The Historical Emergence of Perceptual Coding

2.00pm-3.30pm
Tuesday 12th August 2008
Social Sciences and Humanities Library Conference Room
Level 1 Duhig Building  (Bldg 2) [see map]

Audio of this seminar is available for streaming or downloading

Abstract

MP3s get their small file size through a process called “perceptual coding.”  An MP3 encoder scans a soundfile, estimates which parts of the recording will be inaudible to the ear, and disposes of those parts, thereby making the resulting MP3 file considerably smaller than the “same” song on a compact disc.  In this talk, Associate Professor Sterne will trace the origins of the ideas behind perceptual coding, and show how they traveled from psychoacoustics to communications and computer engineering in the 1960s and 1970s.  Many of the key insights of psychoacousticians and engineers during this period carry strange and interesting parallels to key writings on music and sound in the humanistic tradition, most notably by Roland Barthes and Jacques Attali.  The seminar considers what Pierre Bourdieu calls “the homology of the fields” among psychoacoustics, engineering, aesthetics, and political economy in an attempt to explain why perceptual coding emerged when it did, given that the technology and the theory were available for at least a decade before the process was first realized.

About the Presenter

 Dr Jonathan Sterne is associate professor and chair of the Department of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University.  He is author of The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Duke, 2003), and numerous articles on media, technologies and the politics of culture.  His next book is tentatively entitled MP3: The Meaning of a Format.  He is also an editor of Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life ( http://bad.eserver.org/ ) one of the longest continuously-running publications on the Internet.

Associate Professor Sterne will be touring Australia during July and August courtesy of the CRN, and will be presenting seminars and public lectures as well as 'open door days' in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney. These 'open door days' are organised by the ARC Cultural Research Network mainly for the benefit of postgraduates and Early Career Researchers, but all researchers and interested people are invited to be involved. Jonathan is making himself available for one-on-one meetings to discuss research ideas, thesis conundrums, career trajectories, or to talk more about his own work. These sessions represent a fantastic opportunity to learn more from this creative thinker. Any researcher working in the broad areas of sound, music, technology, media studies, or cultural studies are strongly encouraged to make an appointment by contacting the CRN.

This seminar is to be chaired by Professor Graeme Turner.

For more details, contact Rebecca Ralph, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies.
 Phone (07) 3346 7407, or email admin.cccs@uq.edu.au or r.ralph@uq.edu.au