UC San Diego

High Static, Dead Lines: Sonic Spectres and the Object Hereafter provides a textual expansion of ideas explored in Kristen Brooks’s practice component of the PhD in Art History, Theory, and Criticism with a Concentration in Art Practice.

The condition of the “sonic spectre” is a form of “thickened” media or material culture with connections to sound theory and history—an invisible layer of noise that results from the self-obfuscating conditions of retreat found within the history of technological objects. The degradation of use-value, disconnect of knowledge—the use and misuse of obsolete technological objects and media formats—are recurring examples that amplify the presence of such spectral conditions.

Historical artifacts, architecture, and recollections are invoked as primary research texts, exploring the intertwined boundaries between material culture, sound, and folklore. Methodologically, the essays, object lessons, and fictocritical interludes are arranged here to evoke a network of ley lines for the sonic spectre to travel along—and in-between. Each section takes on a theme: traditional haunting, sky borne frequencies, interactions of sound with the body, manifestations of spectrality in media and broadcast, performance rituals as contamination rituals, and finally—landscapes and their sonification.

The objects and stories themselves are varied, spanning the mid-19th century to present day. They touch upon military, communications, music, and cultural history—examined when appropriate through lenses of media archeology, folklore studies, landscape theory, the Anthropocene, Thing theory, and object-oriented ontology. Connectivity between these essays is found in the overarching presence of sound—audible sound, microsound, self-generative sound, the sonification of objects, remembered sound, and the contentious territories of supernatural sound.