Acoustic, Electric and Virtual Noise: The Cultural Identity of the Guitar
Gavin Carfoot ABSTRACT
Guitar technology underwent significant changes in the 20th century in the move from acoustic to electric instruments. he guitar is a form of music technology sounds in music relies upon an In the first part of the 21st T century, the guitar continues to through which dominant sociocultural and musical discourses ever-changing standard definition develop through its interaction are frequently enacted and challenged. In particular, the gui- of what actually distinguishes ac- with digital technologies. Such tar has often played a part in challenging dominant discourses ceptable music-sound events from changes in guitar technology through its ability to highlight the cultural boundaries between pure “noise” [3]. In an even broader are usually grounded in what we noise and musical sound. This fact can be seen in each of sense, we can think of “noise” as any might call the “cultural identity” of the instrument: that is, the the instrument’s ever-changing technological forms—-from information that appears to exist various ways that the guitar is acoustic to electric and virtual. This article begins by exam- outside of the representational sys- used to enact, influence and ining quite broadly how musical instruments help to define tems that we are accustomed to—- challenge sociocultural and the concepts of “noise” and “musical sound.” Next, I focus on that which appears to be “chaotic” musical discourses. Often, some specific historical events that typify the move from or “random,” for example. Thus, in these different uses of the guitar can be seen to reflect a conflict acoustic to electric guitars. Finally, I discuss the recent tech- music, the injection of noise can between the changing concepts nological shift toward virtual guitars: specifically, how virtual take any number of forms, from the of “noise” and “musical sound.” guitars have resulted in innovative possibilities, but also how literal use of noise generators (white common nostalgic views toward the guitar are reiterated in or pink noise, for example) right virtual technologies. through to a particular type of com- The impact of virtual guitar technology has not yet been positional method that breaks with pre-existing musical forms, studied to a great extent, no doubt because the technology such that listeners might describe it as “not even music at all” has only recently become widespread in the mass market. Fur- or “just noise, not music.” thermore, until recently, much study of the guitar was nar- For example, John Cage’s redefinition of the musical sound- rowly focused on the origins of the modern classical guitar. scape emerged in part from his Zen-inspired questioning of However, there have been some recent studies of the guitar the separation between everyday noises and musical sounds. and the worldwide “guitar diaspora,” including edited collec- Another, more contemporary example can be found in the tions by Andy Bennett and Kevin Dawe, as well as Victor Anand “glitch” genre of electronic dance music, in which producers Coelho [1]. Similarly, in influential studies by Robert Walser use noises such as pops and scratches—-those “accidental” as- and Steve Waksman, the electric guitar has garnered some pects of recorded sound that are usually ignored or consid- significant scholarly attention, most of which has interpreted ered extraneous to the musical work—-and incorporate these the instrument as a means to better understand the sociocul- noises into musical compositions using the sampler. However, tural contexts of popular music [2]. just as the sampler has been used to introduce so-called noise into music, it is also often used for its original purpose: that is, to approximate “real” instruments, supposedly as “accurately” NOISE, SOUND AND MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS as possible. In both ways of using the sampler, it becomes clear Within the contemporary environment, the role of sonic tech- that musical instruments can act as primary sites of contesta- nologies is often organizational: From mall music to cell tion through which the definition of “noise” is actively enacted phones, sound is used to structure and direct our lives. How- and challenged, but also that instruments may act as sites ever, this representational and ordering use of sound is nei- through which these definitions of noise are played out and ther new nor unique to new-media technologies. The ringing reinforced. In a sense, all musical instruments (not just recent of a telephone bell and the whine of a siren both exemplify electronic instruments) may function in this way: that is, they similar uses of sound. Whenever a sound wave changes from have the potential to dramatically alter the ways of delineat- an indistinguishable noise into a meaningful sound, it can only ing noise and music, even though the ways that they use are do so in relation to the relevant sociocultural milieu. Just as not always so radical. New musical technologies may just as eas- noises and sounds in everyday life gain meaning through their ily function to reinforce cultural notions of “musicality” and social and cultural environment, so too are the terms “sound” “properly ordered” sound as they may act as utopian harbin- and “noise” continually changing in relation to music. Jacques gers of novelty. Attali famously noted that musical meaning is often created through the disruptive power of noise. The use of different FROM ACOUSTIC TO ELECTRIC The history of the guitar is dotted with instances in which the Gavin Carfoot (lecturer, musician), Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University, PMB 50 Gold Coast Mail Centre, Bundall 9726, Queensland, Australia. E-mail: distinction between noise and musical sound has been chal-
©2006 ISAST LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 16, pp. 35–39, 2006 35
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/lmj.2006.16.35 by guest on 01 October 2021 of the guitar as an instrument does not ing the gradual acceptance of the in- ternatively, it may be thought of as a bat- necessarily incorporate these sites of strument in this setting, much writing tle of volume, wherein Guy’s loud city “noisy” contestation. When narrated in a about the guitar in the early and mid- blues had an “unfair advantage” and dryly analytical organology, the history of 20th century aimed to reinforce the drowned out other performers at New- the guitar traces a route from 15th- and development of an orthodox concert port [10]. Overall, the fact that such 16th-century Spanish, Italian and French tradition. “anti-electric” sentiments were expressed instruments such as the chitarra to the The development of the electric guitar so strongly is remarkable—especially Portuguese vihuela and their dispersion in the 1940s and 1950s came as some- given that electric guitars were a widely through colonization. Despite this clear thing of a threat to this ideology. For ex- accepted part of the popular culture of ancestry, the history of the guitar is not ample, Frederic Grunfeld’s The Art and the day. This would seem to demonstrate just the story of a contained, linear Times of the Guitar did not even recognize just how musical instruments are deeply development within a unified musical the electric guitar as a guitar at all [6]. inscribed with different social and musi- tradition. Rather, it is the story of cross- Harvey Turnbull’s The Guitar: From the Re- cal values in different contexts. Yet an- cultural exchange and transformation, to naissance to the Present Day typified this other way to understand these events is the extent that it becomes difficult to es- attitude. As Turnbull wrote in 1974: by thinking about how the thresholds be- tablish orthodoxy in the instrument’s his- “A number of offshoot guitars have ap- tween musical sound and noise may have tory. Victor Anand Coelho describes the peared, ranging from the flamenco gui- been crossed. In each case, we can see story of the guitar as one of “multiple tar to the ubiquitous electric guitar, and how sociocultural notions of “musical and overlapping histories” [4]. Especially these, too, . . . have developed their own sound” were breached by the incursion given the ubiquitous role of the guitar in techniques. Some of these techniques of “chaotic noise.” In each case, also, we the 20th century, the usefulness of study- involve the use of a plectrum to pro- can observe a re-configuration of these ing the guitar lies not in accurately map- duce sounds, thus limiting the musical notions, along with an attendant “re-mak- ping a linear, historical and geographical possibilities” [7]. That Turnbull’s work ing” of the social discourses that inform distribution of the instrument. Rather, it masqueraded as an all-encompassing the “legitimate” use of music technolo- is through tracing the complex, web-like historical survey—and yet dismissed the gies such as the guitar. interactions within and across cultures creative and musical possibilities of the The move from acoustic to electrified that we are able to learn more about con- electric guitar, even in 1974—demon- instruments is only one aspect of the rich temporary musical cultures and practices strates how musical instruments can history of the guitar, and “the electric [5]. Few musical technologies span the act as a locus for culturally inscribed mu- guitar has a much broader importance broad social, cultural and musical rela- sical values. In the case of Turnbull’s dis- with regard to sound than the electric/ tionships that can be found through missal of guitar music produced with a acoustic divide would suggest” [11]. The studying the guitar. Even the revered pi- plectrum, the physical and technical de- ideology surrounding the instrument is ano tends to be more confined to the mands of the guitar are used to justify also intimately tied to discourses of gen- Western art music tradition than does a whole set of value judgments about der, race, age and generation, nostalgia, the guitar. Furthermore, while musicians musical style and taste—judgments that and the powerful effect of sound itself and writers might be susceptible to the privilege the more “human,” “natural” [12]. Furthermore, despite the afore- techno-utopianism that surrounds recent and musical acoustic guitar over and mentioned clash between “folk ideology” digital music–making technologies, the above the more “machine-like,” “artifi- and “rock revolution,” the electric guitar scope and influence of digital music– cial” and noisy electric guitar. has usually held the lauded mantle of au- making is generally more limited to Perhaps the most well-known incident thenticity in popular music. Indeed, the musicians from relatively affluent cir- demonstrating this