Soundbox is a collaborative project that aims to enhance the practice of using sound in scholarly productions. This two-year enterprise, funded by a generous grant from the PhD Lab in Digital Knowledge at the Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke, will culminate in the publication of a collection of digital “provocations” about sound.
The project is inspired by two needs, one theoretical and the other practical. In practical terms, the interdisciplinary field of sound studies has flourished apace with the digital turn, yet sound still remains absent in many publications dedicated to its study. Even digital sound studies publications tend to be text-centric as scholars struggle to find the right players and tools for their projects. We expect that a technological innovation, however minor, will improve the prospects of using audio to augment and produce scholarship.
As an intellectual endeavor, this project puts pressure on the conventions of academic argumentation as well as genres of web-based writing. What if it were possible to make arguments about sound using sound itself? Soundbox envisions possibilities to play with and experience sound in a way that enables a critical and creative engagement with multimedia. Thus, while this project will make it possible technically for scholars to argue with sound, it also thinks outside the (sound)box, pursuing experimental interventions that exceed the limits of argumentation as a mode.
Soundbox is co-directed by doctoral candidates Mary Caton Lingold, Darren Mueller, Whitney Anne Trettien.