High Static, Dead Lines: Sonic Spectres & the Object Hereafter

by Kristen Gallerneaux

A literary mix tape that explores the entwined boundaries between sound, material culture, landscape and esoteric belief.

Trees rigged up to the wireless radio heavens. A fax machine used to decode the language of hurricanes. A broadcast ghost that hijacked a television station to terrorize a city. A failed computer factory in the desert with a slap-back echo resounding into ruin.

In High Static, Dead Lines, media historian and artist Kristen Gallerneaux weaves a literary mix tape that explores the entwined boundaries between sound, material culture, landscape, and esoteric belief. Essays and fictocritical interludes are arranged to evoke a network of ley lines for the “sonic spectre” to travel through—a hypothetical presence that manifests itself as an invisible layer of noise alongside the conventional histories of technological artifacts.

The objects and stories within span from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day, touching upon military, communications, and cultural history. A connective thread is the recurring presence of sound—audible, self-generative, and remembered—charting the contentious sonic histories of paranormal culture.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Theory, Technology, Science

264 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 2018

About the author

Kristen Gallerneaux is a writer, folklorist, and artist. She has published on topics as diverse as mathematics in midcentury design, the visual history of telepathy research, the world's first mouse pad, and car audio bass battles in Miami. She is also Curator of Communications and Information Technology at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, where she continues to build upon one of the largest historic technology collections in North America.

Reviews

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Class-A example of sizing up the limits of academia and saying "but let's go further," the destination being neither a clean-cut monograph nor a performance art piece for eccentricity's sake. Probably the only way to delve into the history and theoretical relevance of something so nebulous as the "sonic spectre". A joyride all around.

[Lilian Buckthought · Rating 4 out of 5]

A practical way to make your life feel haunted again!

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Technology has turned us all into ghosts.”

Clarity confirms our ignorance.

No matter the time, you still have to pay the ferryman to enter the forest.

At the cemetery, they sat to rest their quivering knees, realizing—then and now—that they had somehow walked past the bridge without ever having crossed it.

[Jack Bates · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someone must have recommended this to me, I think - or maybe I read a review in the Fortean Times. Either is equally likely, as this book of essays explores all sorts of strange things about sound, from ghost telephones for speaking with the dead, the the development of the Moog, the Windsor Hum, and various hauntings. Lots of interesting stuff about slightly esoteric technology, some of which starts off as an oddity and is now everywhere, while other things have long since had their moment in the sun. I liked the combination of personal memories/autobiog/memoir with research.

[Ned Netherwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hard to describe this book. It's a collection of folklore, tech history, personal recollections and supernatural reflections with a strictly agnostic tint.

[Annie Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

very cool

[Peixian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really weird narrative format, but also very good

[Corey · Rating 5 out of 5]

📻🔊👻🤔🎓