Atmospheric Noise: The Indefinite Urbanism of Los Angeles

by Marina Peterson

Overview

In Atmospheric Noise, Marina Peterson traces entanglements of environmental noise, atmosphere, sense, and matter that cohere in and through encounters with airport noise since the 1960s. Exploring spaces shaped by noise around Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), she shows how noise is a way of attuning toward the atmospheric: through noise we learn to listen to the sky and imagine the permeability of bodies and matter, sensing and conceiving that which is diffuse, indefinite, vague, and unformed. In her account, the “atmospheric” encompasses the physicality of the ephemeral, dynamic assemblages of matter as well as a logic of indeterminacy. It is audible as well as visible, heard as much as breathed. Peterson develops a theory of “indefinite urbanism” to refer to marginalized spaces of the city where concrete meets sky, windows resonate with the whine of departing planes, and endangered butterflies live under flight paths. Offering a conceptualization of sound as immanent and non-objectified, she demonstrates ways in which noise is central to how we know, feel, and think atmospherically.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478013174
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	02/05/2021
Series:	Elements
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	17 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Marina Peterson is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, author of Sound, Space, and the City: Civic Performance in Downtown Los Angeles, and coeditor of Between Matter and Method: Encounters in Anthropology and Art.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction  1
1. Aerial Attunements  19
2. Noise Annoys  45
3. Environmental Imaginaries  77
4. Murmurs: Experiments in Glitching  105
5. Vibrating Matter  129
6. Indefinite Urbanism  155
Notes  185
References  207
Index  231

Editorial Reviews

"Peterson conceptualizes the act of listening as an intervention into the atmosphere, which originates these categories and definitions, while sound itself remains immaterial and unquantifiable. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals."

Choice

An exemplary experiment in compositional thinking and writing, Atmospheric Noise buzzes with conceptual and methodological inventiveness. Through the style in which it deftly traces the uneven emergence and refraction of urban noise across archives, concepts, bodies, regulations, and experience, Marina Peterson's book brilliantly performs its own argument about the importance of an ethos of informed listening. Atmospheric Noise should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in understanding and writing about the atmospheric conditions of worlds.

Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Envelopment - Derek P. McCormack

"This study offers researchers in fields including music, sound studies, urban planning, and American studies a model for the possible contributions of new materialism’s methodological assumptions. In doing so it invites readers and researchers to be sensitive to new attunements demanded by the changing (post)human onto-epistemologies supporting our own entanglements with the sonic in music and other regimes of tonality."

Journal of the Society for American Music - Andrew J. Kluth

"Atmospheric Noise is a rich and complex interrogation of urban noise, and there is much to engage readers interested in sonic philosophy, auditory culture, and histories of acoustics. . . . Atmospheric Noise offers an original account of how the sounds of Los Angeles airport came to shape lives, neighbourhoods, and the urban environment."

Yearbook for Traditional Music - Marie Thompson

"Peterson’s prose is always lyric, tidal almost, but she sacrifices neither scholarly rigor nor theoretical ferocity in her pursuit of how sound gets us into questions, spaces, activities, constructions, and the politics of infrastructure. Atmospheric Noise is the story of a city remade (parts indeed sacrificed) around an airport, flight paths, and racket. It’s also the story of instrumentation, calibration, and how we both measure and experience what we claim to know. It’s a shining example of what, with care, ethnography can be."

Public Books - Gretchen Bakke

"Atmospheric Noise is an engaging and timely piece of scholarship. At its most successful, the work draws jarring, cacophonous resonances between the science and engineering of acoustics, urban political economy, governmentality, the metaphysics of sound, and the social construction of ecology and environment. It amplifies the possibilities of social science inquiry in its call for attunement to noise, to sound, to an atmospheric sensibility as method."

Public - Andrew Merrill

Writing in and through the movements of people, butterflies, planes, and homes; the shifts in environmental discourse; and varied human-nonhuman entanglements, Marina Peterson brings us a story and a book that will resonate across fields for years to come. Original, compelling, and evocative.

The Undersea Network - Nicole Starosielski

"This study offers researchers in fields including music, sound studies, urban planning, and American studies a model for the possible contributions of new materialism's methodological assumptions. In doing so it invites readers and researchers to be sensitive to new attunements demanded by the changing (post)human onto-epistemologies supporting our own entanglements with the sonic in music and other regimes of tonality."--Andrew J. Kluth "Journal of the Society for American Music" (2/3/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Atmospheric Noise is a rich and complex interrogation of urban noise, and there is much to engage readers interested in sonic philosophy, auditory culture, and histories of acoustics. . . . Atmospheric Noise offers an original account of how the sounds of Los Angeles airport came to shape lives, neighbourhoods, and the urban environment."--Marie Thompson "Yearbook for Traditional Music" (7/28/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Atmospheric Noise is an engaging and timely piece of scholarship. At its most successful, the work draws jarring, cacophonous resonances between the science and engineering of acoustics, urban political economy, governmentality, the metaphysics of sound, and the social construction of ecology and environment. It amplifies the possibilities of social science inquiry in its call for attunement to noise, to sound, to an atmospheric sensibility as method."--Andrew Merrill "Public" (9/1/2021 12:00:00 AM)

"Peterson conceptualizes the act of listening as an intervention into the atmosphere, which originates these categories and definitions, while sound itself remains immaterial and unquantifiable. Recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty; professionals."-- "Choice" (2/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Peterson's prose is always lyric, tidal almost, but she sacrifices neither scholarly rigor nor theoretical ferocity in her pursuit of how sound gets us into questions, spaces, activities, constructions, and the politics of infrastructure. Atmospheric Noise is the story of a city remade (parts indeed sacrificed) around an airport, flight paths, and racket. It's also the story of instrumentation, calibration, and how we both measure and experience what we claim to know. It's a shining example of what, with care, ethnography can be."--Gretchen Bakke "Public Books" (5/21/2021 12:00:00 AM)

"Writing in and through the movements of people, butterflies, planes, and homes; the shifts in environmental discourse; and varied human-nonhuman entanglements, Marina Peterson brings us a story and a book that will resonate across fields for years to come. Original, compelling, and evocative."--Nicole Starosielski, author of "The Undersea Network"

"An exemplary experiment in compositional thinking and writing, Atmospheric Noise buzzes with conceptual and methodological inventiveness. Through the style in which it deftly traces the uneven emergence and refraction of urban noise across archives, concepts, bodies, regulations, and experience, Marina Peterson's book brilliantly performs its own argument about the importance of an ethos of informed listening. Atmospheric Noise should be on the bookshelf of anyone interested in understanding and writing about the atmospheric conditions of worlds."--Derek P. McCormack, author of "Atmospheric Things: On the Allure of Elemental Envelopment"

From the Publisher