leonardo reviews editor-in-chief Michael Punt associate editors Hannah Drayson, Dene Grigar, Jane Hutchinson A full selection of reviews is published monthly on the Leonardo website: www.leonardo.info/reviews. b o o k s have just about been explored. Or or teleological hermeneutic, this have they? book describes material and cultural The PoeTics of Noise from The theoretical apparatus that frames that parse the flowing matrix DaDa To PuNk surrounds and interpenetrates the of sound.” Good chess players can by John Melillo. Bloomsbury Academic, poetics of sound and noise gets a easily remember the position of every New York, NY, U.S.A., 2021. 208 pp. Trade. thorough workout here, as the com- piece on the board because they ISBN: 978-1501359910. ings and goings of noise and sound are “chunking,” seeing a few simple Reviewed by Brian Reffin Smith. figures, from a background of sound structures where a novice might only and noise, are disentangled. It can see the individual bits, and doubtless https://doi.org/10.1162/leon_r_02080 be difficult going. It is also, para- there are those to whom the above It’s hard to imagine what your fully doxically, quite visceral. The point quote makes immediate, obvious paid-up Dadaist would be doing to hold onto is the constant flux sense. For me it was something to today, noise-wise. Anyone with a between acoustic figure and ground leave in suspension in hopes of later computer or iPad and a MIDI key- and the contradictory differentia- expansion and elucidation. board can access and change the tions between noise and sound: on Actually, if you do understand, parameters of millions of playable the one hand is to show how such- you are rewarded: This is a very noises, melodic or not, from finger- and-such is different from its noisy interesting book. And I now see that nails on a contrabass to underwater background, or must change lan- the above quote means the author trumpets, from Bartók pizzicato guage, poetry or sound just to escape is not concerned with, for example, to a burnt piano, from German from a hell of noise; on the other, is bird or sound per se but rather in swear words with variable attack to show that it’s all just/not just noise the conditions of our perception and decay to an orchestra of railway anyway. station sounds, both ambient and Are these forms important on provoked, playable in major, minor a day-to-day basis, though? Does Reviews Panel: Kathryn Adams, Cristina and more exotic scales. I suppose a poetics of sounds need to refer Albu, Jan Baetens, John Barber, Catalin Brylla, Rita Cachao, Iain Campbell, they would be doing something else. to their origins? Is hearing a rapid Judith A. Cetti, Chris Cobb, Giovanna L. Words, phrases or syllables can be tap-tap-tap the same as hearing a Costantini, Edith Doove, Hannah Drayson, whispered, screamed or sung . woodpecker, and is the rat-a-tat-tat Phil Dyke, Ernest Edmonds, Phil Ellis, Persian melodies mixed with Hol- of the machine gun the actual, over- Anthony Enns, Jennifer Ferng, Bronac lywood choirs and monks singing whelming fear of the bullet? Many Ferran, Enzo Ferrara, Charles Forceville, Gabriela Galati, George Gessert, Allan backwards in virtual reverberation would still ask, “What is a sound, Graubard, Dene Grigar, Daisy Gudmunsen, setups ranging from outer space to what is noise?” For those not of the Craig Harris, Jane Hutchinson, Amy Abbey Road Number 1 Studio or North American university depart- Ione, Boris Jardine, Assimina Kaniari, an anechoic chamber . poetry is ment of English cognoscenti, an Jacqui Knight, Mike Leggett, Ellen K. written on substrates of any and all equally difficult question is “What is, Levy, Will Luers, Robert Maddox-Harle, Roger Malina, Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe, philosophies and atrocities, but this or are, ‘the poetics’ in this case?” But Stephanie Moran, Mike Mosher, Sana is hardly revolutionary now. The while there are books whose opacity Murrani, Frieder Nake, Maureen Nappi, cultural and theoretical distinctions and/or nonsense is egregious, this Ryan Nolan, Jack Ox, Jussi Parikka, between noise and music are well reviewer finds that there are many Stephen Partridge, Ellen Pearlman, and truly demolished. I’ve stayed in more that simply make you do more Robert Pepperell, Ana Peraica, Beate Peter, Stephen Petersen, Andrew Prior, the so-called dead-room of Berlin’s homework than usual—which is Michael Punt, Aparna Sharma, George Technische Universität, and it’s true then rewarded. The Poetics of Noise Shortess, Brian Reffin Smith, Laurence what they say: There’s lots of noise from Dada to Punk is one such book, Smith, Eugenia Stamboliev, James Sweeting, coming from inside you. From although it contains sentences such Gregory Tague, Flutur Troshani, Ian Verstegen, Anna Walker, Cecilia Wong, kitchen implements to the gut, from as “Rather than defining and defend- Ahyoung Yoo, Jonathan Zilberg Mars to intracellular variations in ing a particular vibrational ontology, plants, the sources of sound or noise phenomenological objectification, 462 LEONARDO, Vol. 54, No. 4, pp. 462–475, 2021 ©2021 ISAST Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/54/4/471/1958985/leon_r_02085.