ABSTRACT
Some forms of media production are solely visual or solely aural. Chapter 2 discusses still photography. Chapter 6 discusses radio and acoustic art. Many websites have only visual content-text and graphics. Much of our media consumption, however, involves simultaneous sound and image. Even before sound film came along, live music accompanied silent films in theaters. “Talkies,” or films with sound, once thought by some to be the death of film art, were actually a natural and enduring addition to the reproducing of our visual world through film. Television brought us radio with pictures, giving visual dimension to many of the same characters and programs that had been so popular on radio. Sound has increasingly become an important aspect of computer-based media, though the full understanding of sound’s role on the Internet or other interactive applications is still being discovered. The dual experience of seeing and hearing is so natural to most of us that we only notice when one is missing, not when both are there. For that reason, silence in a film or a black TV screen with sound can be very attention grabbing.
