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Confrontadas al problema del caos y el significado en el contexto de la producción de subjetividad, el arte sonoro surge una y otra vez como un espacio privilegiado para la reordenación y producción de nuevas consistencias subjetivas. Frente a los procesos de creciente homogeneización subjetiva del capitalismo tardío, la imaginación sonora, en el centro de una tensión ontológica entre la disolución del sentido y su redundancia estructural y fantasmática, nos permite seguir “removiendo el fondo”. Así, hemos tratado de explorar el arte sonoro como una enunciación colectiva, como una forma de exceso que va mucho más allá del ámbito humano y hacia el plano maquínico de consistencia, y lo hemos hecho a través del prisma de las semióticas a-significantes. La conclusión a la que hemos llegado es la de la necesidad de una comprensión maquínica, transespecie, no-humanista del arte sonoro y su ensamblaje colectivo., When confronted with the problem of chaos and meaning in the context of the production of subjectivity, sound art emerges time and again as a privileged space for the rearrangement and production of new subjective consistencies. Faced with the processes of increasing subjective homogenization of late capitalism, the sonic imagination, in the centre of an ontological tension between the dissolution of meaning and its structural and phantasmatic redundancy, allows us to carry on “turning over the ground”. We have thus tried to explore sound art as collective enunciation, as a form of excess that goes well beyond the human realm and into the machinic plane of consistency, and we have done this through the prism of a-signifying semiotics. The conclusion we have reached is that of the need for a non-humanist, trans-species, machinic comprehension of sound art and its collective assemblage.

En este trabajo se reconstruye cuál ha sido la programación musical en el Guggenheim de Bilbao desde sus inicios. Se articulan tres perspectivas: por un lado, la organización de conciertos en relación con las exposiciones (y su justificación) frente al uso de los espacios del museo para eventos que, aparentemente, no guardan relación directa con las exposiciones. Por otro, se consideran brevemente propuestas que, por su carácter audiovisual o coreográfico implican la atención al sonido en el museo. Por último, se analizan los dos grandes encargos, a colación del décimo y vigésimo aniversario del museo, en cuanto constitución de eventos que proponen sonificar la totalidad del edificio. Para las tres líneas se presentan numerosos ejemplos que ilustran lo planteado, también en relación con otras instituciones españolas. De este modo, se intenta rastrear el discurso subyacente del Guggenheim con respecto a la música, que oscila entre el compromiso inicial con la creación contemporánea y la atracción de público., This paper reconstructs the musical programming of the Guggenheim Bilbao since its beginnings. Three perspectives are displayed: on the one hand, the organisation of concerts in relation to the exhibitions (and their justification) as opposed to the use of the museum’s spaces for events that are apparently not directly related to the exhibitions . On the other hand, we briefly examine proposals that, due to their audiovisual or choreographic nature, involve attention to sound in the museum. Finally, the two major commissions are analysed on the occasion of the museum’s tenth and twentieth anniversaries respectively, in terms of the constitution of events that propose to sound the entire building. For these three lines, numerous examples are presented to illustrate what has been proposed, also in relationship to other Spanish institutions. In this way, an attempt is made to trace the underlying discourse of the Guggenheim with respect to music, which oscillates between a initial commitment to contemporary creation and the attraction of audiences.

"Ecstasy / Light / Inertia" represents an innovative exploration into the realm of gamified music experiences. Created within a 3D virtual environment, this project incorporates elements of postmodern philosophy, Nordic nature, modernist architecture, and high-fidelity spatial audio technology. It offers a unique mode of engagement with new music through narrative-based interaction and navigation, intending to replace traditional concert settings or sound art galleries with an immersive digital experience. The project features a series of original music compositions, intricately woven into beautifully crafted virtual spaces, presenting an innovative attempt to democratize the accessibility to transformative sound-focused art forms. The core of this dissertation revolves around the detailed analysis of the conception, evolution, and realization of "Ecstasy / Light / Inertia". It delves deep into the exploration of the artistic choices, methodologies, narrative threads, and philosophical facets that contribute to this distinctive gamified experience. Integral to this study are the music compositions that serve not merely as a backdrop, but as a crucial part of the overall project, underpinning the journey and narrative progression within the gamified environment. This dissertation also contemplates the potential of game engine environments in disseminating new music, particularly after a global pandemic that necessitated a reconsideration of physical presence for enjoying various sound-focused art forms. It further investigates the potential of gamification in music and the integration of philosophical elements into the narrative fabric of the project. Finally, it outlines future directions and concludes with reflections on the lessons learned and the potential impact of "Ecstasy / Light / Inertia" on the evolution of sound art in the digital era.

