Join us for Reading Around Sound – a monthly reading group run in conjunction with Christchurch’s Auricle Sonic Arts gallery. Each month we’ll meet up and discuss specific texts that present ideas, thoughts, and theories relating to sound activity. All are welcome to attend!

This month we will be discussing a brief passage from the introduction to Jacques Attali’s text ‘Noise: The Political Economy of Music’. A .pdf of the reading is available via The Auricle’s website here; auricle.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Attali_Noise_excerpt.pdf

In Noise: The Political Economy of Music, Jacques Attali, a French economist who was a Special Counsellor to President François Mitterand, proposes a number of theories on the political economy of music, some quite bold and difficult to accept at first encounter, others more readily convincing. His principal thesis in the former category is that changes in the basic character of music throughout history have foreshadowed subsequent fundamental revolutions in political and economic structures, from which he concludes inductively that changes taking place in music today predict the future shape of our society.”

For online discussion around these texts, and if you’d like to suggest a text for upcoming consideration please join the Reading Around Sound Facebook group: www.facebook.com/groups/1803541419871262/

Reading Around Sound is a monthly reading group that endeavours to facilitate theoretical and critical engagement with contemporary sonic practices and related issues through close reading, and ongoing discussion and debate. It is a shared initiative between the Auricle and the Audio Foundation with monthly events in both Auckland and Christchurch.