Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture
Unsettled Matter
Published on 1. October 2025
240 pages
978-1-040-77294-2 (ISBN)
Description
This book charts the unsettled media cultures and deep time of shellac, retracing its journey from the visual to the sonic, and back again. Each chapter unveils a situated moment in the long history of shellac - travelling from its early visual culture to Emile Berliner's discovery of its auditory properties through to its recycling in contemporary art and design practices. Unforeseen correspondences between artefacts as diverse as mirrors, seals, gramophone discs and bombs are revealed. With its combinatory approach and commitment to material thinking, Shellac in Visual and Sonic Culture insists on moments of contact, encounter, and transformation. The book notably addresses the colonial unconscious underpinning the early transnational recording industry, highlighting the multiple gestures and forms of labour entombed within the production of the 78rpm disc. Roy explores shellac as a concrete substance, as well as the malleable stuff of which stories, histories and modern imaginings were made - and unmade.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
File size
26,02 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-040-77294-2 (9781040772942)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
approx. 12/2025
1st Edition
Routledge
€68.80
Not yet published
Book
10/2023
Amsterdam University Press
€149.70
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Elodie A. Roy is a media and material culture theorist with a specialism in the history of phonography. She is the author of Media, Materiality and Memory: Grounding the Groove, and the co-editor (with Eva Moreda Rodriguez) of Phonographic Encounters: Mapping Transnational Cultures of Sound, 1890-1945.
Content
Introduction: From material culture to the materials of culture, Chapter 1. Sheen: Early stories and circulation of shellac, Chapter 2. Crackle: Assembling the record, Chapter 3. Mirrors: Phono-fetishism and intersensory visions, Chapter 4. Detonations: Shellac at war, Chapter 5. Shards: Waste, obsolescence, and contemporary remediations, Conclusion: Sonic sculptures, Index.
