Sound art
Encyclopedia
Sound art is a diverse group of art
practices that considers wide notions of sound
, listening and hearing
as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception
by sound artists.
Like many genres of contemporary art
, sound art is interdisciplinary in nature, or takes on hybrid
forms. Sound art often engages with the subjects of acoustics
, psychoacoustics
, electronics
, noise music
, audio media and technology
(both analog
and digital
), found or environmental sound, explorations of the human body, sculpture
, film
or video
and an ever-expanding set of subjects that are part of the current discourse of contemporary art.
From the Western art historical tradition early examples include Luigi Russolo
's Intonarumori or noise intoners, and subsequent experiments by Dadaists, Surrealists, the Situationist International, and in Fluxus
happenings. Because of the diversity of sound art, there is often debate about whether sound art falls within the domain of either the visual art or experimental music
categories, or both. Other artistic lineages from which sound art emerges are conceptual art
, minimalism
, site-specific art
, sound poetry
, spoken word
, avant-garde
poetry, and experimental theatre
.
Scottish artist Susan Philipsz
's 2010 British Turner Prize
win for her piece Lowlands (overlapping recordings of the artist singing an ancient Scottish lament in three different versions, played back over a loudspeaker system, without any visual component) was seen as an important boost for this relatively new genre (it was the first time a work of sound art won this prestigious prize), and, in winning an art prize, again highlighted the genre's blurred boundaries with other, more visual artforms.
, Connie Beckley, Bill and Mary Buchen, Nicolas Collins
, Sari Dienes and Pauline Oliveros
, Richard Dunlap, Terry Fox
, William Hellermann, Jim Hobart, Richard Lerman
, Les Levine, Joe Lewis, Tom Marioni, Jim Pomeroy
, Alan Scarritt, Carolee Schneeman, Bonnie Sherk, Keith Sonnier
, Norman Tuck, Hannah Wilke
, Yom Gagatzi. The following is an excerpt from the catalogue essay by art historian Don Goddard: "It may be that sound art adheres to curator Hellermann's perception that "hearing is another form of seeing,' that sound has meaning only when its connection with an image is understood... The conjunction of sound and image insists on the engagement of the viewer, forcing participation in real space and concrete, responsive thought rather than illusionary space and thought."
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
practices that considers wide notions of sound
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
, listening and hearing
Hearing (sense)
Hearing is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations through an organ such as the ear. It is one of the traditional five senses...
as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
by sound artists.
Like many genres of contemporary art
Contemporary art
Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...
, sound art is interdisciplinary in nature, or takes on hybrid
Cross-genre
A cross-genre is a genre in fiction that blends themes and elements from two or more different genres.-Examples:*Action comedy *Comedy-drama or dramedy *Comedy-horror...
forms. Sound art often engages with the subjects of acoustics
Acoustics
Acoustics is the interdisciplinary science that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics...
, psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics
Psychoacoustics is the scientific study of sound perception. More specifically, it is the branch of science studying the psychological and physiological responses associated with sound...
, electronics
Electronics
Electronics is the branch of science, engineering and technology that deals with electrical circuits involving active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive interconnection technologies...
, noise music
Noise music
Noise music is a term used to describe varieties of avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, indeterminacy, and repetition in their realization. Noise music can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically...
, audio media and technology
Technology
Technology is the making, usage, and knowledge of tools, machines, techniques, crafts, systems or methods of organization in order to solve a problem or perform a specific function. It can also refer to the collection of such tools, machinery, and procedures. The word technology comes ;...
(both analog
Analog signal
An analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...
and digital
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
), found or environmental sound, explorations of the human body, sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
, film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
or video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
and an ever-expanding set of subjects that are part of the current discourse of contemporary art.
From the Western art historical tradition early examples include Luigi Russolo
Luigi Russolo
Luigi Russolo was an Italian Futurist painter and composer, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises . He is often regarded as one of the first noise music experimental composers with his performances of "noise concerts" in 1913-14 and then again after World War I, notably in Paris in 1921...
's Intonarumori or noise intoners, and subsequent experiments by Dadaists, Surrealists, the Situationist International, and in Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
happenings. Because of the diversity of sound art, there is often debate about whether sound art falls within the domain of either the visual art or experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
categories, or both. Other artistic lineages from which sound art emerges are conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
, minimalism
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
, site-specific art
Site-specific art
Site-specific art is artwork created to exist in a certain place. Typically, the artist takes the location into account while planning and creating the artwork...
