ABSTRACT
 

What does it mean to study sound as an aesthetic object? Through my research, I have experimented with a variety of approaches that reintroduce our aural everyday as an object of analysis. Through distancing, remediation, visualization, and signal processing, familiar sounds can begin to appear strange again. I have suggested that this approach can be understood as signal archaeology: a way of approaching media and culture from the signal
up. Instead of reducing sound to communication, I am interested in following how ordinary sounds take shape, stabilize, and transform over time. This line of inquiry has taken me from thousands of hours of silence in Swedish radio to the global history of air raid horns. By drawing on a set of examples from recent research projects, this presentation aims to give an outline and introduction to my way of engaging with sound, while inviting critical
dialogue on its wider implications.