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Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction. By Caleb Kelly. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009. x + 388pp (hardcover). Illustrations, Bibliography, Index. ISBN 978-0-262-01314-7. Price: $24.95
Noise was proposed as a source for aesthetic contemplation as early as Russolo's 1913 Art of Noises; the idea has fascinated composers, sound artists, critics, and scholars ever since. Technologies for sound recording and reproduction, including the tape recorder and the phonograph, furnished the means to realize the most far-reaching early explorations of the concept. A particular subset of these experiments involved adapting these technologies to purposes other than those for which they were originally intended; John Cage's Cartridge Music (1960) involves inserting everyday objects into phonograph cartridges and using amplification to make audible the sounds of these objects - feathers or pipe cleaners, for instance. Caleb Kelly's Cracked Media documents a number of artists who alter various media in a variety of ways, both permanent and impermanent, in order to subvert their functionality in the pursuit of sounds for music ranging from avant-garde art to quirky pop.
The book, which appears to be a more or less unrevised publication of Kelly's doctoral...