This dissertation undertakes a quest for a poetics of responsibility in the age of the Anthropocene. I aim to extend the concept of a poetics of responsibility beyond the literary discussion, within which the term was originally coined by ecocritical theorist Greg Garrad. My thesis achieves this through tracing sound and radio waves from outer space, to the inside of the human body, and along crossspecies boundaries to the deepest depths of the ocean. Reference is made to the theoretical work of Michel de Certeau and media arts practice under the wider label of tactical media. I argue that critical reflections of political media arts practice occurring at the nexus of politics and technology can make an important contribution to the quest for a poetics of responsibility. This argument draws on works that incorporate sonic and radio related practices from the early 20th century radio amateur movement as well as the work of contemporary media arts practitioners including Natalie Jeremijenko, Marko Peljhan and my own. My argument is epistemologically informed by philosopher Jacques Rancière’s theories concerning the political dimension inherent in the aesthetic and vice versa. It also references the work of media theorist Geert Lovink, a key figure in establishing the concept of tactical media. In order to understand the merger of creative practice and theory in tactical media, I employ the notion of fluid thinking in waves -- depicting art making as the tactical pondering over aesthetic experience, technological possibilities and political context. Drawing on my own artistic exploration in a series of works titled unrelated relatedness, I suggest that the combination of technological and sensory perceptions in media arts practice can extend and refine the human sense of situated awareness and shift how we as humans understand our position on this planet.Submission note: A thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by creative work to the School of Communication, Arts and Critical Enquiry, Faculty of Humanities, La Trobe University, Bundoora.

Se muestran diferentes obras y proyectos relacionados con el arte sonoro, la ciudad y el uso de tecnologías contemporáneas. Se divide en introducción, metodología, resultados y conclusiones. En los resultados primero se señalan conocidas obras que sirven de antecedentes a los siguientes proyectos mostrando la tradicional reunión de este género con lo tecnológico. Después se abordan las obras núcleo del texto avanzando desde internet y las conocidas Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación, a los Sistemas de Gestión Geográfica, las Apps, la Realidad Virtual, la Inteligencia Artificial, el Big Data y el Internet de las Cosas. Con todo ello se muestra que estas tecnologías ofrecen importantes posibilidades al arte sonoro, a la ciudad y al ciudadano, que este género sigue beneficiándose de las innovaciones tecnológicas y que ciertas temáticas y praxis como mapas, cartografías, audioguías, conciertos de ciudad o la urbe como instrumento continúan directa o indirectamente tomando hoy nuevos niveles de profundidad.

With its mutating cracks, bleeps, and booms, the contemporary cryosphere speaks in accelerating volumes. A number of contemporary artists transform these sounds of collapsing, disappearing ice into broadcastable frequencies. Rather than a remote distance beyond the reach of relevance, these artworks translate the effects of Antarctica’s melting ice into galvanizing sonic affects. These strange sonics make the pre-existing, myriad connections between ice shelves and human selves apparent. This essay surveys the work of artists Andrea Polli, Adrian Wood (in collaboration with glaciologist Grant MacDonald), Luftwerk, and Himali Singh Soin, in order to think through a phenomenon which I call ‘collapsing cryospheric auralities’. More than purely doom-laden dictatics, these sonic artworks strive to propagate hope in equal measure: gestating new trajectories and other futures beyond the seemingly intractable impasses of the present. How to cite this article: Hill, Rachel. " Like Electronic Techno Music: The Accelerating Rhythms of Collapsing Cryospheric Auralities." AM Journal of Art and Media Studies 25 (September 2021): 27-37. doi: 10.25038/am.v0i25.446 Article received: April 20, 2021; Article accepted: June 21, 2021; Published online: September 15, 2021; Original scholarly paper

