Amplification Project

With amplification, sound assumed a new pliability within the work that musicians and other sound artists and technicians do, and more than that, it acquired a new consistency as a part of daily life. Amplification did not just create the possibility for sound to be experienced at louder volume. It enabled sound to bridge the worlds of public and private life in ways that were previously unavailable, and to a degree unimaginable. Radio, electrically amplified phonographs and other home audio systems, sound in movie theaters, television – all in some fundamental way rely on amplification for their effects. Then there are the more obvious applications to which the device has been put: to amplify voices through the microphone; to amplify guitars and other electric or electronic instruments; to form the basis for the public address systems that have made modern mass gatherings – from political rallies to stadium concerts to raves to sporting events – possible. To borrow a phrase from influential historian Emily Thompson, the “soundscape of modernity” owes much to the impact of amplification across these various branches of 20th and 21st century culture and society. 

Project Aims

The Amplification Project aims to investigate the cultural history and social impact of amplification. This history encompasses amplifying technologies as such but is more broadly concerned with the effects of the technology and its proliferation. Part of this project entails researching the idea of amplification – when and why did it emerge as something desirable? How much of the motivation for amplification came from the worlds of scientific and technological research, and how much came from musicians and other sound practitioners who determined that they needed enhanced capabilities? Another part concerns the economic structures that have enabled amplification – whose investments made amplification technologies possible, and what interests were behind those investments? And then, there are the questions about the uses to which amplification has been put, many of which have been outlined above. To conduct a history of amplification is to undertake a broad-based study of the role that sound has played in shaping the world in which we live.