, sound poetry
Sound poetry
Sound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
, spoken word
Spoken word
Spoken word is a form of poetry that often uses alliterated prose or verse and occasionally uses metered verse to express social commentary. Traditionally it is in the first person, is from the poet’s point of view and is themed in current events....
, avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
poetry, and experimental theatre
Experimental theatre
Experimental theatre is a general term for various movements in Western theatre that began in the late 19th century as a retraction against the dominant vent governing the writing and production of dramatical menstrophy, and age in particular. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream...
.
Scottish artist Susan Philipsz
Susan Philipsz
Susan Philipsz is a Scottish artist who won the 2010 Turner Prize. In her youth, she sang with her sisters in a Catholic church choir in Maryhill. She studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee from 1989–1993 and then at the University of Ulster in Belfast in 1993-4. She was a...
's 2010 British Turner Prize
Turner Prize
The Turner Prize, named after the painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist under the age of 50. Awarding the prize is organised by the Tate gallery and staged at Tate Britain. Since its beginnings in 1984 it has become the United Kingdom's most publicised...
win for her piece Lowlands (overlapping recordings of the artist singing an ancient Scottish lament in three different versions, played back over a loudspeaker system, without any visual component) was seen as an important boost for this relatively new genre (it was the first time a work of sound art won this prestigious prize), and, in winning an art prize, again highlighted the genre's blurred boundaries with other, more visual artforms.
Origin of the term in the United States
The earliest documented use of the term in the U.S. is from a catalogue for a show called "Sound/Art" at The Sculpture Center in New York City, curated by William Hellerman in 1983. The show was sponsored by "The SoundArt Foundation," which Hellerman founded in 1982. The artists featured in the show were as follows: Vito AcconciVito Acconci
Vito Hannibal Acconci is a Bronx, New York-born, Brooklyn-based designer, landscape architect, performance and installation artist.-Education:...
, Connie Beckley, Bill and Mary Buchen, Nicolas Collins
Nicolas Collins
Nicolas Collins is a composer of mostly electronic music and former student of Alvin Lucier. He received a B.A. and M.A...
, Sari Dienes and Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros
Pauline Oliveros is an American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music....
, Richard Dunlap, Terry Fox
Terry Fox (artist)
Terry Fox was an American video, conceptual, sound, and performance artist.-Biography:Fox was born in Seattle, Washington. At the age of seventeen, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, later referencing the cycles of illness and wellness in several artworks...
, William Hellermann, Jim Hobart, Richard Lerman
Richard Lerman
Richard Lerman is a composer and sound artist whose, "work...centers around his custom-made contact microphones of unusually small size," including, "piezo disks and other transducers". He studied with Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma, and David Tudor.He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Sound Art ...
, Les Levine, Joe Lewis, Tom Marioni, Jim Pomeroy
Jim Pomeroy (artist)
James C. Pomeroy was an American artist whose practice spanned a variety of media including performance art, sound art, photography, installation art, sculpture, and video art.-Career:...
, Alan Scarritt, Carolee Schneeman, Bonnie Sherk, Keith Sonnier
Keith Sonnier
Keith Sonnier is a Postminimalist, performance, video and light artist. Sonnier was one of the first artists to use light in sculpture in the 1960s, and has been one of the most successful with this technique...
, Norman Tuck, Hannah Wilke
Hannah Wilke
Hannah Wilke was an American painter, sculptor, photographer, video artist and performance artist.-Biography:...
, Yom Gagatzi. The following is an excerpt from the catalogue essay by art historian Don Goddard: "It may be that sound art adheres to curator Hellermann's perception that "hearing is another form of seeing,' that sound has meaning only when its connection with an image is understood... The conjunction of sound and image insists on the engagement of the viewer, forcing participation in real space and concrete, responsive thought rather than illusionary space and thought."
See also
- List of topics related to Sound Art
- Acoustic ecologyAcoustic ecologyAcoustic ecology, sometimes called ecoacoustics or soundscape studies, is the relationship, mediated through sound, between living beings and their environment. Acoustic ecology studies started in the late 1960s with R. Murray Schafer and his team at Simon Fraser University as part of the World...