This article details the rationale and creative process behind a collaborative – or more accurately in this case, dialogic – sound composition undertaken as part of research into the acoustic ecologies of people in the early stages of a dementia. Changes in abilities around hearing and listening are among the first symptoms of many types of dementia, making such auditory phenotypes an increasingly common part of lived experiences of sound. Following acoustic ecology practice in doing and presenting research in sound, and more specifically Steven Feld in doing so in dialogic or polyvocal ways, co-composition can be a way of exploring the particularities of others’ hearing, listening and sound practices, which is less reliant on the discursive frames of interlocutors and researchers. The process of making sound art together draws attention to particular sounds and experiences, creating dialogic situations of companion listening, discussion and mutual learning. It also provides a framework for engaging interlocutors in soundscape and ethnographic fieldwork methods. The composition discussed here, Trevurr, documents my time working with Trevor, a keen amateur musician in Cornwall who has mild cognitive impairment, and gradually comes to simulate his experience of hyperacusis in a piece of dialogic, auraldiversity-oriented composition.

Neither electroacoustic music nor sound art, in a Slovene cultural context, have been the subject of comprehensive musicological research. There is, therefore, a need for basic research and reflection on the subject itself, as electroacoustic music discourse in general notably demonstrates some sustained interpretational patterns, the most common being the technological bases which supposedly gave rise to predominant styles and aesthetics.

[EN] This study is part of a research stay at the Institut Universitari de la Creativitat i Innovacions Educatives (IUCIE), Universitat de València, with CREARI, Research Group in Cultural Pedagogies. The object of the research is to take the inquiry about sound art toward pedagogical experiences with teaching students from the artistic perspective. The objective is to promote active listening and find strategies that allow reflection and sound practice with different techniques and aesthetics but create a relationship-transformation of teaching content (conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal). The methodology used is Research in Artistic Education, incorporating visual, textual, and sound narratives under a participatory and group model. The results of the actions carried out are shown in different contexts and formats and reflect the sonorization process of the projects, which exhibitions such as: "Textile Cartographies" at the Faculty of Teaching, UV, and Quinta da Cruz (Center for Contemporary Art in Viseu, Portugal), and "Disseny dels records" sound installations at the UPV Computer Museum. Through debate activities and opinion questionnaires, the students have satisfactorily valued listening as an artistic way of working in education., [ES] Este estudio parte de una estancia de investigación en el Institut Universitari de la Creativitat i Innovacions Educatives (IUCIE), Universitat de València, con CREARI, Grupo de Investigación en Pedagogías Culturales. El objeto de la investigación consiste en llevar la indagación sobre arte sonoro hacia experiencias pedagógicas con alumnado de magisterio desde la perspectiva artística. Se trata de promover la escucha activa y encontrar estrategias que permitan la reflexión y la práctica sonora con distintas técnicas y estéticas, pero creando una relación-transformación de los contenidos docentes (conceptuales, procedimentales y actitudinales). La metodología utilizada es la Investigación Basada en las Artes que incorpora narrativas visuales, textuales y sonoras, bajo un modelo participativo y grupal. Los resultados de las acciones desarrolladas se muestran en diferentes contextos y formatos y reflejan el proceso de sonorización de los proyectos, con exhibiciones como “Cartografias Têxtei” en la Facultad de Magisterio UV y en Quinta da Cruz - Centro de Arte Contemporânea de Viseu, Portugal, y “Disseny dels records”, instalaciones sonoras en el Museo de Informática UPV. A través de actividades de debate y cuestionarios de opinión, el alumnado ha valorado satisfactoriamente la escucha como forma artística para trabajar en la educación.

