There is No Soundtrack studies sound tactics deployed in experimental media art. It analyses how the aural and visual elements interact and produce meaning, drawing from works by contemporary media artists and collectives including Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Christian Marclay, Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky), Nam June Paik, Tania Tagaq, and Ultra-red. The book argues that experimental media art produces audio-visual relationships that challenge and destabilize the visually-dominated field of art history, art criticism, cinema and media studies, and cultural studies.
Ming-Yuen S. Ma is the co-editor of Resolutions 3: Global Networks of Video (University of Minnesota Press, 2012) which won the Best Edited Volume Award from Society of Cinema and Media Studies in 2014, and he was the co-editor of the Moving Image Review of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. His videos and installations, including the “ReCut Project” (2006), “THIS IS NOT A FOREIGN FILM” (2002), “Xin Lu Project” (1997-present), “Sniff” (1997), “Slanted Vision” (1995), and “Toc Storee” (1992) have shown nationally and internationally in venues ranging for the Museum of Modern Art in New York to a tour bus driving around Los Angeles. He is Professor of Media Studies at Pitzer College, and the Co-chair of Intercollegiate Media Studies at the Claremont Colleges.