The Sound of Tomorrow

When Bebe Barron and her husband Louis produced the soundtrack to Forbidden Planet in 1956, they were not allowed to call it “music.” The producers of the science fiction film only granted the Barrons credits for creating “electronic tonalities.” In her documentary Sisters with Transistors, Lisa Rovner shows how influential these tonalities were to become: The female pioneers of electronic music shaped the sound signature of modernity as such. Heiko Hoffmann illustrates their ubiquity in a selection of short videos, commercials and sound logos that he curated. Together, Rovner and Hoffmann discuss examples of how the inventive spirit of Daphne Oram, Wendy Carlos, Suzanne Ciani and other musicians was disseminated via mass media and how The Sound of Tomorrow became a natural part of collective imaginary worlds.