lecture by Christoph Cox (US)

Theorists of sound and music tend to distinguish “hearing” from “listening”, the mere registration of acoustic signals from the intelligent understanding of sound. Animals can certainly hear, but only humans can genuinely listen. However commonplace, this idea is rooted in an age-old and highly problematic metaphysics that elevates humans above the rest of the natural world. In this talk, Christoph Cox challenges this metaphysics arguing that a genuinely naturalist and materialist theory of sound must collapse the distinction between listening and hearing and extend the latter not only to animals and other living things, but to inanimate nature as well.

appearance at Tuned City
Brussels / Relational Noise – 28. June 2013