[EN] The voice is an immediate instrument of expression that, intuitively and without mediation, allows thoughts and emotions to be transformed into sound. In the field of action art and specifically sound art, the voice has been worked on from its musical application, as a carrier of text and as a sound texture. In a peri-algorhythmic society, defined as a community in coexistence with algorithms, it is of interest to understand the repercussion of the new artificial intelligence algorithms on sound practice, and on this occasion, specifically, their influence on vocal practice. This paper presents an approach based on sound-musical practice and not on language. It proposes a map of new extended practices through the analysis of contemporary sound proposals that combine the use of the voice with intelligent algorithms, both for expressive purposes and as a control interface. We propose, by way of conclusions, an exercise in reflection and listening on the artistic use of data and technologies in an algorithmic context, in line with the shared idea of the search for artistic progress through experimentation outside the limits of the system, beyond preconceived applications and pre-established concepts, as it is promoted by Cage, McLuhan, Yoshida, Kubisch and Collins, among other authors. We will emphasize post-humanist and technorealist positions, the generation of underlying conflicts around creativity, agency, ethics, accessibility and inclusion, without ignoring how the algorithm allows us to extend the timbral possibilities of the voice limited by human physiognomy, but also provides new systems of interaction with the computer, a central element of contemporary sound production, as a more expressive interface that shortens the transit of ideas and emotions to their sonic formulation., [ES] La voz es un instrumento de expresión inmediato que, de forma intuitiva y sin mediación, permite transformar pensamientos y emociones en sonido. En el terreno del arte de acción y en concreto el arte sonoro, la voz se ha trabajado desde su aplicación musical, como portador de texto y como textura sonora. En una sociedad “peri-algorítmica”, como una comunidad en convivencia con algoritmos, es de interés entender la repercusión de los nuevos algoritmos de inteligencia artificial sobre la práctica sonora, y en esta ocasión, concretamente, su influencia sobre la práctica vocal. Esta comunicación presenta un enfoque desde la práctica sonoro-musical y no desde el lenguaje. Propone un mapa de nuevas prácticas extendidas mediante el análisis de propuestas sonoras contemporáneas que combinan el uso de la voz con algoritmos inteligentes, tanto para finalidades expresivas como de interfaz de control. Planteamos, a modo de conclusiones, un ejercicio de reflexión y escucha sobre el uso artístico de datos y tecnologías en un contexto algorítmico, en línea con la idea compartida de búsqueda del progreso artístico a través de la experimentación fuera de los límites del sistema, más allá de las aplicaciones preconcebidas y los conceptos preestablecidos, potenciada por Cage, McLuhan, Kubisch y Collins, entre otres autores. Haremos hincapié en posicionamientos post-humanistas y tecnorrealistas, la generación de conflictos subyacentes en torno a la creatividad, agencia, ética, accesibilidad e inclusión, sin obviar cómo el algoritmo permite extender las posibilidades tímbricas de la voz limitadas por la fisionomía humana, pero también proporciona nuevos sistemas de interacción con el computador, elemento central de producción sonora contemporánea, como una interfaz más expresiva que acorta el tránsito de las ideas y emociones hasta su formulación sonora.

In this paper, we offer a review of the sound art online exhibition ‘Acts of Air’ organized by the Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice group at the University of the Arts London (UAL) and some...

Form in sound art is the crucial aspect for both analysis and per- ception. The theoretical basis includes, among others, the theory of ‘Pure Form’ devised by Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz and Susan Sontag’s theory of interpretation. Later in the text, issues of aesthetics and anti-aesthetic are mentioned. The research questions dealt with in this text were: What is the position of form in sound art and how is it related to content? What kinds of means of expression can be applied? The employed methods in- clude literary analysis and criticism as well as some elements of structural analysis. The examples analyzed in this article were broadcasts by Gregory Whitehead, Eugeniusz Rudnik, Tomasz Plata, and Antye Greie. The per- ception of the art can be disturbed by certain means of expression such as formal chaos or noise which is also considered in the text.

