Book – Travelling Time – Sonic Acts 2012

Format: 17 x 24 cm Edited by Arie Altena and Sonic Acts Published by Sonic Acts Press, Amsterdam Designed by Femke Herregraven Book, paperback, 304 pp., English text, illustrated Sonic Acts 2012 €17.50 Time is a complex and ambiguous concept. Relativity theorists and quantum mechanics have tinkered with the seemingly unambiguous concept of time since the beginning of the previous century. Art, film, and music make abstract notions of time tangible and comprehensible, and manipulate how we experience it. The ongoing development and implementation of technology constantly challenge, change and undermine our perception of time. Communication networks function at the speed of light, and computers process data in real time, without human intervention. The rapid advances in technology are creating a gap between ‘machine time’ and ‘human time’. Building on the theme of Sonic Acts Festival 2012, Travelling Time reveals the significance and how the intricacies of time and how we experience it. This publication is an accompaniment to Sonic Acts XIV. Along with vibrant illustrations, the book discusses the festival theme from several perspectives and features extensive interviews with Pauline Oliveros (by Nick Cain), Catherine Christer Hennix (by Bill Dietz), Mark Fell, Robin Hayward, Keith Fullerton Whitman, Hilary Jeffery, and Joel Ryan. It also contains essays by Hillel Schwartz on noise and time, Siegfried Zielinski on music automata, Omar Muñoz-Cremers on Science Fiction and time travel, David Edgerton on the history of technology, Enda Duffy on the adrenaline aesthetics of Joyce’s Ulysses, Thomas W. Patteson on Roland Kayn’s cybernetic music, and furthermore texts by George Dyson and Timothy Druckrey.