SOUND ART
Once as esoteric as any branch of conceptualism, sound art is now making waves in the mainstream of contemporary art.
Sound is a function of time, articulating time and describing our surroundings at a level of subtlety that increases environmental awareness and the skills associated with attention, should we care to exercise our familiarity with the process on a regular basis. All of these observations are germane to the use of sound as a medium, yet they have the quality of a mystery to those who privilege sight and the word. Common sense and the prevailing view both insist that the world is a large space occupied by objects, all possessing varying degrees of value, magnitude and mobility, whereas sound is imprecise and ambiguous.
Visual work has boundaries; a position that is fixed, if only from moment to moment; a capacity to express specific ideas. Sound, on the other hand, may come and go; be perceived at all points in a space, even behind the listener's head or out of sight; be resistant to verbal interpretation, or attachment to any kind of meaning other than the way it alters an environment. Sound work may be the environment itself.
An aspect which is common to both visual and musical arts while seldom directly addressed by either is the composition of dynamic space. While music seems to activate a space in an abstract manner, sculpture creates a palpably present but static and unresponsive space. Sound artists attempt to create environments as a sculptor might, but which are animated with sound.
Art and sound and sound art are quite different creatures. As much as sound art may attempt to distance itself from music, its point of origin is silence and listening. This is also true of music, though there is a great deal of it that could use a refresher course on the subject. Sound used in art as a raw material is more likely to be an idea within a bigger idea.
Artkrush, www.artkrush.com, Sound Art
David Toop, The Art of Noise
Paul Panhuysen, Aesthetical Issues of Sound Art
Christoph Cox, Return to form: on neo-modernist sound art |