The paper examines the sonic experiences of the listener in digital environments by using a Bluetooth speaker as an example. It discusses how the everyday use of a speaker highlights human beings’ material and multi-sensory situatedness in digital environments. Based on the analytical approaches concerning embodiment, movement, and infrastructures, the paper aims to develop further the idea of musicking in everyday life contexts. It suggests that in addition to the social importance of music, the material approach to musicking reveals new political and ethical questions, especially those concerning the power of code and planetary sustainability. publishedVersion

In The Natural Contract, Michel Serres asks how humanity can ever address the 'anguishing question' of climate change as long as we don't know how to conceive of the relations between time and weather; temps et temps. This essay aims to find ways in which, through music and sound art, we may be able to attune to temporalities that are less anthropocentric and more ecologically minded. In this investigative essay I will take a closer listen to four works that touch upon this theme of more-than-human time: Jennifer Walshe's Time Time Time (2019), Jem Finer's Longplayer (1999), Felix Hess' Air Pressure Fluctuations (2001) and John Luther Adams's The Place Where You Go to Listen (2004-2006). I aim to enquire how these works offer representations and sonifications of ecological notions of time through sound. Drawing on Elaine Gan's essay The Time Travelers, as well as the vast time-scales of Timothy Morton's hyperobject and Michel Serres's ideas on nonlinear, percolating time, I will further frame the notion of ecological time. To explore the correlated question of how the sonic experience manages to render these more-than-human temporalities tangible, I will turn to sound studies by both the American philosopher Christoph Cox and the Swiss sonic theorist Salomé Voegelin.

This article elaborates the art-theoretical concept of ‘the contemporary’ along with formal differences between contemporary music and contemporary art. Contemporary art emerges from the radical transformations of the historical avant-garde and neo-avant-garde that have led to post-conceptual art – a generic art beyond specific mediums that prioritizes discursive meaning and social process – while contemporary music struggles with its status as a non-conceptual art form that inherits its concept from aesthetic modernism and absolute music. The article also considers the category of sound art and discusses some of the ways it, too, is at odds with contemporary art's generic and post-conceptual condition. I argue that, despite their respective claims to contemporaneity, neither sound art nor contemporary music is contemporary in the historical sense of the term articulated in art theory. As an alternative to these categories, I propose ‘musical contemporary art’ to describe practices that depart in consequential ways from new/contemporary music and sound art.

An aesthetic and epistemological departure from ocular centrism has occurred in the wake of current technological evolutions and the posthuman turn. The sonic exploration of the more-than-human takes artists and philosophers beyond anthropomorphism to reveal the hidden patterning of life forms and yet-unfathomed universes. The conflation of nature(s) with culture(s) is one shift that takes place when thinking with sounds and rhythm and studying our environments. On an ontological level, a reordering of subject and object occurs when encountering the reciprocal relationship of sounding. What if culture is actually nature? How does technology connect with botany, and what does it mean to engage the environment with the expanded tactility of the ear? This essay observes current inter-species practices in sound art by revisiting philosopher Susanne Langer’s theory of an embodied and embedded mind. Her “new key” in philosophy emphasizes music as a dynamic sound-pattern to conceptualize a semiology of artistic forms that renders human feeling in regard to non-human antecedents. This serves as a tool to trace the preconceptual substrata of mind, leading us through process-oriented studies of nature and psychophysical affect. Thinking with Langer involves the interconnection of natural systems, behavioural patterns, and human expression, which emerges in art.

Ensaio composto por uma partitura visual, criada para a arte sonora de "O Grande Som", uma obra que trata da associação entre o tupanvírus, um vírus gigante, e a cosmologia tupi à respeito de Tupã. O tupanvírus foi descoberto em um lago de águas alcalinas no MS e, por se hospedar apenas em amebas, sua constituição é associada às formas ancestrais de vida na Terra. O nome do vírus faz referência à Tupã, um importante elemento da cosmologia originária guarani. "O Grande Som" aborda os paradoxos dessa associação por meio da interação entre som e visualidade na intenção de tratar da dimensao invisível do assunto em questão.

The author's artistic experiment The Hearing Test focuses on detection of high frequency clicking sounds that are emitted by the tips of plants' roots. Scientists have claimed that plants' roots produce high frequency clicks between 20 and 300 kHz by bursting air bubbles. But while the phenomenon has been described, its cause remains unexplained. This lack of knowledge opens up possibilities for multiple interpretations and invites experimental approaches as well as speculation concerning plant intelligence, the role of species-specific hearing and sound as evidence. The article is an extended reflection on the experiment.

