MASS MEDIA: GLOBALIZATION PERIODS.

THE MOMENT OF THE SOUND

Globalization, media, sound, cities, history

Jos Luis Fernn e! "ien#i$s e %$ "o&uni#$#i'n F"S(UBA

A)s*r$#* Our team has been working for ten years on the evolution of sound media (phonograph and its followers, telephone and the radio) in the context of the city of Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina. e will expose and discuss the globali!ation periods in mass media, in order to confront the big issue of this concept, which is precisely, its globalizing power. "n this paper we will focus on the moment of the sound# from the end of the $%th &entury to the thirties in the '(th &entury and its influences on the urban environment, on the space of the city. )ediatisation of sounds changed relationships among individuals, between individuals and cultures and between cultures and segments of cultures. Globalization, a long*term process of our culture, has changed too, and increased its importance through the sound media development. +. FRAME,OR-

Globalization is an umbrella concept. +hen, its use always risks shaping specifics aspects of the sociodiscoursive process. "f we are studying ,globali!ation-, globali!ation must be sub.ect, not the context of our search for knowledge$. )ass media is the cause and conse/uence of the process of cultural globali!ation. +hat process is long, multidirectional and not necessarily irreversible. "t is impossible to imagine phenomena like ,current affaires-, ,popular music- or ,sports- *as we know them* without the presence of press, radio, phone, phonograph, different forms of television, and also "nternet. +he notion of ,big city- includes structurally the media system and the media system itself /uestioning the bounders of each city (we can live all our life out of the city but in contact and en.oying its life or discursive styles). "f we focus on one sub.ect of the call for papers of this round table ()A0&O1) we can understand that it considers ,the city itself like a language- (BA0+231, 4A)"53+)6 in both ways we would include immediately mass media semiotics as a main part of that language. 7lobali!ation is not a homogenous process. 1ome areas change (in our time, access to information, interaction with the screen, hybridation of some discursive types and fictional or not fictional genres, etc.) while others do not (individualism of radio phonic speakers, average duration of popular songs, star system, heroes with courage and madness, etc.). Besides, the appearance of a new global media does not necessarily lead to the disappearance of previous media# radio did not diminish the attraction of live musical concerts and has resisted the attack of television. 8rom this point of view, globali!ation would be a concept to be built each time when we need to describe each social event or, more evidently, when we must locate in a specific given historical moment, the emergence of a new mediated discursive phenomenon. +o fix a social context (local, global or glocal9) we need to establish a social moment, too (previous or new6 then, to make, to propose, periods'). "n general terms, when we talk about globali!ation we talk about relationships located in one space6 more or less complex, but only one. +he different ways through the location
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. e don:t discuss here differences between global and worldwide phenomena (partially e/uivalent to globalization vs. mondialization, similar in 8rench and 1panish). ' . +his is absolutely different from saying ,find- periods $

of cities and their relationships with the context, described by "sabel, contribute to the development of globali!ation and their conse/uences are always spatial issues. hen we speak about periods of globalization, globali!ation is defined as a process6 a temporary concept6 .ust as when we talk about ,different moments in the life of the city- the spatial issue becomes a time issue. All of us know that switching from space to time is common but conflictive in social sciences.
.. PROBLEMS TO MA-E PERIODS

+o make periods is one of the main issues in history and one of the problems about long or short duration are classical;. +he concept of globali!ation itself would be focused on long duration (then, )arco <olo or Alexander the )agnus could be considered as first steps of the process) or in short duration (our case ** focused on this globali!ation, which represents the heart of our time**). But, in every relatively short duration period it is possible to find included shorter duration periods, which may be not infinite, but surely more stages than common sense could discriminate. Anyway, our ob.ective to determine periods does not match necessarily either common sense or general history:s sense. "f we need to understand, i.e.# transformations contributed by the sound medias to the discursive system of our city, we need to have periods (at least, the previous and the following) including the aspects that, according to our knowledge, these media aimed for the discursive system. +herefore, every discussion about the period of one media or one type of )edias implies to discuss the periods of the other )edias# which was developed before or after with respect to ,our- )edias or, more complicated, which co*exist. =nfortunately, establishing periods is not easy. )aybe 3liseo >er?n is the one who has suggested the many ways to determine periods of the media and they were presented according to different ob.ectives. 1ometimes, his periods represented steps in the general development of media. "n this way, symbolism in the writing press, iconicity in photographic device used in cinema too and indexicaly aspects on the television are moments of truth to understand how )edias changed relationships between the media and the receptors@. "n the same work, a few pages below, the author differentiated successive positions of the central speaker of the news bulletin on television with respect to the camera (which is to say, with respect to the viewers and both of them with respect to the news itself). +hese different and successive moments were used by >er?n to describe and explain different periods of the distribution of information on television. As we can see, those periods are suggestive and useful to understand the problems that >er?n was trying to show. +aking into account the first series of periods, who can avoid the enlightening effect produced because the development of the media system is opposed to the common sense about general culture development9 +he media denied the ,naturalprocess that had been described# meanwhile in the development of culture first would be the indexical, then the iconicity and finally, at the ,top of the culture-, the symbolism of the written language. But, what could we say about our sound )edias9 +hey have and add to the discursive system, in the same movement, the symbolism of words and music, and the limited (but specific) iconicity of its spatial re/uirements and the brutal indexicality of the living texts. Obviously, the /uestion is not to discuss with >er?n. "n fact, he is working in some lines of research and from that position showed his concepts. On the other hand, in our position we need to understand **in the framework of the progressive (remember, sometimes regressive too) process of globali!ationAthe place of the media of sound.
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e can focus it from the approach of 2istory of Art, determining and understanding the periods from two points of view# finding in pieces of art of different ages e/uivalent forms of organi!ation (formal or contents) or attributing to the pieces of each age particular characteristics referred, in general terms, to styles of age. 1chematically, from the first perspective, 0enaissance Dor its most important traces are the repetition, or the revision of classical schemes also present in the 7reco 4atin period. 8rom the second point of view, these similar characteristics contribute to put in order the differences, evident at first glance, between the arts of each age. "t is true# the first position dissolves the notion of period. +he second Despecially if we are thinking of authors like Arnold 2auserAshows all the time the limits and the conflict to determine periods and, especially, to apply the notion of style even if it is impossible to abandon its use.
/. DETERMINING PERIODS

"t is very difficult to think about the possibility of .ust one way to determine periods of globali!ation from the point of view of mass D media development. +he process can affect mainly the distribution of contents or, otherwise the new forms of contact. "n the first case we will talk about international delivery of films, +> series, popular songs, etc.). "n the second one, whether in prevailing spatial or temporal aspects or both (presence of images or sounds, live or recorded texts modify time or space of discursive relationships, etc.). hen we are studying distribution of contents, the main issue is transposition (different processes through genres, texts, etc. passing through different )edias, i.e. melodrama, as theatrical genre became films, radio theatre, photo novel, soap opera, video game, etc.)E. hen we are studying forms of contact, the main issue is enunciation (linguistic or non* linguistic procedures through texts build communicational scenes between figures, images of emission and reception). 2owever, phenomena like the global system of information are crossroads between types of contents and types of contacts# to understand ,breaking news- every people need knowledge about news and .ournalism and to accept a specific enunciative position that must include open ways to novelty. "f, as " believe, it is truth what was previously said, proposing periods must be only a provisional and careful proposition to be considered in a fieldwork of discussion. +aking into account those limits, in our period of globali!ation focusing on mass media development, we can discriminate the following internal periods# a) Bo 0 $n 1ress. "n last decades of the F"F century, technical images (lithographic and photographic) transformed graphics media, which with the big cities themes created sensationalism6 in the meantime telegraph reduced time of information and melodramatic and realistic novels were distributed through the press. +he added value of the period is not only the new contents but also the new ways to relate mass*media texts with social and anthropological issues. b) Me#2$ni# iconicity. <assing from $%th &entury to '%th, massive representation and perception of the body and its environment# from photographs to cinema, capturing big stories. +ruly, this period coexists partially with the previous ones, but its sense is absolutely different. "ts main issue is the transposition of painting genres like portrait and landscape and fictional stories from prestigious technological procedures like paint or press to mechanical procedures excluding the aura typical of the unique piece of art (B3GHA)"G). c) T2e &o&en* o3 *2e soun . +he beginning of sound media coexists partially with mechanic iconicity but almost reaching the forties in its first stage. +he electronic media
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**the phone, phonograph and radio** bring together live or recorded texts with new relationships between concreteness and abstraction. >oices and music emitted without their sources generate a new presence of individual positions through the voices and musical interpretation. As we will see, the period built new revolutionary relationships between space and time and we cannot forget that sound cinema developed when the sound media system was successful. d) "on*en*s eliver0 e41%osion. "n the fifties, television and long plays (micro recording plus high fidelity) generated and explosion in the distribution of contents. +he entertainment industry reached its most extended influence and new segments of public (children, youths, women, etc.) began to consume targeted discourses. Once in the sixties, from that raw material, pop art articulated mass communication with plastic avant-, making cinema and +> as well as musical consumption a global success. e) In i5i u$% on &$ssi5e: from the eighties up to nowadays we find new constructions of events in the articulation between direct television takes and satellite distribution. Almost differentiated ways of contacting through "nternet going to ,absolute- globali!ation6 a greater part of mass media texts can be reached for a lonely searcher and, in a lot of them, the navigator can interact. "t is our time, and then we have problems to focus on the specific characteristics of the period that partially .ustify this paper. 1umming up, $., #. and e. are periods focused on transforming ways of contact and ). and . are focused on the distribution of contents. "t is true to say that transforming ways of contact, culture transforms inevitably contents, but the opposite is not e/uivalent.
6. FO"USING ON A PERIOD: THE MOMENT OF THE SOUND

As we have said, from the last decades of the $%th &entury to the ;(:s in the '(th& a huge process to transform media contacts started and was successful. >oices, noises of the nature or the sound of musical instruments started to be collected and transmitted by phone, phonograph and radio without traces of their sources. Gothing e/uivalent was possible before. )oreover, our culture did not have the tradition of managing sounds like managing images. 3very history of every type of images or their uses could be related, directly or indirectly to the Altamira &avern and its sophisticated mural pictures. hat can we find similar to that about sounds9 Of course not the tam- tam used by neither a very limited number of cultures nor the mythical group of acusmatics listening behind the curtains of the famous <itagora:s speeches. +o see the si!e and depth of novelty, we can see how the culture processed the beginning of this media in Buenos Aires. +he first transmission by phone in $BIB was public and included a piece of music by a symphonic orchestra. +hat is to say that it was neither a private conversation nor anything similar previous to the ,official- beginning of radio. hen, approximately at the same time, it was possible to record sounds, the first graphic advertisement of phonographs and gramophones, proposed to record voices and sounds of nature noises, and also music but only as a possibility. "n the twenties, forty years after the other media, despite the similar technology, the first radio phonic transmission was an opera from a theatre6 it means that radio did not start as a media to produce and transmit texts but only to transmit texts with a previous cultural life. +hat uncertain way to start did not prevent that in the ;(:s, everything was consolidated. +elephonic system became an interindividual net of conversation. +he phonograph system (gramophone and its following developments, in fact) became an international factory of musical contents, fixing apparently the song format and the ,new- popular genres, like .a!!, bolero, tango, etc. 0adio system became a very big machine to produce and distribute

information, music and fiction in ,real time-. +he world, thought about it and life itself changed deeply. hat happened in the socio discursive life to allow for that huge transformation9 Of course, certain social events were happening with relatively independence from the media and below we will speak about them. But, firstly we shall focus on the internal process of the mediatisation of sound itself. 8irst of all, phone, phonograph and radio are useful to produce, emit and receive sound texts6 however, by no means they are so in all their aspects. 1uperficially, telephone is an ,empty- media, pure contact, used by callers to say something without limits of time, in live exchanges6 on the other extreme, phonograph, successful as a factory and distribution device for music, is a filled media, proposing pure contents and pure reception without discursive exchange. +he place of the radio is inscribed automatically with all its importance this way. 0adio produces and emits multi contents (musical or verbal, informative or fictional) live but, compared to the phone permits the appearance of an individual (famous or anonymous) and with relation to the phonograph it was the most important channel to deliver all recorded music. "t is not exaggerated to see radio like the social preview of "nternet. +he development of these blind media coexisted with a lot of graphic publications that presented, explained and stimulated the use of the new technologies. "n general terms, graphic Meta discourses of sound media included photographs and showed an optimistic point of view about the future (830GJGK35 et alt., '((;). 3ven if the )oment of the sound coexisted with cinema development Dit means a very rich moment regarding imagesApictures referred to phone, radio or phonograph did not add complex representations. Advertising of telephone companies showed people talking on the phone. Articles or advertising about radio*theatre showed portraits of actors, individual or in group, or, more boring, actors reading their part of the play6 no costumes or scenarios were showed. Kiscs records were sold enveloped without images. +he poverty of images in the )eta discourse accompanying the beginning of media of sound did not stop its success. "n fact, we should consider that characteristic as another trace of the abstraction. "f the common aspect of these media is the possibility of isolating sound from it sources, the movement implied an abstraction gesture# something in the age did not re/uire the absolute and impossible presence of the whole traces necessary to build realistic texts. Obviously, it is impossible to describe here all the conse/uences generated by these changes in the social life but it is imperiously necessary to see some of them. +o sum up, the discursive conse/uences of this period, for the first time and to all these media# texts to be listened, live or recorded texts, in conditions to be distributed globally. Among these sounds# the voice. >oice is a part of a body, is essentially individual and resistant to education. 4ike other sounds, a voice mediated (transmitted live or recorded) is not the representation of a body, as an image is, it is not something in the place of another thing, a voice mediated is the same voice, that is to say a semiotic scandal. e are not in front of the representation of a body like a picture or even a photo, but in front of the presentation of a voice# nothing is in the place of anything. +he voice recorded or transmitted is the voice with its strong link with individuality. "n addition, the perception of sound is not external like the perception of images (to see an image it is absolutely necessary that the referent is out of our body), the sound is always in our body, inside our ears without anything e/uivalent to the eyelids. According to that revolution in perception, only after the development of the sound media it is possible to talk about globali!ation in the same sense as today. After the radio and phonograph success the most global texts included the most singular traces# individual

voices, personal ways to play instruments, unrepeatable performances, huge and non controlled mistakes (830GJGK35, $%%@). +he most global texts that have achieved international success like songs of popular genres (.a!!, bolero, and tango) are the most local texts in the sense of ,tango is the music of Buenos Aires- .a!! from Gew Orleans, bolero from &entral America, etc. +he notion of glocal had to be created at that time. +he spatial complexity built in the radio phonic show works analogically showing the complexity of the citi!en life in big cities and globali!ed societies (830GJGK35, $%B%). A sociodiscursive operator (the conductor) presents, coordinates and balances different levels of culture (information, music, science, humor, gourmandi!e, etc.)** "n front of that public performance, the telephone net with the satellite support covers the planet accumulating inter individual, private conversations. &ore aspects of this period are alive. "f we try to understand the characteristics and conse/uences of globali!ation today, knowledge about the moment of the sound is absolutely indispensable. 2ow can we best explain and understand in depth the relationships between individual and universal or global and local aspects9 1imilarities and differences with that moment could describe perfectly our days.
7. ANS,ERING 8UESTIONS AND PROPOSING "ON"LUSIONS

+his round table was organi!ed to discuss two systems ()A0&O1, b)# on the one hand, globalization and territory and, on the other, globalization and communication. " hope that the idea of mass media /uestioning the bounders of each one was enough to explain my opinion that, in some aspects, both systems are deeply related. Anyway, " agree that it is necessary to make efforts to focus their specific characteristics, too. "n that way, what happened in a city like Buenos Aires while the sound media system was growing9 Buenos Aires was changing from a village with a rich cultural life but only one*floor buildings and muddy dirt streets into a big and modern metropolis. "n $%$(, the &entennial of the )ay 0evolution and the first step to its "ndependence, Buenos Aires was facing a multilevel transformation where spatial aspects were specially affected. +he city assumed its position as city*port like an interface between the central countries and a relatively important country, in the border of the hearth, like Argentina. +he transformation of the city affected the internal face of the city (big avenues were he power of government, etc.). But, the transformation took place in the external face too, such as the borders of the city (new neighborhoods following railway extension, the new port assuming definitively the strategic position of a city*port, etc.). But, the transformation was not only developed on the urban surface6 at the same time, airplanes began to cross the sky and, in $%$;, the subway, the first in 4atin America, ran its inaugural trip. Buenos Aires, like a big international metropolis, became a multilevel social space6 from that moment onwards, the only point of view e/uivalent to a renaissance perspective in painting or photographic technology could not represent the general image of urban life. And not only the image and perspective of the city changed but also, walking along its streets changed too (HO13<2). +he representation of the social and graphic space itself in maga!ines rather in than newspapers was transformed as well, maybe as an answer to that process. Portrait and landscape, the main visual genres that passed from painting to photographic pictures were replaced in newspapers by photo-shots. ithin this change, in Buenos Aires newspapers static pictures began to represent movement pictures (remember cinema) and the pages of

newspapers design passed from schematic grid from $%th &entury to the Mondrian s style of the '(thC. 3ven if we insist on being careful about establishing relationships among different series of culture and social phenomena (8ABB0"), taking into account consonance and dissonance between, i.e. urban space and media space may be suggestive and fertile. hy should we discuss the different possibilities to determine periods of globali!ation9 "n the first place, as other papers here are showing, if we agree on the fact that globali!ation today is an important process strongly influencing our social and cultural life, to introduce and discuss the existence of periods must permit us to take distance with respect to novelty. "n general terms, the aforementioned relationship between television and satellite generated a big expansion in the distribution of contents but live +> plus satellite includes changes in the forms of contact (&A04LG). 3mphasi!ing the details of different periods helps us to understand very specific aspects of our own culture. +his way, focusing on live +> conse/uences allows us to relate them to, i.e., the previous existence of live texts on the phone and the radio and, nowadays, the extended on line discursive exchanges through "nternet. 8inally, " want to make a lateral contribution to answer the /uestion# how to make a semiotic methodology to study urban globali!ation9 8rom our point of view, it is evident that it is necessary to combine the semiotic analysis with the historical perspective. 0elationships between semiotics and history of media are conflictive# surely, from semiotics, our knowledge about the complex procedures (narratives, descriptive) to make history is a limitation. But, our work always goes beyond the historical moment. Another topic to be included in the study of globali!ation, mainly if we agree on studying periods, is the notion of style in spite of the fact that we already mentioned 2A=130:s troubles to sustain relationships between stylistic and historical periods. +he notion of style itself is conceptually weak but suggestive, in spite of its use, it has been inconsistent in different authors and moments (1&2A<"0O). But, when we mention a phenomenon like the success of the sound media, where sound texts are built without the images of their sources, or when we observe the texts that go together with the process, we can reali!e that theses are abstract, too. here should we find an explanation outside the abstract tendency present in paintings and graphic designs at the same time9 (830GAGK35, '((;). Obviously, as " have previously said, the relationship among the series themselves is a problem and in some cases we shall need to use very creative metaphors (4M>"*1+0A=11). e cannot eliminate the tension between the
risk of poor description and the risk of unsustainable explanation. +his is our whole .ob.

1umming up, one way Donly one way among the possible ones** to study cities in the context of globali!ation and taking in account the communication level is to consider them as a result of the periods in the history of media, built from the point of view of a stylistic history.

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HosR 4uis 8ernSnde! teaches #emiotics of media in the Kepartment of &ommunication 1ciences, 1ocial 1ciences, =niversity of Buenos Aires and is the head of the 0esearch <ro.ect !etter and image of sound& graphic and .ournalism in front of sound media. 3*mail# .Xfernande!Ys!infonet.com.ar