Testing Hearing: The Making of Modern Aurality
Viktoria Tkaczyk, Mara Mills, Alexandra HuiHearing tests received a further boost around 1900 as a result of injury compensation laws & state & professional demands for aptitude testing in schools, conservatories, the military, & other fields. Applied at large scale, tests of seemingly small measure-of auditory acuity, of hearing range-helped redefine the modern concept of hearing as such.
During the twentieth & twenty-first centuries, the epistemic function of hearing expanded. Hearing took on the dual role of test object & test instrument; in the latter case, human hearing became a gauge by which to evaluate or regulate materials, nonhuman organisms, equipment, & technological systems. This book considers both the testing of hearing & testing with hearing to explore the co-creation of modern epistemic & auditory cultures.
The book's twelve contributors trace the design of ever more specific tests for the arts, education & communication, colonial & military applications, sociopolitical & industrial endeavors. Together, they demonstrate that testing as such became an enduring & wide-ranging cultural technique in the modern period, one that is situated between histories of scientific experimentation & many fields of application.