inscription of cultural electric guitar holds a rarefied place in cumstances. Because the guitar has tra- values within a musical instrument is Bob rock criticism as an icon of mass resist- versed so many 20th-century musical Dylan’s infamous performance at the ance and a symbol of authentic, artistic cultures, it offers a useful way to study the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where he was expression. sociocultural ideologies that underpin purportedly booed off stage for appear- In this regard, few experiences in the use of new technologies. ing with an electric guitar and forced to the popular music of the 1960s were as For an example of the above, Andrés return to the stage with an acoustic in- provocative as Pete Townshend’s manic Segovia’s infamous “invention” of the strument [8]. A similar incident occurred smashing of guitars and trashing of am- modern classical guitar tradition was at the 1968 Festival, when electric gui- plifiers, or Jimi Hendrix’s guitar sacrifice based upon, and actively produced, a se- tarist Buddy Guy performed with high- through burning. As Tom and Mary Anne ries of culturally constructed ideologies volume amplification and feedback. Evans write about Hendrix, through “the around the instrument: Namely, that Waksman describes Guy’s presence as volume and aggression of his sound, it was indeed a “great” instrument, un- representing “the status of noise, of an ap- [Hendrix] alienated many outside the deservedly neglected in the concert tra- proach to sound that could not be read- rock circle and public. But the audio vi- dition. His promotion of the guitar ily assimilated into the presiding social sual feast he provided, with smashed and extended to his connection with con- and aesthetic assumptions of the festival” burning guitars, fulfilled his audience’s temporary luthiers who crafted guitars [9]. This clash between acoustic and elec- demand for a cathartic Experience” [13]. that were significantly louder and sup- tric sound has functioned as a key event This catharsis can be likened to a “re- posedly more “expressive.” Initially, Sego- in the history of musical instruments and configuration” of the representational via’s promotion of the guitar injected a it can be interpreted in a number of ways. systems used to order and regiment noise “noise” into the concert music tradition, It might be seen as a matter of “authen- and sound in music. Thus, in the case of in the sense that it introduced a new, dis- tic,” acoustic-based folk music perform- Townshend, we find that ruptive type of sound into the rarefied ance set in opposition to inauthentic and Sound manipulation, distortion and world of concert music. However, follow- commodified musical performance. Al- physically violent performances pointed
36 Carfoot, Acoustic, Electric and Virtual Noise
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/lmj.2006.16.35 by guest on 01 October 2021 to a new concept of the electric guitar. an infinite array of possible meanings situated and these thresholds are often From being a conventional musical in- through its own creative destruction, a fact manifested within—and challenged by— strument on the one hand or a stage that Metzger recognized. As Ross Birrell the ways that musical instruments are prop on the other, the electric guitar became the heart of a sound system, in writes: used and abused. which artificially induced noise was as le- gitimate as a musical note [14]. In a manner that echoes both Hindu creation myth and Bakunin’s anarchism FROM ELECTRIC TO VIRTUAL (from the beginning Metzger has aligned In other words, these noises became a Auto-destructive Art with auto-creative It is not yet entirely clear how disruptive part of the representational systems that art), Metzger views destructivity as inte- noise—-such as that of Hendrix and both musicians and audiences recognize gral to any act of creativity: “Art arises Townshend’s electric guitars—-might as “belonging” to music. This resulted in from the feeling and the knowledge that be realized within the new breed of the line between a generative and a de- not only an expanded dramatic and the- structive reality is paper thin” [16]. consumer digital guitar technologies. atrical palette in performance but also a Until recently, digital guitars have been new palette of sounds that became inter- As such, these gestures also enact a re- relatively uncommon, although some twined with various popular music styles making of social, cultural, music and industry standards have arisen [18]. and genres. The same can be said of gui- technological discourses. Part of this re- Experimental instruments have been tar-induced amplifier feedback: Jeff Beck making relies upon a transgression be- available, but the influence of these in- saw it first as an annoying noise, a side ef- tween discrete elements: between musical struments in the broader world of guitar fect of playing at high volume. However, sound and noise, between performer players has been quite minimal. There Beck subsequently learnt to use it as a and instrument, between representa- are a number of reasons for this, includ- highly expressive musical device (as have tional and non-representational gestures. ing the inability of small-scale inventors many guitarists since then). Similarly, Smashing and burning an electric guitar to mass-produce and effectively market Townshend is said to have