Author Archives: Jonathan Sterne
Comments back on
I got a couple emails saying “I was going to comment but had to log in” and sure enough, some setting got tweaked when the site went down for a couple days. Should be good again.
New Text
“The Cat Telephone,” The Velvet Light Trap #64 (Fall 2009): 83-84. Part of a very interesting dossier on failure with lots of short entries; also a tiny snippet from Chapter 6 of the mp3 book. It is also now on the “text” page of sterneworks. “The Preservation Paradox.” in Sound Souvenirs, eds. Karin Bijsterveld and …
On Rediscovering Music-Making
First, open this page and play the song. Then switch back to this page. Last spring my 2004 G5 “desktop” (more like a “floortop” given its heft and profile) finally gave up the ghost. At the time I just switched to a laptop and kept writing. But its death had some beneficial effects on my …
Questions About Sound
Some questions arrived in the mail this morning from Ekpektatwa, an interdisciplinary arts project in Poland. I decided to warm up by answering them. I think they really wanted an essay, but I went with point form. Sometimes it’s more fun just to answer the questions. 1). What is silence for You? Is it a …
Some Kennedy Considerations
Doug Henwood, as usual, offers a salutary alternative to the funerary hagiography.