Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art
Abstract
Background Noise follows the development of sound as an artistic medium and illustrates how sound is put to use within modes of composition, installation, and performance. While chronological in its structure, Brandon LaBelle’s book is informed by spatial thinking - weaving architecture, environments, and the specifics of location into the work of sound, with the aim of formulating an expansive history and understanding of sound art.
At its center the book presupposes an intrinsic relation between sound and its location, galvanizing acoustics, sound phenomena, and the environmental with the tensions inherent in what LaBelle identifies as sound’s relational dynamic. For the author, this is embedded within sound’s tendency to become public expressed in its ability to travel distances, foster cultural expression, and define spaces while being radically flexible.
This second expanded edition includes new chapter about the future of sound art, revisions to the text as well as a new preface by Brandon LaBelle. Intersecting material analysis with theoretical frameworks spanning art and architectural theory, performance studies, and media theory, Background Noise makes the case that sound art should be at the core of contemporary culture.
... ESTOA 26 / Vol 13 / 2024 e - ISSN: 1390-9274 ISSN: 1390 To move from making a musical object or work to the construction of environmentally and architecturally active "music" entails a compositional and performative shift, for such work incorporates the complexity of acoustical events informed by the presence of a broader set of terms (LaBelle, 2015). ...
... As LaBelle (2015) says, sound artists tried to broaden the understanding of music and criticize its traditional approach by introducing contextual sounds. John Cage's iconic 4'33'' and many later sound works represent a shift from traditional music (harmony, melody, and rhythm) to sound (as an environmental phenomenon) (LaBelle, 2015). Simultaneously, situated compositions and spatial music composers began to use "space as a direct musical parameter" (Lennox, 2009, p. 4). ...
... Young, in his work The Magenta Light, activated the acoustic properties of a building through the loud reproduction of several tuned frequencies to make them part of the composition (LaBelle, 2015). In other words, the frequencies were composed or designed by Young to interact with the installation's physical space to enhance its acoustic qualities and, therefore, to make them more evident. ...
Classical composers such as Wagner, Mahler, Handel, and Debussy, among others, noticed that a space’s acoustic qualities affected their compositions, so they made intuitive arrangements to their performances to suit the space. Some contemporary musicians, on the other hand, incorporate those sonic characteristics as part of their composition. Pauline Oliveros, John Butcher, and Paul Bavister are some composers who produce site-specific works, compositions that include the site’s sound as part of their sound works. This project proposes site stimulation as a methodology to extract Basilica del Voto Nacional’s reverberation, a neo-gothic church in Quito, Ecuador, to produce a site-specific sound work: Composition for a Jazz Quartet and for a Basilica. This research aims not only to use spatial sonic qualities for music composition but also to propose a friendly, day-to-day activity, such as listening to music, as a learning method to acknowledge spatial sound phenomena.
... Este trabalho trata da obra de Bernhard Leitner e busca entender como ela representa uma forma de instalação sonora espacial que combina características da arte, física e arquitetura. Trata-se de um texto com métodos exploratório, descritivo e de revisão bibliográfica a partir de autores como Leitner (1978), LaBelle (2006) e Blesser e Salter (2007). A discussão se justifica pela necessidade de investigar sua produção artística em virtude de seu pioneirismo e reconhecimento mundial. ...
... This text discusses the artwork of Bernhard Leitner and aims to understand how it represents a type of spatial sound installation that combines characteristics of art, physics and architecture. This is a text with exploratory, descriptive and bibliographic review methods based on authors such as Leitner (1978), LaBelle (2006) and Blesser and Salter (2007). The discussion is justified by the need to investigate his artistic production because of his pioneer status and worldwide recognition. ...
... A fundamentação teórica se baseia em Leitner (1978), LaBelle (2006) e Blesser e Salter (2007), ainda que outros autores também sejam citados. É apresentada uma revisão bibliográfica sobre o artista e suas obras, com foco nas instalações sonoras. ...
... No final da década de 1930 e ao longo da de 1940, John Cage criou obras que quebraram simbolicamente a ligação entre compositor e intérprete, substituindo a partitura por uma forma processual. Isto implicou uma rutura, (1), não só na obra musical por si só, com a alteração da melodia e harmonia para uma obra aberta -em contraste com uma partitura cheia de informação musical, uma obra aberta é caracterizada por um tipo de notação aberta (Magnusson, 2019) -, onde a escrita musical é substituída por um processo que visa criar situações que irão produzir música (LaBelle, 2006). (2), mas também introduziu uma mudança estética significativa, sob o ponto de vista do intérprete/instrumentista, porque este novo estilo performativo requeria diversas outras competências que iam para além da execução instrumental. ...
... 4´33" de Cage, funciona como um encontro com hora marcada para apreciar e executar um processo sonora, no qual, pela primeira vez na história da música, o intérprete musical entra em palco sem ter de tocar uma única nota musical (Katschthaler, 2015). Existe ainda uma rutura com a ideia preconcebida de que o público de desloca a um concerto exclusivamente para ouvir uma performance instrumental (LaBelle, 2006). Consequentemente, os membros do público que estavam rotinados a frequentar uma sala de concerto para apreciar melodias e harmonias produzidas por um ou mais instrumentos, viram-se eles próprios parte do processo performativo por intermédio da sua reação sonora -ou falta dela -, tudo isto em paralelo com o seu papel normal enquanto membros do público. ...
... Igualmente, o público deixou de ter um papel exclusivamente passivo e as suas interações tornaram-se parte da performance. Usando uma vez mais a obra 4´33´´ como exemplo, verificamos que o público se converte num agente performativo produtor de som e de componentes visuais através das suas reações (LaBelle, 2006). Por outras palavras, o público passa a ter influência direta na performance. ...
https://repositorioaberto.uab.pt/handle/10400.2/14555
A música e a tecnologia têm experienciado, desde há séculos, uma coabitação e um desenvolvimento mútuo e constante na nossa sociedade, o qual tem possibilitado aos músicos instrumentistas, não só a oportunidade de evoluírem os seus instrumentos, como também a sua performance. No que concerne à música em específico, Irving Godt (2005) afirma que não há conhecimento de sociedade alguma que tenha existido, ou que exista, sem música. Tal afirmação espelha bem a importância desta nas sociedades, desempenhando um papel de relevância sobre vários aspetos, sejam eles de cariz artístico, festivo, fúnebre, ou noutros enquadramentos. Na realidade, a música e a tecnologia vivem numa simbiose e com uma dinâmica particular, na qual a tecnologia fornece meios para que a música evolua, mas, por sua vez, a música também vai criando necessidades e fomentando o desenvolvimento tecnológico. Inerentemente a esta evolução conjunta e consoante os espaços temporais em que acontecem, o papel dos músicos vai-se alterando espontaneamente, por adaptação. É uma destas alterações, num destes timings, que é aqui investigada, nomeadamente a influência que a média-arte digital exerceu/exerce na música, sob o ponto de vista do músico instrumentista erudito de tradição ocidental escrita e, em particular, o ponto de vista do próprio autor enquanto clarinetista. Este, que vinha já observando ampliações nas suas responsabilidades enquanto intérprete - mais propriamente por intermédio de adições cénicas, físicas, acústicas, entre outras – viu-as serem aumentadas de forma mais acentuada através da junção com os canais média digitais. Sumariando, o presente documento é o resultado investigativo da forma e das implicações que este desenvolvimento relacional trouxe aos instrumentistas. Para o efeito, foi observada e identificada a performance musical instrumental tradicional, a sua evolução mediante diversos pontos de vista entre os agentes envolvidos, a evolução notacional, a evolução conceptual, a adição tecnológica, entre outros aspetos, com o objetivo de identificar e diferenciar influências. Foram também elaborados três artefactos que explorassem ambas as áreas – média-arte digital e música –, aproveitando a formação e experiência profissional do autor enquanto instrumentista e como forma geradora de dados para investigação proposta.
... The concept of space has changed in the last century. In social sciences and humanities, the abstract and geometric space has become social space (Eisenberg, 2015); in music the space has brought time as the main focus of composition (Pardo, 2017); in the fine arts through the development of conceptual art, performance and land-art have revalued the context as the main basis of art work (Rogers, 2013); and in architecture where the static space of the building becomes dynamic (LaBelle, 2006). The present research and the series of artworks "Resonant Spaces" are presented as a resignification, from subjectivity, performance and body, to the symbolic, affective and representational apparatus of architecture and, finally, to our society. ...
... Leitner presents a series of spaces like sculptures of sound built from listening. His objective is to draw acoustic dynamics to create the sculptural experience of sound (Labelle, 2006). They are sculptures in movement that work in sync with the movement of the listener. ...
From the interaction between sound and space, the dimension of soundspace emerges. This research project and its series of artworks focuses on the aesthetic, and social aspects of soundspace as a means to create alternative and subjective narratives, to re-signify and deconstruct the memory of space and the architecture that sustains it. The paper revise the concepts of space and sound in architecture, social sciences and sonic arts of the 20th century, trying to create a link between these diverse practices and theories. Understanding that a major shift in all this disciplines occurred when sound and space coalesce. "Resonant Spaces" takes this tradition an applies to a series of art pieces.
... LaBelle argues that sound dramaturgy involves the use of sound as a narrative tool that can convey meaning, emotion, and atmosphere in ways that dialogue and visual elements alone cannot. In this view, sound operates as a language with its own syntax and semantics, capable of driving a narrative forward, suggesting psychological states, or evoking specific cultural or historical contexts (LaBelle, 2006). Chion suggests that sound dramaturgy is concerned with how sound defines and manipulates space within a performance (Chion, 1994). ...
Sound Dramaturgies: repoliticizing performance – The paper explores the potential of sound to repoliticize theatre and performance. By examining the activity and dramaturgical practices of the multimedia art collective Medea Electronique (Greece), it highlights contradictions of contemporary art, particularly the continuous transition from ‘everything is political’ to ‘no, not everything is political’ and vice versa. From a post-Brechtian perspective, the political function of art lies in preserving the diverse sensibilities at the core of art’s autonomy. This entails avoiding that art be reduced to a post-political gesture or aligning it too closely with everyday aestheticized experiences.
Keywords: Sound Art; Dramaturgy; Performance; Installation; Digital Art
... This crucial turning point in the history of art is encapsulated by the avant-garde movement of the early 20 th century. Luigi Russolo, an Italian futurist artist, composer, and the author of the groundbreaking manifesto "The Art of Noises", played a transformative role [5]. Russolo's manifesto advocated for the inclusion of everyday sounds, or "noises", into music, challenging conventional notions of harmony and melody. ...