first smashed acts as a symbolic representation of new niche technological products to the in- his guitar by accident, although this ac- potentials in cultural production and dustry. Overall, however, the ingrained cident was subsequently incorporated often demonstrates the crossing of cul- culture and ideology of guitarists and gui- into the system of musical representation. turally constructed thresholds between tar makers has been the primary reason In each case, the cultural and musical musical sound and noise. why digital technologies have only just identity of the guitar has incorporated In a broad sense then, the noise- started to have an impact upon the mass these originally chaotic, sometimes de- making of Hendrix and Townshend market. structive events into established systems holds much in common with the digital To better understand this situation, we of musical signification. revolution of dance music (including the only need to examine the types of digital Art that destroys its very means of cre- “glitch” genre mentioned above): Both guitar technology that are now popular ation has particularly strong links with sets of musicians inject noise in the mu- [19]. In most new digital guitar tech- the era of the 1960s, most especially in sical strata as a means of resistance and a nologies, the aim is usually to re-create the avant-garde. When it came to guitar- means of creating the new. In some ways existing orthodoxies in instrument de- smashing antics, Townshend himself echoing Attali, philosophers Gilles De- sign: that is, to digitally model the elec- referenced Gustav Metzger, a Fluxus leuze and Félix Guattari would describe tric guitar and guitar technologies in artist and author of a manifesto on auto- it as a process of “territorialization”: It be- software as transparently as possible. In this destructive art [15]. In the 20th-century gins with the use of noise to destroy pre- practice we can observe how the process avant-garde, artistic acts of destruction existing musical territories; noise is then of creating a “virtual” guitar is usually were commonly used as symbolic gestures able to de-territorialize the culturally con- played out. While the term “digital gui- in the creation of meaning, often specifi- structed notion of musical sound, and tar” can be used quite accurately to cally in the expression of politicized cri- this noise is in turn re-territorialized into describe some of these technological hy- tique. As such, works such as Metzger’s a new definition of what constitutes mu- brids, in a more descriptive sense they are self-destructive painting in acid on nylon sical sound [17]. In the case of Hendrix virtual guitars, because the explicit aim or Jean Tinguely’s burning Homage to New and Townshend, the de-territorialization is to “virtualize” some material reality York (1960) are usually interpreted as of their noise-making acts is also inti- into a “non-physical” form. Related to this representing a very pointed critique of mately connected to their bodily and ma- process is the concept of a “virtual real- capital and the role that the contempo- terial transgressions: By destroying a ity” in which a facsimile of a supposedly rary arts play in capitalist society. Simi- material object that is invested with so “real” reality is created, or in which a to- larly, Townshend and Hendrix’s acts can much cultural significance, they were tally new “digital reality” is fabricated. As be interpreted as symbolic representa- redefining the ways in which musical in- a concept popular in postmodern and tions of some specific social and cultural struments could be used to organize mu- poststructuralist theory, this idea of the critique. As an interpretive strategy, how- sical sound, noise and the human body. virtual is often used to illustrate how the ever, the understanding of destruction in To caress an instrument, to live with it, era of late capitalism has introduced art as a politics of critique is not exhaus- for it to become part of you: These are in- some major shifts in our relationship to tive. The destruction of an instrument is timate and introspective acts. To smash “reality.” The process of virtualization has provocative for a number of complex so- and burn an instrument is an aggressive occurred in so many aspects of everyday cial, cultural, musical and technological and transgressive act: It introduces a life in the first world, and as such it is pre- reasons. It is not only a display of social chaotic “sonic noise,” in addition to a “so- dictable that musical instruments would resistance. It can also be seen as an ex- ciocultural noise,” into the aural-cultural be incorporated into this process. treme, athleticized form of expressive vir- landscape. It reminds us that the thresh- Since the adoption of MIDI technol- tuosity, for example. Most interestingly, olds between “musical sound” and ogy and the use of digital audio, virtual- it can also be seen as a means of creating “noise” are socially created and culturally ization (in one form or another) has
Carfoot, Acoustic, Electric and Virtual Noise 37
