Our studies of aesthetics and knowledge have long tended to privilege the visual - at the expense, Wolfgang Ernst argues, of the aural. Sonic Time Machines aims to correct that, presenting a striking new approach to theorising sound that investigates its split existence: as a temporal effect in a techno-cultural context and as a source of knowledge and information. Ernst creates a new term for the concept at the heart of the book, sonicity, a flexible and powerful term that allows him to consider sound with all its many physical, philosophical, and cultural valences.

Wolfgang Ernst is full professor for Media Theories at the Institute for Musicology and Media Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin.