Kyle Devine
Academic Interests
I specialize in musical culture since 1900, with a focus on sound technology and an approach that combines music studies with media studies and cultural sociology.
My current project is called Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music (MIT Press, forthcoming 2019). It's about the history of what recordings are made of, and what happens to those recordings when they are disposed of. I focus on three materialities—shellac, plastic, data—which correspond to the main commercial recording formats since 1900: 78s, LPs, 45s, cassettes, CDs, audio files. Common sense suggests that the history of recorded music has been a progress of dematerialization—an evolution from physical discs to invisible digits. Decomposed shows that recorded music has always been a significant exploiter of both natural and human resources, and that its reliance on these resources is more problematic today than ever before.
I am also coediting a related book called Audible Infrastructures: Music, Sound, Media (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2020). It looks at the social life and social death of various musical commodities in terms of three phases: resources and manufacturing, shipping and circulation, disposal and waste. We ask how these phases influence and respond to musical conventions, environmental realities, and political-economic conditions in industrializing and industrialized parts of the world.
Most of my other publications are about histories, cultures, and theories of sound reproduction. I coedited Living Stereo: Histories and Cultures of Multichannel Sound (Bloomsbury 2015) and I coauthored work on gender and social inequalities in music technology for Twentieth-Century Music (2015) and the Contemporary Music Review (2016).
Music sociology is my other main interest—especially the field's pasts and prospects—and here I coedited The Routledge Reader on the Sociology of Music (Routledge 2015).
Teaching and Supervision
I’m always happy to hear from prospective students working in my main fields of interest: popular music studies and musicology, sound studies, media studies, sociology of music, cultural sociology, material culture, science and technology studies. I encourage projects that are conceptually adventurous, politically engaged, and empirically grounded. Some of my teaching contributions include:
- The Political Ecology of Music (split undergraduate–masters)
- Music and Cultural Studies
- Research Seminar in Popular Music
- Metodologisk emne: Musikk, kultur, samfunn
- Music, Technology, and Production
- Popular Music and Dust: Archives, Memory, Heritage, Historiography
- Thesis Seminar in Musicology
Background
Before joining the University of Oslo in 2015, I taught at City University of London and Worcester College, University of Oxford. At Oxford, I also worked with the Music and Digitization Research Group.
Publications
Devine, Kyle. 2019. Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Devine, Kyle, and Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, eds. 2020 (forthcoming). Audible Infrastructures: Music, Sound, Media. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Devine, Kyle (2017). Desert Island Discomorphoses: Listening Formations and the Material Cultures of Music, In Julie Brown; Nicholas Cook & Stephen Cottrell (ed.), Defining the Discographic Self: Desert Island Discs in Context. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780197266175. Chapter 4. s 67 - 82
- Born, Georgina & Devine, Kyle (2016). Introduction: Gender, Creativity, and Education in Digital Musics and Sound Art. Contemporary Music Review. ISSN 0749-4467. 35(1), s 1- 20 . doi: 10.1080/07494467.2016.1177255 Full text in Research Archive.
- Devine, Kyle (2016). L’intensité matérielle de l’écoute musicale sous forme de données, I: Philippe Le Guern (red.), Où va la musique? Numérophose et nouvelles experiences d’écoute. Presses des Mines. ISBN 9782356714077. Chapter 1. s 47 - 64
- Born, Georgina & Devine, Kyle (2015). Music technology, gender, and class: Digitization, educational and social change in Britain. Twentieth-Century Music. ISSN 1478-5722. 12(2), s 135- 172 . doi: 10.1017/S1478572215000018 Full text in Research Archive.
- Devine, Kyle Ross (2015). Decomposed: A political ecology of music. Popular Music. ISSN 0261-1430. 34(3), s 367- 389 . doi: 10.1017/S026114301500032X Full text in Research Archive.
- Devine, Kyle & Shepherd, John (2015). Music and the Sociological Imagination—Pasts and Prospects, In Kyle Ross Devine & John Shepherd (ed.), The Routledge Reader on the Sociology of Music. Routledge. ISBN 9781138856363. Introduction.
- Devine, Kyle; Théberge, Paul & Everrett, Tom (2015). Introduction: Living Stereo, In Kyle Ross Devine; Paul Théberge & Tom Everrett (ed.), Living Stereo: Histories and Cultures of Multichannel Sound. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781623565510. Introduction. s 1 - 34
- Devine, Kyle Ross (2014). A Mysterious Music in the Air: Cultural Origins of the Loudspeaker. Popular Music History. ISSN 1740-7133. 8(1), s 5- 28 Full text in Research Archive.
- Devine, Kyle Ross (2013). Imperfect Sound Forever: Loudness Wars, Listening Formations and the History of Sound Reproduction. Popular Music. ISSN 0261-1430. 32(2), s 159- 176 Full text in Research Archive.
- Devine, Kyle (2019). Decomposed: The Political Ecology of Music. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262537780. 328 s.
- Devine, Kyle Ross & Shepherd, John (ed.) (2015). The Routledge Reader on the Sociology of Music. Routledge. ISBN 9781138856363. 386 s.
- Devine, Kyle Ross; Théberge, Paul & Everrett, Tom (ed.) (2015). Living Stereo: Histories and Cultures of Multichannel Sound. Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781623565510. 304 s.
- Brennan, Matt & Devine, Kyle (2019). Music streaming has a far worse carbon footprint than the heyday of records and CDs—new findings. The Conversation. ISSN 2201-5639. . doi: https://theconversation.com/music-streaming-has-a-far-worse-carbon-footprint-than-the-heyday-of-records-and-cds-new-findings-114944
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 08. april). Digital Music Consumption Has Led to Increase in Greenhouse Gas Emissions, New Study Finds. [Internett]. Billboard.
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 13. juli). E-mails, applications mobiles, centres de données : le numérique, un véritable glouton énergétique. [Internett]. L'Orient-Le Jour.
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 08. april). Emissions From Music Consumption Reach Unprecedented High, Study Shows. [Internett]. Pitchfork.
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 23. mai). Is Streaming Music Dangerous to the Environment? One Researcher Is Sounding the Alarm. [Internett]. Rolling Stone.
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 04. juni). Is streaming music worse for the environment than buying CDs and records?. [Internett]. Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 21. april). Noise pollution: What you need to know about the carbon footprint of streaming music. [Internett]. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 09. april). Real Cost of Streaming. [Radio]. Cape Talk (South Africa).
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 09. april). Streaming Music Shamed for its Inadvertent Carbon Output. [Internett]. Gizmodo.
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 15. juli). The Internet’s Carbon Footprint. [Internett]. IRL: Online Life is Real Podcast.
- Devine, Kyle (2019). The Slow Violence of Music: An Infrastructural History of Sound Reproduction.
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 19. august). The World Remade. [Internett]. Reasonably Sound (podcast).
- Devine, Kyle (2019, 28. juli). Vinyle ou streaming : quel support musical pollue le plus la planète ?. [Internett]. Télérama.
- Devine, Kyle; Brennan, Matt & Collinson Scott, Jo (2019). The Cost of Music.
- Devine, Kyle (2018). Musicology Without Music?.
- Devine, Kyle (2017). Making Infrastructures Audible: An Introduction.
- Devine, Kyle (2017). Plastic Makes Perfect: Popular Music Before Production and After Consumption.
- Devine, Kyle (2017). Recorded Music and the Capitalist World System.
- Devine, Kyle (2017). Recorded Music: Theory and Plastic.
- Nielsen, Nanette; Devine, Kyle; Hagen, Per Ole & Gadir, Tami (2017). How We Got into Academia, and How to Get (More) Out of It: Ideas Entrepreneurship in Action.
- Devine, Kyle (2016). Bugs, Rocks, Oil, and Light: Material Politics and Recordings as Cultural Artifacts.
- Devine, Kyle (2016). Even in the Quietest Moments: Loudness and Power in “Speaker Culture”.
- Devine, Kyle (2016). Organized Sound: Music, Media, Infrastructure.
- Devine, Kyle (2016). Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Music, Materiality, Infrastructure.
- Devine, Kyle (2016). Sound Media Research Report.
- Devine, Kyle (2015). The Material Intensity of Listening to Music as Data: Ruptures and Continuities.
- Devine, Kyle & Everrett, Tom (2015). Solid Sound? Staging, Perspective, and Practice in the History of Stereo.