The Analog Age
A day and a half of events considering the shift from analog to digital in advance of Digital Humanities Week with special guest Damon Krukowski
Author and podcast host Damon Krukowski will be on campus for a series of events sponsored by the McGillicuddy Humanities Center in collaboration with The Department of English. On Thursday at 4:30 he’ll discuss The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World with MHC director Jennifer Moxley in an event that is free and open to the public (Stewart Commons 104). Krukowski will also be visiting CMJ 237: Journalism Across Platforms on Thursday and ENG 408: Advanced Poetry Workshop on Friday. A catered lunch in the Wicks Room is scheduled for Friday from noon to 2pm; the topic of discussion is “Negative Capabilities, Cage, noise and poetry.” If you’re interested in attending the lunch-time discussion please RSVP to english.chair@maine.edu by Wednesday (Septemeber 27th) at 4:30pm.
Damon Krukowski:
Recording technologies can become outdated or obsolescent, but does sound itself have an age? If so, what does it sound like? How do we hear “age” in the temporal medium of sound recording? We may assume that the “Analog Age” is gone for good, replaced by the “Digital Age,” but in his new book The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World, and podcast Ways of Hearing hosted by Radiotopia author and musician Damon Krukowski takes this assumption back to basics to build a thought-provoking argument asserting the necessity of “noise.” Krukowski helps us understand how recording technologies can have a huge impact on we are and are not hearing in our world.
Damon Krukowski is the author of The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in the Digital World, which Alex Ross called “a radical defense of analog craft in the face of the digital hard sell.” The Kirkus Review said that “Krukowski turns the basic dichotomy of audio engineering, the ratio of signal to noise, into a complex metaphor for the loss of history and ingenuity represented by the replacement of analog recording and culture with digital media.” Krukowski’s six-part podcast, Ways of Hearing, went live on Radiotopia’s Showcase on August 4. Krukowski was in the indie rock band Galaxie 500 and is currently one half of the folk-rock duo Damon & Naomi. He has written for Pitchfork, Artforum, Bookforum, Frieze, The Wire, and on his blog International Sad Hits. In addition, he has published two books of prose poetry and serves as co-publisher of the literary press Exact Change.
Schedule:
Thursday September 28:
4:30-6PM A discussion between Jennifer Moxley (MHC Director) and Damon Krukowski on his book The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World. This event is free and open to the public. Stewart Commons 104.
Friday September 29:
12-2PM: Loose round table discussion: Negative Capabilities, Cage, noise and poetry. Catered lunch in Wicks Room, please RSVP to english.chair@maine.edu by Wednesday (Septemeber 27th) at 4:30pm if you want to attend.
The Analog Age is sponsored by the Clement and Linda McGillicuddy Humanities Center and the Department of English and is part of the 2017-2018 year-long symposium: Juvenescence/Obsolescence: Humanities Approaches to Aging across the Ages.