Essentially, sound is a pressure wave that causes vibrations as it displaces and moves the air around it, which our ear drums pick up and our brains interpret. The human brain gathers and infers a LOT of information through sound because sound waves carry a lot of clues about the physical properties or events that created them. For example, if someone drops an object on the floor, the sound waves that come from the object striking the floor tell our brains about the kind of surface the object hit as well as the physical properties of the object—its approximate size, weight, material, and shape.
What Comes Next? Thoughts On the Future of Historical Scholarship
I define a “native audio history” as a narrative work of scholarly history created and produced in audio. It is a work that considers and presents sounds that evoke the past as well as the sounds that produce history. When I hear this genre, I hear the archives and intellectual production of history as an integral part of the presentation. It’s a genre that answers the whys and hows of history.