THESys doctoral researcher Marvin Heine has published his master’s thesis under the title “Resonant Fabrics: Listening to Urban Worlds”. “Resonant Fabric”, published by ‘transcript’ and with a foreword by THESys member Prof. Ignacio Farías, is an exploration and celebration of urban sense- and soundscapes as they shape and are shaped by urban cultures and particular ways of listening.
Through sonic sensitivity to a better understanding of urban environments
Soundscapes profoundly connect listeners to the places they inhabit and thereby reveal the vibrant and resonant fabrics that lie beneath the delineated spaces of visual representation. But the social sciences, for so long, deliberately overheard the outcries, the roars, the uncanny silences all around us – and thereby also turned a deaf ear to the acoustic richness of the more-than-human world, with often disastrous consequences. By developing a more acute sonic sensibility, the social sciences could gain new, empowering, and compassionate understandings of urban environments and the life forms within.
By examining historical documents, contemporary accounts, and original empirical material through a combination of actor-network-theory, ecology, and sound studies scholarship, “Resonant Fabrics” embraces, in a stylistically embodied and often poetic manner, the sonic urban world in all its fragile, ephemeral, yet deeply affective sonority.
Marvin Heine is an environmental sociologist and doctoral candidate at the Humboldt University Berlin. He is deeply interested in the senses, their phenomenology, mediations, and politics. His research focuses on the influence of sense perception on processes of socialization, as well as the storied and sensorially mediated transformation of human-environment systems.
Publication
Marvin Heine (2023). Resonant Fabrics. Listening to Urban Worlds. transcript
If you have any questions or are interested in getting a free copy of the book for the purpose of writing a review about “Resonant Fabrics”, please get in touch with Marvin ().
Photo credits: Marvin Heine & transcript
