Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives
Composer and sound artist Brian Harnetty explores the remarkable everyday stories of sound recordings and shows us a new way to listen to the past. From murder ballads and oral histories in Appalachian Ohio, to the Afrofuturistic music of Sun Ra in Chicago, to the recorded thoughts of monk and writer Thomas Merton in Kentucky, Harnetty reveals rich historical contexts of the recordings and introduces us to the people and places connected to them. The result is a new, interdisciplinary approach to sound archives, listening, creative practice, and community engagement.

Drawing on his two-decade career as an artist and researcher, Harnetty builds upon and expands the tradition of composers and artists writing about their work. A unique combination of ethnography, memoir, philosophical text, and meditation on the creative process, Noisy Memory presents both scholarly and innovative approaches to ethically working with sound archives.
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Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives
Composer and sound artist Brian Harnetty explores the remarkable everyday stories of sound recordings and shows us a new way to listen to the past. From murder ballads and oral histories in Appalachian Ohio, to the Afrofuturistic music of Sun Ra in Chicago, to the recorded thoughts of monk and writer Thomas Merton in Kentucky, Harnetty reveals rich historical contexts of the recordings and introduces us to the people and places connected to them. The result is a new, interdisciplinary approach to sound archives, listening, creative practice, and community engagement.

Drawing on his two-decade career as an artist and researcher, Harnetty builds upon and expands the tradition of composers and artists writing about their work. A unique combination of ethnography, memoir, philosophical text, and meditation on the creative process, Noisy Memory presents both scholarly and innovative approaches to ethically working with sound archives.
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Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives

Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives

by Brian Harnetty
Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives

Noisy Memory: Recording Sound, Performing Archives

by Brian Harnetty

Hardcover

$99.00 
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    Available for Pre-Order. This item will be released on August 26, 2025

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Overview

Composer and sound artist Brian Harnetty explores the remarkable everyday stories of sound recordings and shows us a new way to listen to the past. From murder ballads and oral histories in Appalachian Ohio, to the Afrofuturistic music of Sun Ra in Chicago, to the recorded thoughts of monk and writer Thomas Merton in Kentucky, Harnetty reveals rich historical contexts of the recordings and introduces us to the people and places connected to them. The result is a new, interdisciplinary approach to sound archives, listening, creative practice, and community engagement.

Drawing on his two-decade career as an artist and researcher, Harnetty builds upon and expands the tradition of composers and artists writing about their work. A unique combination of ethnography, memoir, philosophical text, and meditation on the creative process, Noisy Memory presents both scholarly and innovative approaches to ethically working with sound archives.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781469691336
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date: 08/26/2025
Pages: 204
Product dimensions: 6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Brian Harnetty is an interdisciplinary sound artist, composer, and author.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Brian Harnetty’s warm, thoughtful, and inclusive narrative offers a window not only into the creative process but also into what it means to be a steward of archival sound. A compellingly personal, marvelously written evocation of art, place, and community.”—David Grubbs, musician, author, and Distinguished Professor of Music, Brooklyn College

“A beautifully rendered mix of memoir, creative practice, deep listening, and social history, Noisy Memory insists that cultural studies can be both scholarly and personal, artful and ethical. Brian Harnetty reminds us that archival study is never neutral but always situated—materially, socially, historically, and politically—in community. This book is a model for community-engaged humanistic scholarship.”—Ryan Thomas Skinner, author of Afro-Sweden: Becoming Black in a Color-Blind Country

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