The Sound Atlas

A Guide to Strange Sounds across Landscapes and Imagination

Michaela Vieser, Isaac Yuen, Vieser, Michaela, Yuen, Isaac

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN:
  9781836391487
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Nature writers Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen set out in search of sounds beautiful and loathsome, melodious and disturbing, healing, strange and intimate. The phenomena of sound may be fleeting and evanescent, but the memory of it can open a window into the soul, deepening our connections with time, the environment and each other. From the edge of the solar system to the crackle of arctic sea ice, from the ancient oracle site of Dodona to the singing pillars of Hampi, each of these 36 essays explores stories of sound through the lens of history, science and culture, stylishly blending fantastical facts and unique anecdotes to create a compelling narrative.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Sounds of the Universe: In Search of Harmony and Resonance
• 2 The Shape of Sound: The Singing Pillars of Hampi
• 3 An Arms Race 50 Million Years in the Making: The Shadow War of Moths and Bats
• 4 Caves, Sounds and the Human Imagination
• 5 Reconstruction of the Paleosonic: Bringing Back the Sounds of Past Life
• 6 Calling Out Across Far Distances: Sound Messages in Air and Water
• 7 Reverberations Across Time and Fate: The Oracle at Dodona
• 8 Word on the Wind: The Curious History of the Aeolian Harp
• 9 To Be Defined By Sound: Regarding the Cicada
• 10 Gagaku: A Music that Crosses Space and Time
• 11 Sounds of the Cryosphere
• 12 The Stories and Secrets of Singing Sands
• 13 The Humility Pipe
• 14 The Untameable Ritual of Keening
• 15 Death of a Sound and Age: Pining for the Foghorn
• 16 A Voice, an Echo, Silence
• 17 Sounds of the Atomic Age
• 18 Sounds from the Deepest Artificial Point on Earth
• 19 The Humming Fields and Meadows of the Altai
• 20 Otherworldly Ordinary: The Found Sounds of the Fantastic
• 21 Pay Attention: On the Sounds of the In-Between
• 22 The Not-So-Secret Love Lives of Fish
• 23 Voices Within and Without
• 24 Listening to Traces
• 25 Explaining the Inexplicable: The Taos Hum
• 26 One Square Inch of Silence
• 27 Acoustics Accidental and Incidental
• 28 Sound Over Sight as Sense: The World According to Whales
• 29 Geophony, Biophony, Anthrophony: The Three Sound Types Beneath the Seven Seas
• 30 ‘That’s Not What It’s Supposed to Sound Like’: Bizarre Bird Calls from All Seven Continents
• 31 Sensing the Sound of a Landscape through Rock and Stone
• 32 The Body Fields and the Works of Jacob Kirkegaard
• 33 ASLSP: As Slow As Possible
• 34 From Wax and Glass, Music and Voices: The Past, Present and Future of Sound Recording
• 35 The Sound of Manipulation: Sonic Warfare and Propaganda
• 36 Humanity’s Message for Whom? The Voyager Golden Record
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements