In the early 1960s top Israeli archaeologists were taken on a state-sponsored mission of rescuing ancient scrolls, supposedly hidden in the Judean Desert caves from looting. One team of archaeologists managed climbing three extremely hard-to-access caves hanging over the cliffs of Nahal Mishmar (Mishmar canyon). In these caves they were amazed to discover unique archaeological treasures, as well as skeletons of 21 children, women and men. A forensic investigation discovered that those individuals died from severe violence, hundreds to thousands of years ago. Who were these people?

This paper is an exploration into sound and music as historical materials. Although it delves momentarily into the parallel and intersecting histories of modern aurality and visual culture, this paper considers different aspects of music composition and performance—sampling, coding, recording, and live instrumentation—as techniques for creating historical knowledge. To demonstrate, this paper will consider a work-in-progress—a musical composition whereby Josef Albers paintings and Anni Albers textile become sonic landscapes.

Does science need to be useful? Are productivity and innovation good goals for academics? Do academics need to be paid? For what would you pay them and how much? And what would happen if you did not pay them? Does anyone need to go to school? Can’t you make do with apprenticeship and perhaps a few private lessons? Seventeenth-century Istanbul may hold some possible answers. For roughly a century, Istanbul produced no texts dealing with the classical sciences of astronomy, theoretical medicine and natural philosophy as hyperinflation wrecked living conditions of the professoriate.