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 and theorizing about such stuff, and chronologically ordered chapters beyond that to incorporate or find range from First World War poetry such theory in the works themselves. to sound art and noise music via jazz The philosopher Roger Scruton and sound engineering. Melillo sees argued that the nature of sounds is them as being haunted by two dif- fully determined by how a normal ferent “noise regimes” that emerged hearer hears them, but from Dada to in the twentieth century: Russolo’s punk and most points in between, modernist insistence on including creative people have said “bollocks” noise as revolutionary sound, yet to to that and slammed sound, noise, be tamed somehow to enable this, the perceived, the perceiver and all and Cage’s lack of control, letting the surrounding theory into one sounds be themselves. The author often-useful, sometimes-glorious disagrees with Michel Serres’s appar- gestalt. The “poetics” here is about the ent view that making something of alleged self-framing of poetry thrust- noise is an impossibility because ing itself into the theory and practice it then leaves the noise behind, of sound studies. “I read poetry . becoming that other than noise. He not through but as sound theory and suggests rather that musicians and noise theory,” writes John Melillo in poets “render noise as an artifact his introduction. Again, we hope that of listening.” In other words, again, the differences and identities between all the components of the system mittee of North American lit-theory sound theory and noise theory will become . not exactly interchange- academics and, having done so, could be elucidated, and what he means by able but part of each other. I get the enjoy himself. “noise and noise music,” as well as feeling that he’d be quite happy if all The first discusses the way the his use of many other rather-poetic the categories didn’t exist, though noise of the battlefields was used, juxtapositions. they have to be named, spotted and even by its dreamed-of absence, And this does sound reasonable: questioned in order to be heard along rather than portrayed or “communi- “Close listeners to noise—ranging different dimensions, from a meta- cated.” Shell-shocked shards of allit- from the barest sense perception to level, whence they become one. The eration, harsh consonants, the legs of the most technologically advanced chapters portray artists’ work with iambic pentameter intact but a foot mediation—attend neither to ‘sound and against the above-noise regimes, missing. Noise figured on a back- itself’ nor to ‘noise itself’ but rather to roughly split between the first and ground of noise. “In the gap between the culturally encoded relationships second three chapters. communication and experience, only between the transmission and recep- Some glimpses: soldiers sur- an affective, even automatic response tion of sound.” At least if you append rounded by unbearable noise uttering can emerge.” Words are not for com- “or something like that.” The power of repetitions of prayers, poems or rote munication. Where the Italian Futur- poetic experiment is, writes Melillo, phrases as a “homeopathic” antidote ists heard expansion, the First World “to connect listening and making in to it. And actual poetry’s form fall- War poets heard collapse, and reso- ways that discover the limits of those ing apart. Then, jazz and modernist nated with it. relationships—and the motivations poetry explore the randomness of From bodies in the trenches to our and powers within them.” It’s not, for such selection, pushing the increas- bodies . and the “rationality,” espe- me, a given that that is what we do, ingly nebulous boundaries to incor- cially in language, that the noisists but rather that it’s clearly interesting porate nonsense, abstraction and wanted to break down or erase in the and probably useful to consider it. “noise.” Still later, noise is everywhere Zurich of Lenin and Joyce. Ratio- Isn’t theorizing about listening and in the arts, “dedifferentiated.” The nal language was itself mere noise, making, looking and making, central book as a whole celebrates this refusal or “nothing.” “Everyone dances to to, certainly important for, much of to differentiate, and it is in that refusal [their] own personal boomboom,” our creativity? that its riches lie. For this reviewer, it wrote Tristan Zara in the 1918 Dada What I like about this book is isn’t just that we question old bound- Manifesto.