Soundscape composition and environmental sound art already imply critiques and negotiations of nature/culture divide and human/non-human difference. This article, along with the composition it frames, thinks through a vision of environmental sound art that completes a link between sonic practice and its object. As a project, it navigates human/animal difference through a sonic knowing which is founded on life’s shared constitution in signs. Sounds beyond spoken words, like the signs that dominate non-human life, are foundationally non-symbolic, and the ability of environmental sound art to resemble and evoke networks of icons and indices is in some respects a privileged position of electroacoustic music. The article presents a non-dualistic sonic thinking within the decentred perspective of the environment, which emerges as a plural product of its engagements and participants. A vision for soundscape composition is presented, along with a frame for its interpretation as sonic thought, or phonosophy.

This article narrates my practice-based research in embodied sonic meditation, as a Digital Musical Instrument (DMI) designer, a vocalist, a composer, a media artist and a long-term meditation practitioner. I define the concept of ‘embodied sonic meditation’ in the context of electroacoustic sound art with the augmentation by music technology and human-centred design. I historically connect embodied sonic meditation to its roots in Tibetan Buddhism and several inspiring music compositional practices in the Western world from the second half of the twentieth century. I argue that physicality and spirituality are unified in an inseparable non-duality form, through sound, body and mind. I develop a methodology for embodied sonic meditation practice, built on fifteen design principles based on previous research in DMI design principles, neuroscience research in meditation, Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory, and the criteria of efficiency, music subjectivity, affordance, culture constraints and meaning making. I then make reference to three proof-of-concept case studies that use a sensor-augmented body as an instrument to create sound and sonic awareness. I argue that embodied sonic meditation affords an opportunity for sound art to mediate cultures, improve people’s well-being, and better connect people to their inner peace and the outer world.

This short essay is written by a voice teacher, questioning her positionality, ethics and exercises. In writing it, I tried to take a risk, to fail generously and to take responsibility.The provoca...

This article takes a look at notions of agency as experienced by the author in her sound art practice. Primarily a personal reflection on creative practice rather than a theoretical or scholarly piece, the author reviews difference stages of the compositional process and considers where agency lies - with her as composer, with the objects she manipulates, with the electronics that animate those objects, or with the audience / viewers / participants that ultimately experience the work? Landing ultimately on an idea of the agency of imagination, the article also explores ideas of direct, shared, artificial, prosthetic and relational agency. The case study most consistently referred to is Ficarra's work Piano Bench Variations, which premiered at 1078 Gallery in Chico California in January 2019 as part of the Broken Open collaborative exhibit.

The history of sound art has been a case of displacement and misplacement. It has been displaced due to the nature of the medium – sound, a phenomenon that is heard and felt but not seen. In a visually dominated world like ours, this spells the relegation of the importance of sound and audio sensitivity in a human’s perception, cognition and consciousness. It is misplaced as it is more often categorically subsumed under the other art form, music. Sound art is in fact one of the most ancient of art forms when the name of Greek god of wind, Aeolus, was used to name the Aeolian harp. Sound art has often been defined, in the late 20th century and early 21st century and by academics and critics, as a novel form of art. Once again it is another case of displacement and misplacement. The two case studies which will be discussed in this paper will foreground the social and political contexts of the artists as well as their responses to these socio-­political conditions to demonstrate that sound art, just like any other art forms like paintings, music and theatre, is reflexive of the times of the creators, and more.