- art work
- AudiumAudium (theater)Audium is a unique sound art phenomenon that has been presented weekly in San Francisco since 1967. Audium is a creation of composer Stan Shaff that is performed on original equipment designed by Doug McEachern...
- Electronic musicElectronic musicElectronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
- FluxusFluxusFluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
- Installation artInstallation artInstallation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
- IntermediaIntermediaIntermedia was a concept employed in the mid-sixties by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres that became prevalent in the 1960s. Thus, the areas such as those between drawing and poetry, or between painting...
- NIME
- Noise MusicNoise musicNoise music is a term used to describe varieties of avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, indeterminacy, and repetition in their realization. Noise music can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically...
- Performance artPerformance artIn art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...
- Radio artRadio artRadio art refers to the use of radio for art. "Radio Art implies that the artist who works in, and with, radio is not necessarily a trained DJ, programmer, producer, engineer, or personality, but one who uses sound to make art and seeks ways to transit it through radio as art...
- SonificationSonificationSonification, a form of auditory display, is the use of non-speech audio to convey information or perceptualize data. Auditory perception has high temporal and pressure resolution, which opens up possibilities for it as an alternative or complement to visualization techniques.For example, the...
- Sound poetrySound poetrySound poetry is an artistic form bridging between literary and musical composition, in which the phonetic aspects of human speech are foregrounded instead of more conventional semantic and syntactic values; "verse without words"...
- Sound sculptureSound sculptureSound sculpture is an intermedia and time based art form in which sculpture or any kind of art object produces sound, or the reverse...
- SoundscapeSoundscapeA soundscape is a sound or combination of sounds that forms or arises from an immersive environment. The study of soundscape is the subject of acoustic ecology...
- Visual musicVisual musicVisual music, sometimes called "colour music," refers to the use of musical structures in visual imagery, which can also include silent films or silent Lumia work. It also refers to methods or devices which can translate sounds or music into a related visual presentation...
Sources and further reading
- Attali, JacquesJacques AttaliJacques Attali is a French economist, writer and senior civil servant.Former adviser to President François Mitterrand and first president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, he founded the non-profit organization PlaNet Finance and was nominated President of the Commission for...
. 1985. Noise: The Political Economy of MusicNoise: The Political Economy of MusicNoise: The Political Economy of Music is a non-fiction book written by French economist and scholar, Jacques Attali.Attali's essential argument in Noise: The Political Economy of Music is that music, as a cultural form, is intimately tied up in the mode of production in any given society. For...
, translated by Brian MassumiBrian MassumiBrian Massumi is a Canadian political philosopher and social theorist. Massumi's research spans the fields of art, architecture, political theory, cultural studies and philosophy. He received his Ph.D in French Literature from Yale University in 1987...
, foreword by Fredric JamesonFredric JamesonFredric Jameson is an American literary critic and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends—he once described postmodernism as the spatialization of culture under the pressure of organized capitalism...
, afterword by Susan McClarySusan McClarySusan McClary is a musicologist associated with the "New Musicology". Noted for her work combining musicology and a feminist music criticism, McClary is Professor of Musicology at Case Western Reserve University.-Biography:...
. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-1286-2 (cloth) ISBN 0-8166-1287-0 (pbk.) - Bandt, Ros. 2001. Sound Sculpture: Intersections in Sound and Sculpture in Australian Artworks. Sydney: Craftsman House. ISBN 1-877004-02-2.
- Cage, JohnJohn CageJohn Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
. 1961. "Silence: Lectures and Writings". Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. (Paperbak reprint edition 1973, ISBN ISBN 0819560286) - Cox, Christoph. 2003. "Return to Form: Christoph Cox on Neo-modernist Sound Art—Sound—Column." Artforum (November): [pages].
- Cox, Christoph. 2009. "Sound Art and the Sonic Unconscious". Organised Sound 14, no. 1:19–26.
- Cox, Christoph. 2011. "Beyond Representation and Signification: Toward a Sonic Materialism". Journal of Visual Culture 10, no. 2:145-161.
- Cox, Christoph, and Daniel Warner (eds.). 2004. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-1615-5.
- Drobnick, Jim (ed.). 2004. Aural Cultures. Toronto: YYZ Books; Banff: Walter Phillips Gallery Editions. ISBN 0-920397-80-8.