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/lmj.2006.16.35 by guest on 01 October 2021 been synonymous with the “cutting edge” Other options, such as the ability to as- References and Notes of music technology. In the wake of elec- sign different sounds to different strings, 1. Andy Bennett and Kevin Dawe, eds., Guitar Cul- tronic dance music, the sampler became and different triggering options for dif- tures (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001); Victor the symbol of musical resistance par ex- ferent notes in a MIDI guitar setup, offer Anand Coelho, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Univ. Press, cellence. It also came to be a symbol of greater possibilities for disruptive virtual 2002). subversion and a non-representational guitars. The ability to instantly recon- 2. Steve Waksman, Instruments of Desire: The Electric way of co-opting noise into music mak- figure guitars into alternate and micro- Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Cam- ing. Often the ideology behind electronic tonal tunings offers similar opportunities. bridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999); Robert dance music has been targeted at a pre- The material aggression of smashing and Walser, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender and Mad- ness in Heavy Metal Music (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan vailing rock ideology, with rock’s reliance burning an electric guitar is not some- Univ. Press, 1993). on supposedly “material” and “human” thing that has been modeled, although 3. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, guitar technology—as opposed to the in any case, the creative destruction of Brian Massumi, trans. (Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of newer “virtual” and “machinic” possi- the guitar in the virtual realm has the po- Minnesota Press, 1985). bilities of the turntable and sampler. Be- tential to take a very different form. In a 4. Victor Anand Coelho, “Picking through Cultures: cause the ideology of machine-produced sense, the very virtualization of the gui- A Guitarist’s Music History,” in Coelho [1] p. 3. music became so intertwined with the tar is an introduction of noise through a 5. Deleuze and Guattari refer to this kind of web as notion of cultural resistance, it has metaphorical destruction of the guitar in a “rhizome,” whereby arborescent (hierarchical, tree- like) structures are contrasted with rhizomatic struc- been difficult to escape the elements of its material form. That this virtualization tures (those that operate through a proliferation of techno-utopianism that have accompa- is often followed by a duplication of pre- multiple connections, like a strawberry plant that nied it. In a broader sense, however, the existing musical and sonic values is not throws out runners). See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizo- use of musical machines holds much in reason to believe that virtual guitars will phrenia (Minneapolis, MN: Univ. of Minnesota Press, common with the use of the guitar in forever be “re-creative” of ideal, physical 1987). rock. That is, both samplers and guitars forms. The virtual guitar’s uniqueness 6. Frederic Grunfeld, The Art and Times of the Guitar are types of technology and machines, may prove to be its ability to maintain just (London, 1969). and they can both activate a movement enough of the instrument’s form so that 7. Harvey Turnbull, The Guitar: From the Renaissance from noise to musical sound, in the way it remains “a guitar,” but to continually to the Present Day (New York: Scribner’s, 1974) p. 126.
that Attali sees as central to music [20]. push at the boundaries of this form. 8. Since the media reports of the time, there have Many recent developments in virtual Rather than the maintenance of a respect been re-tellings of this incident that have variously guitar technologies demonstrate a desire for idealized types of vintage guitar, the stressed the fervor of the crowd and the reaction from other musicians. to replicate specific, highly desirable gui- future of the virtual guitar might lie in tar technologies (usually in the form of the same sense of creative destruction 9. Waksman [2] p. 7 (emphasis added). vintage guitars and amplifiers). Other and “play” that Townshend brought to his 10. In fact, the desire for greater amplitude has also aspects of virtual luthierie represent a electric guitar. As he said, “I don’t have a been shared by acoustic musicians and instrument makers, in the development of luthierie techniques desire to re-technologize the guitar by love affair with a guitar, I don’t polish it in the construction of concert classical and Spanish creating new and distinctively virtual pos- after every performance; I play the fuck- guitars, as well as the louder and larger-body Dread- sibilities. The luthier who works with vir- ing thing” [21]. nought steel string acoustic, or the American arch- top (“f-hole”) guitar, originally designed to better tual guitar technology usually attempts to “cut through” the loud horn sections of swing-era tread the fine line between these two pos- big bands. CONCLUSION sibilities: creating something novel while 11. Waksman [2] p. 7. at the same time acknowledging that mu- The move from acoustic to electric gui- 12. John Ryan and Richard A. Peterson, “The Gui- sicians often identify very personally with tars is one of the most interesting aspects tar as Artifact and Icon: Identity Formation in the the existing cultural identities of their in- of the history of musical instruments. Babyboom Generation,” in Bennett and Dawe [1] struments. However, due to the strength This is not only because of the techno- p. 111. Despite