Recently, much attention has been paid to the many different forms of collaborative or participatory practice both within, and out with the academy; from practice-based research to theoretical contributions and artistic experimentations. In terms of acoustemology as described by Steven Feld, the creative processes of collaborative soundscaping practices, developed as dialogic editing, produce theories of sound as knowledge production. Within this trend of doing anthropology in sound, sound art works aim to reconnect communities to the environment and indicate the emergence and presence of an ecological and aesthetic co-evolution. Such projects, in fostering interdisciplinary approaches, allow the development of hybrid types of knowledge through dialogic exchanges, and engage multiple agents by developing audile techniques. They also raise interesting questions within collaborative and interdisciplinary creative practice, in relation to the critical examination of the instrumentality of collaboration. By focusing on field recordings and soundscape compositions this paper discusses ecological sound art works that use collaborative creativity, new technologies, and phenomenological listening, to produce dialogic and collaborative forms of epistemic and material equity. These sound art works are the result of complex expressions of creative processes that involve multiple agents, while successfully voice their authorial presence. The interdisciplinary, collaborative and open-ended nature of these projects brings forward the social and political dimension of sound and listening, which could figure in more collaborative forms of knowledge production and inspire climate action.

Bodies constantly emit and receive sensorial stimulation. Having this feedback loop of sensation interrupted can feel profoundly disorienting, even smothering and threatening, as the author discovered when he first visited an anechoic chamber—a soundproof room in which acoustic reflections are virtually absent. This essay is a meditation on the role that sound, vibration, and sensation play in allowing us to feel at home in the world. To work through this proposition, Akiyama stages an imaginary performance event in the anechoic chamber at IRCAM (an institute for the study of sonic art and technology in Paris). This fictitious event brings together a group of expert listeners, including Alvin Lucier, one of the leading figures in conceptual sound art; Maryanne Amacher, a pioneering sound artist, composer, and psychoacoustics researcher; Daniel Kish, the found of World Access for the Blind and a noted expert in human echolocation; and Arthur Russell, a composer and producer who was at the vanguard of the New York downtown music scene in the 1980s, until his tragic, early death from AIDS. Each figure, different in their expertise and capacities, brings one closer to the realization that one’s ability to feel at home in the world is inextricably linked to our sensorial entanglement with our surroundings.

Este artigo apresenta parte da tese SoundSystem : experiencias sonoras e dancantes partilhadas pelos artistas Franz Manata e Saulo Laudares no circuito independente de arte contemporânea. A partir das disparacoes afetivas incitadas por ThePlace (1998-...) , que e a propria pista de danca como obra de arte, Heartbeat (2006), instalacao sonora que compartilha uma conversa entre coracoes e, pela intervencao urbana AFTER:Nature (2008-...), que disponibiliza ao publico o canto dos passaros, pensaremos sobre a posicao politica assumida pelos artistas, que e realizada atraves da ativacao de um saber eco-etologico. Palavras-chave: Arte sonora; Sound System; Corpo vibratil; Micropolitica; Manata Laudares. Abstract This article presents part of the SoundSystem thesis: sound and dancing experiences shared by artists Franz Manata and Saulo Laudares in the independent circuit of contemporary art. Based on the affectives hots triggered by The Place (1998 -...), which is the dance floor itself as a work of art, Heartbeat (2006), a sound installation that shares a conversation between hearts and, through urban intervention AFTER: Nature ( 2008 -...), which makes the song of birds available to the public, we will think about the political position assumed by the artists, which is accomplished through the activation of an eco-ethological knowledge. Keywords: Sound art; Sound System; Vibrating body; Micropolitics; Manata Laudares.

One of the aspects that most contributes to the narration of spirituality in the films of Andrei Tarkovsky (Zavrazhye, Russia, 1932 - Paris, France, 1986) is his particular use of sound.1 Although ...

Freshwater ecoacoustics is an emerging field that involves underwater audio recordings to detect the presence, location, and density of species in noninvasive and unbiased ways. Conducted l...

Este artigo apresenta um estudo sobre determinadas especificidades da Arte Sonora, produção artística contemporânea que utiliza o som como elemento fundamental da obra. Contextualiza a Arte Sonora no ambiente da Arte Contemporânea e aprofunda alguns aspectos deste tipo de arte, a saber: espacialidade, sensorialidade, interatividade, sonoridade e visualidade. Com base nestes aspectos, o texto analisa três obras sonoras. Constata que o caráter ambiental (ou a espacialidade) de tais trabalhos é um aspecto que os vincula à Arte Contemporânea e também os aproxima do campo da Arquitetura. A análise aponta a forte presença dos aspectos sensoriais dos trabalhos, seu caráter interativo, o investimento nos aspectos visuais e também os diferentes e instigantes resultados sonoros de tais produções.

