Sound Art

Concepts and Practices

Thom Holmes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781317224822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Sound Art offers the first comprehensive introduction to sound art written for undergraduate students.

Bridging and blending aspects of the visual and sonic arts, modern sound art first emerged in the early 20th century and has grown into a thriving and varied field. In 13 thematic chapters, this book enables students to clearly grasp both the concepts behind this unique area of art, and its history and practice. Each chapter begins with an exploration of key ideas and theories, followed by an in-depth discussion of selected relevant works, both classic and current.

Drawing on a broad, diverse range of examples, and firmly interdisciplinary, this book will be essential reading for anyone studying or teaching the theory, history, appreciation, or practice of sound art.

1Launching a Study of Sound Art

DOI: 10.4324/9781315623047-1

sound art is any artwork that makes use of the idea of sound, the experience or perception of sound, the physical effect of sound, or the residual traces of sonic activity as its primary material and does not fit squarely within the confines and traditions of existing artistic genres.

Is there a unifying idea behind sound art? It’s not the materials at hand—the paint, the audio recording, or the sculptural construction. It is something else again, something unique. Sound art is any artwork that makes use of the idea of sound, the experience or perception of sound, the physical effect of sound, or the residual traces of sonic activity as its primary material, and does not fit squarely within the confines and traditions of existing artistic genres (e.g., painting, sculpture, recorded or performed music, film scoring, music for dance and theater productions). It is the latter distinction—overlap with the other arts—that usually gets muddled in the process of definition.

The Tate Modern Museum in London offers this simple definition of sound art: “Art about sound, using sound both as its medium and as its subject.”¹ We extend this by saying that the very idea of sound might be enough to inspire a work of sound art, produced without using sound directly, but only as a concept or visual representation.

Art does not exist in a vacuum and is always enveloped by the environment and the sounds of the space where it is located. But just because art exists in a world of ambient sound does not make it sound art. Art evokes many other things as well, including feeling and thought. Sound art might be considered a continuation of what Duchamp once called “non-retinal” art, or an art of ideas that does not merely cater to the eye. Another term for this is conceptual art. Sound, when presented as the subject of art, brings more to art than the mere dimension of sound waves. Sound effectively connects the visual and the audible, eliciting comparisons, sustenance, contrasts, and other meanings. Rather than excluding things by definition, sound art embraces them. This also means that the term sound art is broad, yet connected by combining art and sound in new ways that communicate significance and wouldn’t be possible by art or sound alone.

Not everyone agrees that we need the term sound art. Composer, performer, and installation artist Max Neuhaus (1939–2009) remarked in 2000, “I think we need to question whether or not ‘Sound Art’ constitutes a new art form.”² Does it reveal a common thread to all previously made works labeled as sound art? If that thread is “sound,” what kind of sound? This is the beginning of a circular argument that feeds upon itself and never quite gets answered. Neuhaus argued that having a finer distinction than merely “sound” would be more meaningful and not reduce the work to the least common denominator for the purposes of “promotion.” One of these distinctions is familiar to us: music. It was perhaps Neuhaus’ experience as a percussionist of modern music that flavored his skepticism over using the term sound art. But for a broadening number of people, like it or not, the term seems to be the most commonly used label for art that also produces sound. Audio scholar Douglas Kahn used the term “audio art” to distinguish “sound” from audio signals that are used in art.³ Composer and educator Trevor Wishart embraced a more liberal definition of sound and music in his books On Sonic Art and Audible Design, wherein he argues that the common means for evaluating music through notation, pitch, and duration fail to confront what he calls “experientially verifiable criteria” for evaluating sound.⁴ By broadening his composing practices to embrace all sonic phenomenon, he opens the door to more possibilities.