- Hegarty, Paul. 2007. Noise MusicNoise musicNoise music is a term used to describe varieties of avant-garde music and sound art that may use elements such as cacophony, dissonance, atonality, noise, indeterminacy, and repetition in their realization. Noise music can feature distortion, various types of acoustically or electronically...
: A History. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-1726-8 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-8264-1727-5 (pbk) - Hellerman, William, and Don Goddard. 1983. Catalogue for "Sound/Art" at The Sculpture Center, New York City, May 1–30, 1983 and BACA/DCC Gallery June 1–30, 1983.
- Kahn, DouglasDouglas KahnDouglas Kahn is Professor of Media and Innovation at the , at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He was the Founding Director of Technocultural Studies and is Professor Emeritus in Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Davis. Kahn is known primarily for his...
. 2001. Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Cambridge: MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-61172-4 - Kim-Cohen, Seth. 2009. In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art. New York: Continuum. ISBN 978-0-8264-2971-1
- LaBelle, Brandon. 2006. Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. New York and London: The Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-1844-9 (cloth) ISBN 0-8264-1845-7 (pbk)
- Lander, Dan, and Micah Lexier (eds.). 1990. Sound by Artists. Toronto: Art Metropole/Walter Phillips Gallery.
- Licht, Alan. 2007. Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories (with accompanying compact disc recording). New York: Rizzoli International Publications. ISBN 0-8478-2969-3
- Lucier, AlvinAlvin LucierAlvin Lucier is an American composer of experimental music and sound installations that explore acoustic phenomena and auditory perception. A long-time music professor at Wesleyan University, Lucier was a member of the influential Sonic Arts Union, which included Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and...
, and Douglas Simon. 1980. Chambers. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 0-8195-5042-6. - Nechvatal, JosephJoseph NechvatalJoseph Nechvatal is a post-conceptual art digital artist and art theoretician who creates computer-assisted paintings and computer animations, often using custom-created computer viruses.-Life and work:Joseph Nechvatal was born in Chicago...
. 2000. "Towards a Sound Ecstatic Electronica". The Thing. - Oliveros, Pauline. 1984. Software for People. Baltimore: Smith Publications. ISBN 0-914162-59-4 (cloth) ISBN 0-914162-60-8 (pbk)
- Paik, Nam June. 1963. "Post Music Manifesto," Videa N Videology. Syracuse, New York: Everson Museum of Art.
- Peer, René van. 1993. Interviews with Sound Artists. Eindhoven: Het ApollohuisHet ApollohuisHet Apollohuis was a space for experimental music and visual arts, "focused in particular on...sound art, new music, performance art and the new media," founded in Eindhoven, Netherlands, by Remko Scha and Paul Panhuysen in a former 19th century cigar factory in 1980...
. - Schafer, R. Murray. 1977. The Soundscape. Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books. ISBN 0-89281-455-1
- Schulz, Berndt (ed.). 2002. Resonanzen: Aspekte der Klangkunst. Heidelberg: Kehrer. ISBN 3-933257-86-7. (Parallel text in German and English)
- Toop, David. 2004. Haunted Weather: Music, Silence, and Memory. London: Serpent's Tail. ISBN 1-85242-812-0 (cloth), ISBN 1-85242-789-2 (pbk.)
- Valbonesi, Ilari. A.A.A.A.A.A.A. Cercasi Sound Art. ARTE E CRITICA, ISSUE 64, (2010)
- Wilson, Dan. 2011. "Sonics in the Wildernesses - A Justification." The Brooklyn Rail (April)
- Wishart, Trevor. 1996. On Sonic Art, new and revised edition, edited by Simon Emmerson (with accompanying compact disc recording). Contemporary Music Studies 12. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. ISBN 3-7186-5846-1 (cloth) ISBN 3-7186-5847-X (pbk.) ISBN 3-7186-5848-8 (CD recording)
External links
- UBUWEB - Audio Art examples to Download
- http://www.ubu.com/sound/tellus.htmlmp3 audio archive of Tellus Audio Cassette MagazineTellus Audio Cassette MagazineLaunched from the Lower East Side, Manhattan, in 1983 as a subscription only bimonthly publication, the Tellus cassette series took full advantage of the popular cassette medium to promote cutting-edge downtown music, documenting the New York scene and advancing experimental composers of the time...
] - Sound Art Museum (Rome, Italy)