Hearing the World: Audio Technologies and Listening in New Zealand, 1879–1939

Abstract

Listening is often thought of as an ahistorical, universal and autonomous process, as natural as seeing. But scholars in the field of sound studies have noted that listening is a contingent, social and historical process. This thesis offers the first study of the ways in which audio technologies affected cultures of listening in New Zealand from the late nineteenth century through to the late 1930s. Through the reception of machines that captured, stored and transmitted sounds — radio, cinema and recordings — it explores the idea of listening as a dynamic experience. The technologies of gramophones, radios and films, introduced into New Zealand during the 1890s and early 1900s, are emblematic of modernity; these machines mass-produced audio experiences. Film and recording studios in centres such as Hollywood, became factories of sounds that were exported around the world. New Zealanders were more likely to participate in this new and exciting international culture industry as consumers rather than producers. Before WWII only a very small proportion of the recordings and films were locally made and radio broadcasts tended to follow British models and formats. This study focuses on how this international sonic culture was experienced in New Zealand; it is about how New Zealanders heard the world, rather than how the world heard New Zealanders. Technology had many effects on the ways in which sounds could be heard. Radio and recordings transplanted sounds from their original locations; sounds one heard in concert halls could now also be heard at picnics. Recorded sounds, heard repeatedly, called for new ways of hearing. And recordings, which made sounds durable through time, had major consequences for aesthetics and education. This thesis, the first sounding of the country’s acoustic history, explores how these changes affected the ways in which New Zealanders experienced the sometimes troubling, sometimes enjoyable, but always changing, sounds of global modernity. Hearing the echoes of this past reveals rich and dynamic sonic cultures of consumption and leisure that have been overlooked by many historians. Sound historians do not replay; they remix the records of history.