Origins of the Term “Sound Art”

The term “sound art” has more recent origins than the actual practice of sound art. There are also equivalent terms in German and French, although excitement over the term seems to have originated in the United States. Here are some cases for the creation of the term:

• 1974, Something Else Yearbook included the words “sound art” along with several others on the cover of one of its editions regarding Fluxus artists.⁵
• 1979, curator Barbara London organized the exhibit “Sound Art” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, June 25 to August 5, 1979.⁶
• 1982, William Hellerman founds The SoundArt Foundation in New York.
• 1983, Sound/Art, an exhibition of works organized by William Hellerman, is at the SculptureCenter in Long Island City, Queens (according to Mary Ceruti, chief curator at the SculptureCenter).⁷
• L’art sonore is the French term for sound art. The term can also be interpreted as “the art of sound,” and in this context has numerous usages outside of the scope of this book. However, in French literature, l’art sonore begins to have our musical meaning and was used sparingly, not universally, as early as 1985 in association with IRCAM projects.⁸
• 1999, Klangkunst, the German term for “sound art,” becomes familiar. The term was used occasionally to refer to the art of radio broadcasting as well as its limitations in fidelity.⁹,¹⁰ This had an early use in 1938 in relation to a view that language could be viewed as sound art.¹¹ Klangkunst was famously used later in 1999 as the subject of a book by Helga de La Motte-Haber, Klangkunst: tönende Objekte und klingende Räume (Sound: sounding objects and sounding spaces).¹² After that, references to klangkunst occur regularly in German literature in relation to sound art.

The Use of Sound in Art

In the art world, sound may be considered a material like any other—canvas, paint, wood screws, wire, or whatever else the artist incorporates in a work. Sound is integrated in some fashion into the theme of the art. At one end of this scale of integration there are works that incorporate sound as part of a larger piece. At the other end are works that use sound more purely, in the abstract, with no strings attached. Along this spectrum is endless variety, created by artists whose imaginations are expressed to a greater or lesser extent in sound.

Music and Sound Art

The line between sound art and music is often a fuzzy one. It is the overlap between music and sound art that is perhaps the most muddled. But there is a simple guiding principle to inform our separation of the two.

Music is sound, but not all music is sound art. Understanding music’s role in sound art can bring clarity to an otherwise confusing situation. Music is fundamentally about organizing sound in time. In the field of ethnomusicology, music is among the most social of the arts, often bringing people together to perform and to listen. Music can be private, as with the singing of a lullaby to a baby, an intimate function meant to soothe a restless infant. Music exists for its own cultural reasons, and they are not always the same as when it is used in sound art. There are times, in fact, when music is used in sound art, and it has an entirely different purpose and effect than the same music used in a traditional music listening situation. Situation is important. Music, when presented in sound art, is essentially taken out of its familiar context of the stage or listening room and made to function in an entirely different way.

Another way of expressing this is to say that music has cultural baggage. It brings this realization with it to the situation, loaded with meaning, for whatever purpose the artist had in mind.

If music is about organizing sound in time, sound art is also about organizing sound in space. This distinction allows us to more clearly contrast musical works (e.g., those presented on a stage or as a recording) with sound works that exist outside of the normal spatial boundaries of music. In fact, if you open up the audio geography of a space as an important aspect of sound art, you must begin to consider many aspects of sound hitherto underappreciated and understudied in the world of music. There are the basic engineering challenges of presenting sound in a specific physical space. Beyond that, however, the concept of space is a fluid one that goes beyond the technical. There are social spaces in which people interact, spaces of the body (e.g., inside the body), and spaces that “span multiple times and places, whether real, virtual, or imaginary.”¹³ In recognizing the importance of space, we also acknowledge the categorical differences between public and private, internal and external spaces, and the sound properties that distinguish them. The acoustics of a small room or even the inside of the human body are vastly different than those of a museum atrium or outdoor patio. In the world of sound art, the space usually dictates the properties of the sound generating device designed to go there.

Figure 1.1 is an attempt to situate the worlds of music and sound art within the greater universe of art in general.

Figure 1.1Sound art exists within the world of art and can include music. Sound art may also include nonmusical sounds. All of which is presented as a work of art.

Source: Stephan Moore.

Five Questions to Ask About Sound Art

What was the artist trying to accomplish by including sound in a work of art? Why did the artist think of putting it there? These are some good starting questions. We can begin with the broadest ideas. If you want to immerse yourself mindfully into an experience of sound ...