acknowledging the broad array of in- terpretative strategies that Steve Waksman uses for of these cultural identities, virtual guitars logical shift that it represented, but also understanding the electric guitar, Ryan and Peter- are often positioned as more evolution- because it highlighted some major son tend to reduce their reading of the vintage guitar market to the ascription of a generational nos- ary than revolutionary in relation to the changes in the social and musical dis- talgia. contemporary musical and technological courses of the times. Similarly, new de- 13. Tom Evans and Mary Anne Evans, Guitars: Mu- milieu. velopments in guitar technology may sic, History, Construction and Players from the Renais- Sometimes the novelty of a virtual gui- introduce shifts in the ideology sur- sance to Rock (New York and London: Paddington tar is simply the virtuality of the medium rounding this instrument—-although in Press, 1977) p. 409. itself. In the case of modeling technol- light of recent developments, the move 14. Evans and Evans [13] p. 409 (emphasis added). ogy, the main difference between a vir- from electric to virtual guitar has not re- 15. This is complicated somewhat by the originally tual guitar and an electric guitar lies in sulted in radical cultural re-definitions of “accidental” event that triggered Townshend’s initial the former’s ability to sound like any what actually constitutes “a guitar.” This fetish for destroying musical equipment. Metzger is also known to have lectured at the same art school number of guitars—a Les Paul, a Strato- is because the sociocultural ideologies that Townshend attended. See his first manifesto caster or even a sitar—all with the flick that are inscribed in musical instruments on auto-destructive art in Gustav Metzger, Damaged of a knob. In this case, virtualization pro- cannot be divorced from those instru- Nature, Auto-Destructive Art (London: Coracle Press, 1996). vides a kind of “utility.” It radically alters ments. It may be that virtual guitars con- the degree of speed with which one can tinue to push at the boundaries of their 16. Ross Birrell, Introduction to Gustav Metzger (1996). Available at
38 Carfoot, Acoustic, Electric and Virtual Noise
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/lmj.2006.16.35 by guest on 01 October 2021 19. In the first instance, there are guitars, the mate- lize purely software-based augmentations to the tra- Manuscript received 1 June 2006. rial form of which is almost identical to a standard dition electric guitar, sometimes including dedicated electric guitar, but with the addition of digital I/O audio interfaces for guitar and software modeling of capabilities. Brian Moore’s iGuitar is probably the famous amplifiers and electronic effects (for exam- Gavin Carfoot is a lecturer in popular music most widely dispersed example, and it has used a ple, see plug-ins such as Line 6’s Amp Farm and at the Queensland Conservatorium, where he range of I/O options, including MIDI and USB. Gib- standalone applications such as Native Instruments’ teaches music technology, music theory and son’s Digital Guitar, which uses Ethernet I/O, has Guitar Rig). In the purely virtual realm, software in- been much publicized, but its date of release to the struments that combine either samples of real gui- popular music studies. His research is largely consumer market has been frequently postponed. A tars, synthesized approximations or combinations of inter-disciplinary, including broad-based variation on these instruments is the employment of both types of sounds are also common. work in cultural studies and critical theory. onboard digital modeling, which effectively provides He is also active as a producer, composer and a string-based control surface for the performance 20. Attali [3]. of a modeling synthesizer. In the case of Line 6’s performer in various styles of popular music. Variax, the guitar’s sounds can be altered with a soft- 21. Pete Townshend quoted in Evans [13] p. 411 (em- ware editor running on PC. Other manufacturers uti- phasis in original).
CALL FOR PAPERS
Leonardo Celebrates Leonardo da Vinci Special Section of Leonardo, 2007–2008
In celebration of Leonardo journal’s 40th anniversary, we are calling for essays related to Leonardo da Vinci and his concerns regarding the relationship between art and science. We are interested in submis- sions in which Leonardo’s own concerns serve as a springboard for looking toward the present. What, building upon Leonardo’s ways of thinking, can artists and scientists tell each other today? We also seek original accounts of his visual art, of his achievements as a proto-scientist and of the relation between his concerns with science and with visual art. Recommended length: 2,500–3,500 words. Illustrations per essay: 5–8 black-and-white images; possibly one color image. Prospective authors are encouraged to review the Leonardo Author Guidelines on the Web: www.leonardo.info. (Follow the links: Publications, Information for Authors, Leonardo Print Journals, Editorial and Illustration Guidelines.) All papers will be peer-reviewed prior to acceptance for publication. Submissions deadline: 15 January 2007. Please send inquiries and submissions to Guest Editor David Carrier:
Carfoot, Acoustic, Electric and Virtual Noise 39
Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/lmj.2006.16.35 by guest on 01 October 2021