Tone of Our Times

Endless praise and sweet dissonance -- Acclamation -- Infinite noise -- Disaffected voices -- Resonance, anechoica, and noisy speech -- The racket -- Echoes of eco. "In this wide-ranging book, Frances Dyson examines the role of sound in the development of economic and ecological systems that are today in crisis. Connecting early theories of harmony, cosmology, and theological doctrine to contemporary media and governance, Dyson uses sound, tone, music, voice, and noise as forms of sonority through which the crises of eco can be read. The sonic environment, Dyson argues, is fundamental to both sense and sensibility, and its delimitation has contributed to the senselessness of a world now caught between spiraling debt and environmental degradation. Dyson draws on scenes, historical moments, artworks, and artistic and theoretical practice to situate the reverberative atmosphere that surrounds and sustains us. From Pythagoras's hammer and the transmutation of music into mathematics, to John Cage's famous experience in the anechoic chamber, to the relocation of the stock market from the street to the computer screen, to Occupy Wall Street's people's microphone : Dyson finds policies and