... Tais fatores apontam para o modo como, em determinado domínio discursivo, tornou-se possível pensar em uma estética exclusivamente auditiva a partir da posterior manipulação dos elementos sonoros para fins composicionais. A arqueologia do som proposta por Sterne (2003) nos apresenta algumas das condições históricas de possibilidade que permitiram o desenvolvimento das tradições artísticas ligadas à eletroacústica ou mesmo, mais recentemente, às artes sonoras -no qual o domínio do som se mantém como elemento norteador (LICHT, 2009(LICHT, , 2019LABELLE, 2015, KAHN, 2006. A despeito da diferença que marca tais campos artísticos e acadêmicos, pensamos que o trabalho de Sterne apresenta reflexões pertinentes para apontarmos problemáticas comuns às abordagens ontológicas materialistas sobre o som, como veremos a seguir. ...
Este artigo propõe uma análise crítica às premissas que fundamentam teorias ontológicas materialistas recentes vinculadas ao campo dos estudos do som, buscando entendê-las pela via de uma dimensão ética-auditiva. Foram escolhidos os textos de Christoph Cox e Salomé Voegelin como objetos iniciais de estudo. Primeiramente, apresentamos alguns trabalhos que investigam o som e a escuta a partir de seus elementos histórico-sociais. Posteriormente, analisamos argumentos teóricos representativos que marcam as abordagens selecionadas. Comparamos os enunciados dos autores a uma ilustração de peças e traços sonoros característicos. A fim de compreendermos os limites e problemáticas das abordagens, buscamos situá-las por meio das noções foucaultianas de prática discursiva e modalidade enunciativa.
... However, each of these studies and topics is found quite broad researched fields as their own which are hard refer them in here. Asides, the books of Cox & Warner (2004), Blesser & Salter (2007), LaBelle (2006, , Lefebvre (1991;, Attali (1985), McLuhan (1962), Molles (1990) , Halberstam, (2011) were quite affected on while building a broad understanding for sound cultures, experiences of aural architecture, and politics of noise, everyday life, reductionism, and failures; even though they are not mentioned and cited in this thesis. ...
This thesis questions the potential use of listening practices for spatial explorations in architecture. For this reason, listening is considered a perceptual/sense-making cognitive experience. While the intended investigation is dedicated to the spatial experience of listening, background noise conception is taken as the fundamental notion for problematizing spatial experience in the context of everyday life. The required cognitive approach for this exploration is grounded on the Enacted Mind Thesis as a research method to reach perceptual experiences. Within these considerations, this study aims to intersect the conceptual extensions of enactive account spatial experience in listening to background noise and the obtained results from the conducted case study experiment for the listening experience. One of the reasons is to propose an approach to speculate architectural discourses on the ground of spatial experience. Because, although the cognitive relationship between body and environment is such a fundamental matter for architecture, the given value for the spatial experience’s ambiguous plurality in architecture practices and studies is always open for discussion. However, this study does not interest in discussing these discourses. Instead, referring the background noise conception to this ambiguous side of the experience holds any expected speculations for architectural discourses on the conceptual level. On the other hand, it proposes a research method for reaching the spatial experience of listening to a noisy urban environment, it questions the potentials of the method for revalinf the plurality, instead of politicizing the urban experience.
... environment(LaBelle, 2006). For a song-and-dance sequence, soundscape includes the sound of the entire orchestra, including vocals, instruments, beatbox, adlibs, chorus and others. ...
Narrative construction in contemporary Bollywood has transcended conventional linguistic and visual boundaries due to the profound impact of music and choreography. The two artistic expressions are not mere embellishments but essential elements that breathe life into characters. Drawing from the perspective of choreomusical exchanges in Hindi film song-and-dance sequences, this article focuses on Khalibali song from the 2018 period drama Padmaavat as a quintessential case study to elucidate the precise role of music and dance in delineating the nefarious attributes characterising the villain, Alauddin Khilji. Conducting a psycho-semiotic analysis, this article embarks on an intricate exploration of how lyrics, soundscape and choreography explicitly articulate Khilji's inner turmoil-driven by an insatiable thirst for power and lust-enriching the complexity of his character. The article reveals how contemporary Bollywood filmmakers skilfully orchestrate the 'musicalisation' and 'dancification' of evilness, offering a comprehensive understanding of character development within the cinematic milieu.
... Leitner presenta una serie de espacios como esculturas de sonido construidas a partir de la escucha. Su objetivo es dibujar una dinámica acústica para crear la experiencia escultural del sonido (Labelle, 2006). Son esculturas en movimiento que funcionan en sincronía con el movimiento del oyente. ...
Desde la interacción entre el sonido y el espacio emerge la dimensión del espacio sonoro. Esta investigación y su serie de obras artísticas se centran en la dimensión estética, política y social del espacio sonoro como me-dio para construir narrativas alternativas y subjetivas, y resignificar, subvertir y deconstruir la memoria del es-pacio y la arquitectura misma que la sostiene. Se re vi-san los conceptos de espacio y sonido en la arquitectura, las ciencias sociales y las artes sonoras del siglo XX, tratando de crear un vínculo entre estas teorías y prácticas diversas, en el entendido de que una transformación importante en estas disciplinas sucede cuando el sonido y el espacio se encuentran. A partir de esta revisión se proponen las herramientas metodológicas de la investigación: composiciones, instalaciones y performances de espacio sonoro, que se utilizan para explorar y crear nuevas narrativas a través de la escucha. Estas herramientas son aplicadas en una serie de casos de estudio: infraestructuras abandonadas al margen de la memoria y de lo urbano, espacios inhabitables con acústicas exacerbadas y únicas, monumentos industriales y de guerra que en su acústica conservan el origen de la ciudad contemporánea.
... Para tanto, as reflexões são feitas a partir de autores como LaBelle (2006), Blesser e Salter (2007) e Fowler (2013), ainda que outros autores também sejam convocados quando necessário. Trata-se de uma pesquisa de método descritivo e de revisão bibliográfica especializada. ...
Este artigo propõe uma reflexão sobre a obra Room Tone (2008), do artista Brandon LaBelle, a partir dos conceitos de escuta crítica e de consciência espacial auditiva, investigando como eles nos ajudam a compreende-la. Ela problematiza o som e o espaço baseando-se na criação a partir de sons domésticos como fonte de informação. Neste contexto, apresentam-se brevemente as disciplinas de estudo e análise, a arte sonora e a arquitetura aural. Argumenta-se que a obra utiliza os dois conceitos centrais unindo os pensamentos do som, do espaço e o sentido da audição. Para tanto, as reflexões são realizadas a partir de autores como LaBelle (2006), Blesser e Salter (2007) e Fowler (2013) num texto de método descritivo e de revisão bibliográfica especializada. Conclui-se que a obra é uma evidência empírica dos conceitos discutidos e que demonstra a compreensão do som e da escuta como fenômenos emancipados e de elevação sensorial.
La convergencia entre el espacio público y las nuevas tecnologías, como preocupación fundacional del arte sonoro, suscita un análisis crítico de tópicos recientes sobre cómo las prácticas artísticas interactúan con el sonido. Tras reconocer los atributos socializantes del sonido como fuerza creadora, se abordan repertorios de arte sonoro que han reflexionado sobre la experiencia urbana. El concepto de ciudades inteligentes nos ayuda a pensar la emergencia de una cultura de escucha móvil, que moldea un sentido de territorialidad informacional y construye nuevos modos de ciudadanía digital. Desde el punto de vista del arte sonoro, los temas medioambientales también se analizan, reconociendo en la problemática de la contaminación del aire una estrategia de adaptación a la crisis climática. La práctica interdisciplinar de la sonificación será discutida en detalle, analizando las diferentes vertientes y potenciales desdoblamientos tanto en el campo artístico como en el científico. Además, se reconocerán escenarios de pertinencia de la sonificación bajo lógicas determinadas en una economía del conocimiento. Como complemento a la presentación de las discusiones teóricas y de los ejemplos de problemas abordados, en el texto se reportarán trabajos artísticos realizados durante procesos de investigación-creación. Estas piezas fueron creadas junto a estudiantes como producto de actividades académicas y sintetizan las preocupaciones y determinaciones forjadas en el plano teórico.
This article analyses the aesthetic, technical and conceptual strategies inherent in Estelle Schorpp's sound installation Écosystème(s) (2019) in order to question to what extent it negotiates with the notion of other-than-human, here preferred to the 'more-than-human' term. By drawing from various viewpoints rooted in posthumanist theories, sound studies, and ecosemiotics, our goal is to expand the theoretical framework for contemplating the possibilities inherent in sound and media arts. We propose that these art forms, when delving into the concept of the other-than-human, have the capacity to contribute to the development of novel approaches in attuning to our modern (intricately layered and delicate) sonic environments. After clarifying certain concepts such as the other-than-human, the nature-culture pairing, and the systemic and relational dynamic historically inherent to sound art, we will approach the analysis of Écosystème(s) first from a general description of the artist's intentions, and second through and analysis of the semiosic processes involved in the installation experience. Through this analysis, we will demonstrate that Écosystème(s) generates a territorial friction between the installation and the audience, resulting in differences in semiosis and experience. Its relation dimension configures a human-and-other-than-human complex articulated through a specific mode of existence based on co-presence.
Seth Kim Cohen’s notion of non-cochlear sound art explores the idea of more-than-music, reframing sonic listening, shifting away from the aesthetic and towards the conceptual, reducing ‘the value of sonic pleasure in favor of a broader set of philosophical, social, political, and historical concerns’. While this notion holds academic and artistic merit, it does not acknowledge similar explorations in sound art within disabled and d/Deaf communities and developments within disability aesthetics. Works within the disability arts that fit into Kim-Cohen’s non-cochlear sound art were created prior to the publication of his 2009 text In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sound Art and have continued to develop since. This article discusses Kim-Cohen’s non-cochlear sound and asks the reader to view it alongside discussions of disability aesthetics and sound art works by Hard of Hearing (HoH) and d/Deaf artists. In doing so, it illustrates how disability art and aesthetics are inherently conceptual and sociopolitical and have not only been forgotten in discussion of non-cochlear sound art, but have also carved their own path.
[e]-motion brings together contributions from diverse fields of the arts exploring the interplay of motion, emotion, and digitalisation in the arts. Expanding on discussions from the 1st Graduate Conference on Science and Technology of the Arts, the book examines how the digital era transforms our relationship with the body, materiality, and perception. It addresses the impact of digitalisation on artistic production and reception, including the evolving role of physicality and materiality, the redefinition of audience engagement in cultural institutions, and the socioeconomic inequalities arising from differential access to technology and cultural participation. The volume also considers the implications of digitalisation for social and artistic activism, questioning how activism can transition from physical to virtual spaces. The book opens with two essays: Monsters and Measures: Two Approaches to the Essay Film by Sasha Litvintseva and Beny Wagner, which examines how their work challenges the standardising tendencies of science and technology, and Doug Bailey’s Art Archaeological Interactions, which explores creative ways to deconstruct artefacts and archives to uncover sociocultural narratives. Contributions from Constança Babo, Rosinda Casais & Filipa Cruz, Milan Kroulík, Federica Manfredi & Chiara Pussetti, Ana Barroso, Frederico Henriques & Mário Bruno Pastor, Beatriz Albuquerque, Daniel Tavares, Carolina Ferreira Baptista, Filippo Deorsola, and Anna Rebecca Unterholzner enrich the discussion.
'Estuary / Artery' is a written thesis and experimental multimedia documentary accumulated over 3 months of fieldwork walking the Thames estuary. Combining a meshwork of audiovisual data collection, this thesis approaches the ethnographic fieldsite of the estuary as produced through and beyond the socio-cultural and ecological imaginaries of its 'dwellers'. Rooted in embodied and theoretical reference to the site's spatial configurations as urban edgelands, this thesis reflects on the physical and virtual experience of moving through an in-between landscape - discussing how the estuary has been produced as a speculative frontier for redevelopment and the growing impact of climate change. Delving into the fieldwork process using mapping and sensory methodologies, ethnographic encounters with humans and non-humans along the estuary are discussed with close reference to the film. Considering the estuary as an 'urban wasteland' and ecological brownfield site, the potentiality of sensory attunement - with an emphasis on sound - is explored, asking how embodied practices can be utilised to bring us closer to imagining multi-species entanglement on this planet in late capitalism.
This chapter illustrates how the poetic knowledges of young people from the Cartographies of Youth Social Justice, Voice and Action project were brought together with liberation arts, psychology and youth participatory action research (YPAR). This was done to imagine and create a setting that could reconnect young people at a time of extreme isolation and create possibilities for healing and activism through creative approaches. This critical praxis led to the formation of a collective that comprises 16 young people (half from metro Melbourne and half from rural areas across Victoria) and four academics, working with four youth co-designers/facilitators from YHaven, a youth social enterprise. This chapter presents an overall view of the resulting Youth Participatory Arts Action Research (YPAAR) project in three parts. The first part imagines a collective for healing and social justice, the second focuses on the creation of the collective and the third introduces the arts-based activist works young people created during one of the longest and most restrictive COVID-19 lockdowns in Australia.
The act of “listening to architecture” shifts the built reality towards a perceived reality, which is inserted in a temporal structure where sensibilities and corporealities converge. When architecture is affected by sound, a sonorous, an acoustic and an auditory dimension of space emerges. The connection of bodies with the sonic-spatial presence creates a phenomenal map that is accessed through the listening experience and which I call “aural architecture”. Aural architecture is an aesthetic practice that invites us to experience visible and invisible realities through listening. By auditory experience and sensory interpretation, it is possible to build imaginary architectures that emerge from our own creative perception. It is a critical reflection on the hegemony of visual culture and the disciplinary paradigm of architecture, which, regarding its design and production methods, reveals a lack of sensibility by not considering perception as a material for the construction of spatialities. This chapter is a manifesto on aural architecture, which declares the creative action as a subversive act that aims to dematerialize architecture into subjective interpretations. Aural architecture is a parallel dimension of reality that operates from a rhizomatic and transdisciplinary structure where the frontiers between artist and spectator are blurred.
Degree Show Catalogue documenting an ESALA MArch (Modular Pathway) studio ‘Soundings: Spaces/Architectures of Reassurance’. Studio Leaders: Suzanne Ewing and Andrew Brooks. 2021-2022.
The present article examines the problem that arises in the relationship between jazz, experimental music, and sense of place. Considering the music of La Distritofónica, a musical collective from Bogotá, Colombia, I discuss hegemonic definitions of jazz that conceive the problem of music ontology from an aural perspective. These definitions, which relate La Distritofónica to the sphere of free jazz, become insufficient to define the complexity of the phenomena, translating the question to the relations between jazz and place. From this point of view, the case of La Distritofónica exemplifies an intrinsic link between a particular ontology of jazz and Latin American experimental music, which leads me to see La Distritofónica as a metaphor of the soundscape of the city of Bogotá that critiques the political and sonic circumstances of this particular place but still situates the phenomena as a liminal and abject one in the jazz-experimental binary.
I argue that it is in the intersubjective communicative condition of free improvisation that an ontology can be located that explains the music of La Distritofónica in relation to Bogotá, allowing me to decenter the notions of a “work of art” or “standard” as the dominant conceptualization of jazz music. Instead, La Distritofónica allows us to rethink the ancillary circumstance of improvisation in jazz. I bring into discussion the nonprescriptive aesthetic of La Distritofónica; the way its music dialogues with other music, bringing them into its artistic discourse; and its liminal status as an “undefinable” object that manifests an aural aspect of the city of Bogota. I discuss the matter in question from the voices of the members of the community and mediatic information that exemplifies the nexus between the music of La Distritofónica and Bogotá to explain the metaphor and the breakpoint between ontologies of jazz and experimental music.
Contingency and Synchronization is an ongoing research project exploring the interplay between openness and predictability in computational art. Utilizing distributed multi-agent networks, the project investigates computational synchronization phenomena across installations and visualizations. Central to the project are the concepts of contingency and synchronization, providing a framework for understanding aesthetic nuances arising from computation, sound, site, and collaborative decision-making. This paper examines the project’s conceptual and artistic impact. It explores the relationship between contingency and synchronization and addresses repercussions for concepts of listening, emergence, computation, space, and performance, and presents speculative theses outlining preliminary findings.
This article reflects on the participation of humans and other species as listening and sounding entities in creating sonic environments. The article offers a preliminary reflexive consideration of the author’s current composition-improvisation project, discussing how the project’s pieces transform and transport particular sonic environments of the author’s experience to new settings. The author meditates through birdsong on what it sounds like to compose, improvise, and perform with the sonic affordances of our surroundings. The article suggests that extensions of interspecies and interhuman acoustic assemblages and sonic affordances in composition and improvisation can bring overlapping elements of world-making projects into focus and open up potentialities for new ones. In the article, the author blends reflection with musical description and analysis of one of the project’s pieces, refusing to situate nature as other and rejecting a posture that uses nonhuman sound for personal (human) benefit. By focusing on the edge effects of the overlapping world-making projects at the site of the Zealandia Te Mārā a Tāne Wildlife Sanctuary in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, and on challenging settler colonial listening practices, the article reflects on the implications of sharing spaces with other humans and with countless species beyond our own.
This article analyzes the role of sound in the transformation of social space and organization of noncentered group action through a case study of the series of radio ballets programmed by the German artist collective LIGNA. Typically, LIGNA uses portable audio devices and wireless technology to disseminate instructions to the radio ballet participants, directing them to make synchronized body gestures but not giving them fixed movement paths or identities. This process creates a conceptualized acoustic space parallel to the physical space, challenges the regulations that come with the privatization of public spaces, and dismantles the dichotomies between inside and outside, public and private, and physical and mental. I argue that the radio ballet participants, who form a decentralized, temporary, and mobile community, can explore new possibilities for political intervention in the public sphere through silent collective performances in which sound not only serves the important function of sidestepping visual censorship and avoiding physical conflict but also provides a new methodology for reshaping the order of social space.
The main aim of this chapter is to introduce the pragmatist aesthetic of sound. It draws on the classical American pragmatism of John Dewey and G.H. Mead setting it in the dialogue with contemporary pragmatism of Bruno Latour and John Ryder. The chapter builds on Dewey’s concept of art experience as a dialectic of doing and undergoing, expanding it through pragmatist approaches from a variety of disciplines from creativity studies and design theory to music sociology and video game studies, as well as suitable approaches from sound art and participatory art literature. The second half of the chapter details three principal analytical categories of the book: affordance, perspective and gesture. The term affordance refers to the opportunities for action a situation provides an agent. The notion of perspective is used by Mead to describe the way one’s perceptual reality is structured by their intention to act in a certain way. In the context of participatory sound art, they offer two complimentary ways of approaching the interplay of material and social agencies: as action opportunities that artworks and social situations that arise from them provide (affordance), or as ways sound artworks (and situations) are (re)configured by action-orientations of the participants (perspective). The concept of gesture is used to discuss the participants’ actions and interactions themselves and the way they unfold simultaneously in the material, social and discursive planes, particularly with a view of politics of sound art.
This chapter considers participatory sound artworks from the perspective of affordance theory. Its central contention is that the material (sensory, technological, spatiotemporal) and social (participatory, relational) aspects of the artwork necessarily influence and inform each other. It uses the concept of affordance as an analytical device to investigate how participatory processes in sound art are neither limited to the artistic intent, nor completely indeterminate, being instead delimited and directed by the artwork’s materialities—which they in turn reshape. The chapter first discusses three principal affordances characteristic of participatory sound artworks in general—for creativity, experimentation and connectivity. It then offers a classification of sound art’s materialities and medialities into three environment types—local (not technologically extended in any way), networked, and augmented—exploring their specific affordances. Finally, the chapter expands its scope beyond the institutionally recognised forms of sound art by considering sonic practices of digital online culture that share a sound art aesthetics—both the participants’ documentation of their experience with sound art on social media and the “digitally native” forms of sonic participation, such as sonic memes.
This chapter demonstrates how participatory sensibilities have been the core aspect of sound art since its very inception. It traces the histories of sound art and participatory art—as both artistic practices and theoretical concepts—from their common beginnings in the Avantgarde interpretations of the Gesamtkunstwerk, through their divergence in late twentieth century as both art forms become institutionally established, to recombination of sound and participation in interactive media art and participatory culture. The chapter follows the reciprocal relationships between the development of the practices of sound art and participatory art and the broader theoretical fields of sound studies and participation studies, identifying the premises and the consequences of their discursive split along the aesthetics/politics and perception/production lines.
This chapter restates the main conclusions of the book, offering a brief summary of the Pragmatist aesthetics of participatory sound art developed in the previous chapters and discusses two fruitful directions for further research into the subject: postcolonial and posthumanist.
En este artículo propongo una discusión de la idea del sonido como fenómeno relacional planteada por Brandon LaBelle en Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art (2006). A partir de un análisis de las críticas que ha recibido el concepto original de estética relacional de Nicolas Bourriaud en el ámbito del arte contemporáneo, propongo reflexionar sobre los límites de este término en su aplicación a prácticas artísticas centradas en el sonido.
This article offers a new strategy for cognising musical indeterminacy based on Richard Sennett’s ‘five open forms for the city’, an intrinsically spatial way of thinking about what is ‘open’, and how it is open. Sennett’s five forms (‘synchronicity’, ‘punctuatedness’, ‘porosity’, ‘incompleteness’ and ‘multiplicity’) are explored individually as they might impact our understanding of openness and/in music, illuminated by examples from contemporary experimental music.
En los últimos cincuenta años, la vivencia de conflictos locales a través de los medios de comunicación ha sido una experiencia común a las distintas sociedades latinoamericanas. Durante guerras civiles, dictaduras y revueltas sociales, la radio fue utilizada para imponer narrativas sobre los sucesos y formar una opinión uniforme en las audiencias. La radio, como medio de comunicación arraigado a la población latinoamericana, fue utilizada de formas particulares en cada territorio, pero con operaciones similares debido a las relaciones geopolíticas e históricas de los Estados-nación resultantes de tres siglos de colonización. Llamado de Guerra es una investigación que busca indagar cómo fue utilizada la radiodifusión durante los conflictos en Latinoamérica, a partir del desarrollo de una práctica artística fundamentada en la escucha y recreación de un archivo sonoro de documentos relacionados con acontecimientos políticos donde la radiodifusión fungió un papel crucial en el desarrollo de un conflicto. En este texto expondré aspectos de esta práctica en relación con la dominación territorial por medio del sonido, la reproducción de la realidad a través de los medios de comunicación, las prácticas de escucha profunda y la memoria histórica.
From urbanization to biomedical science, rats can be found in the foundations of modernity. Communicating ultrasonically above the ∼20 kHz limit of human hearing, rats are also well-adapted for the human-built environment and its anthropogenic noise. For the sound installation Urban Intonation, the author recorded rats on the streets of New York City with an ultrasonic microphone and resampled and remixed the audio for playback over a human public address system, repositioning the voices of rats in order for us to reconsider our relationship to our oft-reviled nonhuman cohabitants.
Despite increasing attention to the preservation and development of sound archives in academic research and cultural heritage institutions, they are yet to be more substantially embraced in larger theoretical debates on archival theory and practice. Fraught with contested histories through the legacy of ethnomusicology, rooted in the enterprises of colonial imperialism, now in the era of mass digitization and distribution, many sound collections are attempting to develop ethical and empowering methodologies that support community involvement and a vigorous remediation between sound and visuality. Addressing this confluence of concerns, this article considers the ways in which contemporary digital sound archival projects are encouraging an engagement with cultural history and memory in innovative and complex ways, mobilizing the affordances of digital tools and community-based support material with careful attention to the negotiation between its sonic and visual constituents. Through an analysis of two case studies – The Roaring ‘Twenties and Smoke Signals Radio Show Archive – this article examines how contemporary digital archival projects activate and remediate sonic documents and their contextual counterparts to invite a diverse, multifaceted, and multi-sensory encounter with history, memory, knowledge, and the past.
«Partindo da cidade moderna como meio de manifestação sonora,
Nuno Fonseca desenvolve uma descrição
acerca do aparecimento das artes sonoras desde os finais do séc.
XIX aos princípios do séc. XXI. Neste sentido, debruça-se sobre a
expressão “arte sonora”, que adquiriu foros de cidadania na viragem
para o séc. XXI, abrindo a discussão em relação à distinção
entre arte sonora e música. De facto, tendo ambas como mesmo
material o som, e uma poiética do som, a distinção efectiva-se
na distinção entre som musical e som físico, não sendo, por isso,
exclusivo dos sons musicais a criação sonora. Deste modo, nas
artes sonoras, a espacialização do som ir-se-á reflectir em esculturas
ou instalações sonoras, constituindo gestos performativos
criativos temporais.
Abordando no seu texto a relação do som com a cidade,
mostra como a cidade moderna, com os seus ritmos e vivências,
é um fenómeno que suscitou o interesse das primeiras vanguardas
artísticas musicais, reflectindo a paisagem sonora da cidade
nas suas composições, colocando em consideração obras de
Luigi e Antonio Russolo, Satie, Walter Ruttmann, John Cage
e Max Neuhaus, mostrando, assim, como o som da cidade faz
parte integrante das suas composições. Por outro lado, observa
também a relação entre as artes plásticas e as artes sonoras realçando
os desenvolvimentos importantes que se verificaram com
as vanguardas artísticas da primeira metade do sec. XX em que
predominaram “correspondências cinestésicas e cruzamento de
disciplinas”, num visível experimentalismo.» (Paula Carvalho in A cidade nas práticas artísticas, p. 109)
The purpose of the article is to reveal the specifics of the formation of a sound image in accordance with the artistic and aesthetic concepts of the art of sound recording of the middle of the 20th century, developed by the founder of concrete music P. Schaeffer. Research methodology. Systemic and typological methods were applied (to study the specifics of the sound image and identify its role and significance for the art of sound recording); the method of historicism, which helped to outline the general trends of this issue in the middle of the 20th century; the comparative method (for identifying the peculiarities of sound perception by P. Schaeffer, deepening the understanding of his artistic and aesthetic concepts of the sound image and the specifics of the methods and techniques of sound processing developed by him). Scientific novelty. The specificity of the means of artistic and aesthetic expressiveness of the art of sound recording in the process of forming a sound image is investigated; on the basis of the analysis of the "Treatise on Musical Objects" ("Trait'e des object musicaux"), the artistic and aesthetic concepts of sound, formed by the French composer, the founder of concrete music, Pierre Scheffer, are identified and characterized, and the forms of their creative implementation are analyzed; it is proved that the specificity of the formation of P. Schaeffer's artistic and aesthetic concepts is due to the peculiarities of general cultural processes of the middle of the 20th century. and shows an organic unity with the then theoretical and practical style, artistic, semantic, and aesthetic norms. Conclusions. Artistic and aesthetic concepts of the formation of the sound image of P. Schaeffer played a key role in the history of musical art and the art of recording, in particular, the concept of specific music formed the direction of development of various genres of studio music (experimental electroacoustic music, radio art and "sound poetry"), and the techniques and methods he proposed are widely used in modern sound recording to improve the sound. According to P. Schaeffer's concept, everyday sounds that are not considered musical can be aesthetic, and their artistic and aesthetic expressiveness is realized by means of thoughtful listening. The specificity of the artistic and aesthetic concepts of P. Schaeffer in the context of the formation of a sound image is due to specific technologies that contribute to the full formation of the acoustic space (both real and virtual), the expansion and enrichment of the sound texture by means of regulating temporal, spatial and frequency parameters.
Our field; a landscape grown of natural and man-made structures, forms an omnipresent, vivid, and interactive sonic environment. This temporal field is ephemeral in nature; collected by listeners as passing moments are heard. Captured and projected field recordings can be received as the reanimation of sound into a new time and location, with ambisonics (three-dimensional 360-degree audio) capable of enhancing listener experience through the creation of digital 3D reimagined environments. Historical reimaginations in the form of musical compositions, sound effects, and dialogue, can be presented as solo sounds or entire sculpted soundscapes, accessible on a personal mobile device. Locative mobile audio provides an opportunity for curated audio storytelling in the heritage sector, spatialised in an outdoor setting through GPS, sensors for head-tracking, and headphones. Requiring minimal on-site infrastructure, mobile audio experiences are well-suited to augmenting public interactions with listed, ruined, and outdoor heritage sites , and are fitting for both personal and group listening. This paper will examine ambisonic recording techniques for heritage-specific audio content creation, in relation to the compositional process, design, and presentation of immersive listening experiences to the public. The prototype soundwalks were presented through the project partner mobile application 'Echoes', in the outdoor urban heritage location of Brunswick Square, Brighton & Hove, UK, in partnership with 'The Regency Town House'. It will explore the researcher’s two public prototype iterations 'The Golden Hours' and 'Re/collections' which evolved from a preliminary public co-design activity , as examples to discuss the development process of ambisonic outdoor listening experiences.
This paper explores the first stage of audio content research and experimentation during a current PhD project in 3D mobile immersive audio experiences for audience engagement in urban outdoor heritage sites. This audio experience was created and tested in historic Brunswick Square, Brighton & Hove (UK), with volunteers from heritage partner The Regency Town House, and again with the public during a Heritage Open Days event in September 2019. Industry partner Echoes (echoes.xyz) provided the geolocative mobile audio platform used to test the content. Three different types of audio content were put forward to audiences, all created in response to a piece called ‘The Sea-Bird’ by local Brunswick Square composer Roger Quilter. These interpretations took the form of music, dialogue, and binaural field recording, to open discussions with listeners, and obtain qualitative and quantitative feedback on their perceptions of heritage specific audio content presented through a mobile application in an urban outdoor setting. Using Echoes, the audio tracks were positioned outside the famous composer’s childhood home, creating a tangible connection between site and sound.
Ryoji Ikeda’s sonic composition has often been considered to prioritise a physical, immersive experience of space over temporal musical progression. This article challenges this commonly held view, arguing that the static nature of his work should be understood in terms of complex interactions between space and time rather than in dualistic terms. By analysing a large-scale sonic transformation within his 2005 album Dataplex , the article uncovers complex rhizomatic networks of materials that expand across multiple tracks. The links between the album tracks leads to an unconventional quality of musical time that contains a high degree of statis yet nevertheless presents a non-linear progression, which is created through repetition (loops), variation and re-contextualisation of sounds. The analysis suggests that experiencing the ordered series of tracks in the album means accumulating information and exploring memory within a non-interchangeable process of sonic flow and metamorphosis. Despite the fragmentary nature of these internal continuities, the resulting rhizomatic networks provide a means to understand and even to listen structurally to Ikeda’s sonic composition.
Book of Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Digital Creation in Arts, Media and Technology – Emerging Extended Realities (ARTeFACTo 2022 Macao), held on 24, 25 Nov. 2022 at Ilha Verde campus, University of Saint Joseph, Macau.
Book editors: Gerald Estadieu, Filipa Martins de Abreu, Carlos Sena Caires & Adérito Fernandes-Marcos.
This chapter introduces a basic distinction between environmental and surrounding sound. Ambient effects of surroundability and centralization not only entail a basic environmental dimension of sound. They also involve an aesthetic shift from environmental to surrounding sound. On this basis, I explore how sonic objectivity—the morpho-material quality of a sonic event that it emerges and unfolds independently of a guiding subjective intentionality—can be distinguished as a basic onto-aesthetic feature of environmental sound. But in order to unfold its unobtrusive surroundability and ambient effects of centralization and being-in, before environmental sound can turn into surrounding sound, it must furthermore reduce the presence of confronting objects and isolated figures and transform the objective sonic environment into an objectless, a-figurative continuum.KeywordsObjectivityObjectlessnessA-figurative continuum
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