mack Hagood, flying solo this episode. cris cheek will be back for episode three. Last year we put this episode online as a preview of the series. So, for the couple hundred of you who listened to it, give it another listen. There’s a lot going on. Or just check us out again in two weeks, when we’ll talk to sound artist Brian House. But for everyone else, this episode, we talk with Shannon Mattern about her new book, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt:  Five Thousand Years of Urban Media.  A large portion of Mattern’s story is about sound, from the echoes of ancient caves,

[echoes]

to Roman ampitheaters,

[chanting]

to telephone wires and radio towers.

[pre-recorded radio broadcast]

She shows us how sonic infrastructures allow us to communicate and form communities, cultivating forms of intelligence that are embodied and effective, as well as informatic. Before there was the Smart City, there was the ‘sonic city,’ and the sonic city isn’t going anywhere soon.

[♪ bell music ♪]

If you spend any time looking at architecture or design blogs, or reading tech websites or watching TedTalks,

This episode we have a single longform interview with a media scholar of note–The New School’s Shannon Mattern. We have teamed up with Mediapolis, a journal that places urban studies and media studies into conversation with one another, to interview Mattern about her new book, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media (U of Minnesota Press: 2018).

And lucky for us on Phantom Power, a large portion of Mattern’s story is about sound, from the echoes of ancient caves to Roman amphitheaters to telephone wires and radio towers—she shows us how sonic infrastructures allow us to communicate and form communities, cultivating forms of intelligence that are embodied and affective, as well as informatic. Before there was the smart city, there was the sonic city—and the sonic city isn’t going anywhere soon.

Some topics discussed: Patrick Feaster and First Sounds; Neil Postman; Harold Innis; Marshall McLuhan; John Durham Peters’ The Marvelous Clouds; Carolyn Birdsall’s Nazi Soundscapes. 

Transcript

[♪ ethereal music ♪]

cris cheek:        This is Phantom Power.

Female computer voice:                       Episode two.

cris cheek:        City of Voices.

[♪ fade out ethereal music ♪]

Shannon Mattern:         When we reduce the city to a computer, we think that everything can be ‘datified,’ everything can be fed through an algorithm. There are actually a lot of really important dimensions, human dimensions in particular, historical dimensions, things that resist ‘datification,’ that don’t really fit into that model. So, there’s a lot about a city that sort of leaks through those algorithms, that isn’t captured when you equate the entire city with a computational machine.

Mack Hagood:             That’s Shannon Mattern, an associate professor of media studies at The New School in New York City. Thanks for joining us on Phantom Power, a podcast about the sonic arts and humanities. I’m Mack Hagood, flying solo this episode. cris cheek will be back for episode three. Last year we put this episode online as a preview of the series. So, for the couple hundred of you who listened to it, give it another listen. There’s a lot going on. Or just check us out again in two weeks, when we’ll talk to sound artist Brian House. But for everyone else, this episode, we talk with Shannon Mattern about her new book, Code and Clay, Data and Dirt:  Five Thousand Years of Urban Media.  A large portion of Mattern’s story is about sound, from the echoes of ancient caves,

[echoes]

to Roman ampitheaters,

[chanting]

to telephone wires and radio towers.

[pre-recorded radio broadcast]

She shows us how sonic infrastructures allow us to communicate and form communities, cultivating forms of intelligence that are embodied and effective, as well as informatic. Before there was the Smart City, there was the ‘sonic city,’ and the sonic city isn’t going anywhere soon.

[♪ bell music ♪]

If you spend any time looking at architecture or design blogs, or reading tech websites or watching TedTalks, you’ve probably encountered a couple of truisms about how human beings will live in the future. The future is urban, and the future is ‘smart.’