Sonic Spectres & the Object Hereafter

Kristen Gallerneaux, PhD Candidate, Art Practice, University of California San Diego / Curator of Communications & Information Technology, The Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation

Sonic Spectres & the Object Hereafter

In this multimedia lecture, Kristen Gallerneaux will share selections from her forthcoming publication High Static, Dead Lines: The Sonic Spectre and the Object Hereafter. Gallerneaux describes the hypothetical “sonic spectre” as being hitched at the hip with the history of objects: trees rigged up to the wireless heavens, a fax machine used to decode the language of hurricanes, an edible “radio pill,” voices on MASER beams, a failed computer factory/echo-chamber in the desert—a broadcast ghost that hijacked a television station to terrorize a city.

Utilizing her background as a writer, artist, and museum curator, Gallerneaux reactivates the emotional and physical histories of communication technologies and charged landscapes. In a series of “object lesson” vignettes, she will explore various boundary objects that benefit from a multidisciplinary approach—blending folklore and material culture studies with media archeology and experiments in sonic exploration.

Bio: 

Kristen Gallerneaux is a media historian, folklorist, and artist. She is also the Curator of Communication and Information Technology at The Henry Ford Museum, where she continues to build upon one of the largest historic technology collections in North America. In 2011, she graduated with a masters in Folklore from University of Oregon, and is PhD ABD in the Art Practice: Art History, Media Theory, and Criticism program at University of California, San Diego.

In 2016, she was invited to be a Future Thought speaker at Moogfest: The Synthesis of Art, Technology & Music, and also spoke at Unsound Krakow. She has written for the Barbican Center, ARTnews, and the Quietus. Her forthcoming book, High Static, Dead Lines: Sonic Spectres & the Object Hereafter will be released in October 2017 via Strange Attractor Press and distributed by MIT Press in the US. She has published on wide-ranging topics like mathematics in midcentury design, the visual history of telepathy research, the world’s first mousepad, and car audio bass battles in Miami.