Dolby Stereo

Issues of Sound & Silence In Recordable Space

unpublished talkfor the Immersion presentations on surround sound, Treasury Theatre, Melbourne, 1999
The Vitaphone projection system (c.1926)

Part 1 - The Birth of Silence

1. The many noises of silent cinema

a. rowdy audiences
b. projector drones
c. interactive audio-vision

2. The celebration of sound & the facism of silence

a. still cinematography
b. the boom mic
c. the studio environment

3. The reproduction of sound recording on the theatrical stage

a. auditorium architecture
b. reterritorializing the theatre
c. the Academy Curve

Part 2 - The Tyrany of Vision

1. The spectacle of cinema

a. widescreen ratios
b. the orchestral machine

2. The confused brain

a. notions of location
b. focussing on a film
c. frightful psycho-acoustics

Part 3 - The Rebirth of Sound

1. The growth in sonic phenomenology

a. the social sonorum of noise
b. increased fidelity
c. changes in audio-visual conventions

2. The advent of Dolby

a. Dolby as a means of Noise Reduction
b. Dolby as a means of Stereo Reproduction

3. The apparatus of surround sound

a. the film strip
b. the matrix encoding
c. the speaker configuration

Part 4 - The Design of Space

1. The mimetic wrath

a. stereo as an illusion
b. programmed forced-vision
c. undying narratives

2. The reconfiguring of space

a. the music studio
b. the electro-acoustic laboratory
c. the digital environment

3. The potential for pscycho-acoustic vision

a. abstraction
b. multiplicity
c. desynchronization


Text © Philip Brophy.