Overview

Nature writers Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen set out in search of sounds beautiful and loathsome, melodious and disturbing, healing, strange and intimate. The phenomena of sound may be fleeting and evanescent, but the memory of it can open a window into the soul, deepening our connections with time, the environment and each other. From the edge of the solar system to the crackle of arctic sea ice, from the ancient oracle site of Dodona to the singing pillars of Hampi, each of these 36 essays explores stories of sound through the lens of history, science and culture, stylishly blending fantastical facts and unique anecdotes to create a compelling narrative.

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9781836391104

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Reviews

As guide books go, The Sound Atlas must surely stand as one of the most fascinating and creative written to date . . . Vieser and Yuen have assembled a collection of 36 essays on the subject of sound, each offering an insight into strange sounds across landscapes and imagination. -- Jules Stewart * Geographical * The world is full of noises, and The Sound Atlas is a fascinating and resonant guide to many of its most extraordinary and beautiful ones. * Caspar Henderson, author of A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous * I’ve always thought that music has nurtured me more than literature or art, but I never realized that there was such a rich soundscape outside of music! This book taught me that to “see” sound is to touch life. * Kyoichi Tsuzuki, photographer and journalist * This globe- and cosmos-spanning immersion in sonic oddities, sacred musics, slender silences, and singing stones inspires appreciation for the resonance of places, creaturely language, and what exists beyond earshot at frequencies not often considered. Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen are excellent aural tour guides on this journey, linking together different geographies and historical moments in unexpected and thoughtful ways. Their words vibrate, reminding us not only of the ways our bodies respond to sound but of how we might be more responsive and responsible for human contributions to a wild planetary soundscape. * Gavin Van Horn, author of The Way of Coyote and co-editor of the anthologies Kinship and Elementals * The Sound Atlas is an open invitation to see the world in a new way, by listening to it. Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen invite you to imagine a new map of the world that cannot be seen. This book entertains a delightful contradiction: that it might be best read with eyes closed and only ears open. It contains sonic images of real and remarkable places, imagined spaces and moments in past, present and future time, as well as richly coloured evocations of natural phenomena and acoustic artefacts, unheard places of transience and memory and man-made worlds, built from some forgotten, ephemeral auditive substance. All you need to do once you’ve read this book is close your eyes so that you can hear it all, and experience the sensory world anew. * Tim Hinman, soundmaker and podcaster * This is a fascinating idea: thirty-six brief essays exploring that most evanescent of phenomena, sound – how it acts on the human sensibility, how it is captured in memory and understood in culture. It begins with the sounds of deep space and winds its way through an extraordinary array of acoustic experiences from both animate and inanimate sources - moths, bats, cicadas, and whales as much as stones and seas and Eelds. The authors promise a commentary that blends personal experience with cultural insight, informed by history and science alike. I’m seriously intrigued by this, and I have a lot of trust in Reaktion as a publisher. -- Mathew Lyons * The Broken Compass *

""I've always thought that music has nurtured me more than literature or art, but I never realized that there was such a rich soundscape outside of music! This book taught me that to 'see' sound is to touch life.""--Kyoichi Tsuzuki, photographer and journalist ""The world is full of noises, and The Sound Atlas is a fascinating and resonant guide to many of its most extraordinary and beautiful ones.""--Caspar Henderson, author of ""A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous""

""Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen have produced an informative and romantic gazetteer of the sounds that resonate in our souls . . . The Sound Atlas makes a too rarely considered case for a quieter kind of ecology, within which essential sounds can have broadcasting bandwidth."" - Derek Turner, Engelsberg Ideas ""As guide books go, The Sound Atlas must surely stand as one of the most fascinating and creative written to date . . . Vieser and Yuen have assembled a collection of 36 essays on the subject of sound, each offering an insight into strange sounds across landscapes and imagination."" - Jules Stewart, Geographical ""This cosmopolitan sound collection opens with a background hiss that was detected in 1964: astronomers first blamed it on pigeons roosting in their antenna before realizing that it was cosmic background radiation from the Big Bang. The book also features icebergs crackling and music mysteriously created by tapping stone pillars in a medieval Hindu temple in India."" - Nature ""This is a fascinating idea: thirty-six brief essays exploring that most evanescent of phenomena, sound – how it acts on the human sensibility, how it is captured in memory and understood in culture. It begins with the sounds of deep space and winds its way through an extraordinary array of acoustic experiences from both animate and inanimate sources - moths, bats, cicadas, and whales as much as stones and seas and Eelds. The authors promise a commentary that blends personal experience with cultural insight, informed by history and science alike. I’m seriously intrigued by this, and I have a lot of trust in Reaktion as a publisher."" - Mathew Lyons, The Broken Compass ""The world is full of noises, and The Sound Atlas is a fascinating and resonant guide to many of its most extraordinary and beautiful ones."" - Caspar Henderson, author of A Book of Noises: Notes on the Auraculous ""I’ve always thought that music has nurtured me more than literature or art, but I never realized that there was such a rich soundscape outside of music! This book taught me that to “see” sound is to touch life."" - Kyoichi Tsuzuki, photographer and journalist ""This globe- and cosmos-spanning immersion in sonic oddities, sacred musics, slender silences, and singing stones inspires appreciation for the resonance of places, creaturely language, and what exists beyond earshot at frequencies not often considered. Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen are excellent aural tour guides on this journey, linking together different geographies and historical moments in unexpected and thoughtful ways. Their words vibrate, reminding us not only of the ways our bodies respond to sound but of how we might be more responsive and responsible for human contributions to a wild planetary soundscape."" - Gavin Van Horn, author of The Way of Coyote and co-editor of the anthologies Kinship and Elementals ""The Sound Atlas is an open invitation to see the world in a new way, by listening to it. Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen invite you to imagine a new map of the world that cannot be seen. This book entertains a delightful contradiction: that it might be best read with eyes closed and only ears open. It contains sonic images of real and remarkable places, imagined spaces and moments in past, present and future time, as well as richly coloured evocations of natural phenomena and acoustic artefacts, unheard places of transience and memory and man-made worlds, built from some forgotten, ephemeral auditive substance. All you need to do once you’ve read this book is close your eyes so that you can hear it all, and experience the sensory world anew."" - Tim Hinman, soundmaker and podcaster ""This is a fascinating idea: thirty-six brief essays exploring that most evanescent of phenomena, sound – how it acts on the human sensibility, how it is captured in memory and understood in culture. It begins with the sounds of deep space and winds its way through an extraordinary array of acoustic experiences from both animate and inanimate sources - moths, bats, cicadas, and whales as much as stones and seas and Eelds. The authors promise a commentary that blends personal experience with cultural insight, informed by history and science alike. I’m seriously intrigued by this, and I have a lot of trust in Reaktion as a publisher."" - Mathew Lyons, The Broken Compass

Author Information

Michaela Vieser is a writer based in Berlin. Her books include the German bestseller Tee mit Buddha (2009). Isaac Yuen is a Hong Kong-Canadian writer. His books include Utter, Earth: Advice on Living in a More-than-Human World (2024).

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