Depuis son avènement au début des années 1980, la notion d’« art sonore » peine à trouver une définition stable. Le flou qui l’entoure n’empêche qu’on y ait souvent recours dans le domaine des arts plastiques, où elle souligne la place prépondérante du son dans la construction d’une oeuvre d’art. Ce texte propose de relever les problèmes inhérents à cette notion en revenant sur deux grandes expositions associées à son émergence (Für Augen und Ohren : Objekte, Installationen, Performance [Berlin] et Écouter par les yeux : objets et environnements sonores [Paris]) et sur le débat qui s’ensuivit, avec lequel s’affirme la possibilité de retenir, pour les arts plastiques, non plus des objets sonores mais des manières d’écouter. Reste encore à apprécier les effets théoriques et pratiques de ce changement de paradigme et à pointer ses enjeux esthétiques et politiques. Une ouverture à l’histoire des techniques sonores, étudiée par les Sound Studies, comme aux relations de l’écoute à l’action, analysée par les études éthologiques, pourra, dès lors, s’avérer utile., Since its appearance in the early 1980s, the notion of “sound art” has struggled to find a stable definition. The vagueness of this term has not prevented it from often being used in the visual arts, where it highlights the dominant role of sound in the creation of certain works of art. This article addresses the inherent issues surrounding this notion by looking at two major exhibitions associated with the emergence of the term “sound art”: Für Augen und Ohren: Objekte, Installationen, Performance [Berlin] and Écouter par les yeux: objets et environnements sonores [Paris]. My focus is on the discussions that followed these exhibitions, wherein it became possible to move beyond sound objects and into the realm of different ways of listening, within the visual arts themselves. This leads me to gauge the theoretical and practical effects of this paradigm shift, and to look at its aesthetic and political consequences. From this standpoint, it is important to open this inquiry to include the history of sound techniques, studied notably in the field of Sound Studies, as well as the relationships between listening and action, which has been analyzed in ethology.

This text considers points of intersection between the arts of sound and visual arts institutions and examines their rapidly changing relationships from the beginning of the twenty-firstcentury to the present day. Combining an autoethnographic approach, drawing on the author’s curatorial work with sound-based practices as the director of the London-based commissioning art agency Electra, and sustained observations of broader issues emerging around sound-led work in the field of contemporary art, the text identifies a number of ways in which “sonic substance” enters visual arts institutions. The author considers how these dynamics have changed over the past twenty years and analyses ruptures that emerge along the way., Ce texte examine les points d’intersection entre les arts du son et les institutions d’arts visuels, et étudie leurs relations, en évolution rapide et constante, depuis le début du xxie siècle jusqu’à nos jours. Combinant une approche auto-ethnographique – qui s’appuie sur le travail de l’autrice avec les pratiques sonores en tant que directrice de l’agence artistique Electra (Londres) – avec une étude soutenue des enjeux entourant les oeuvres basées sur le son dans le milieu de l’art contemporain, cet article identifie un certain nombre de manières dont la « substance sonore » entre dans les institutions d’arts visuels. L’autrice examine comment ces dynamiques ont changé au cours des vingt dernières années et analyse les ruptures qui apparaissent en cours de route.

This article explores the phenomenon of spoken music in the field of contemporary Spanish experimental music. Spoken music is a hybrid form of artistic expression which draws on several disciplines...

This response to Pooja Rangan’s bold provocation inImmediationsreflects, from a Derridean standpoint, on the impossible responsibility of speakingforthe other. In particular, it examines the role played by the microphone as technological prosthesis for the voice in activist practices of audio documentary, analyzing the actions of performance artist Sharon Hayes and sound art collective Ultra-red.

Much electroacoustic music composition and sound art, and the commentary that surrounds them, is locked into a materialist sound-object mindset in which the hierarchical organisation of sonic events, especially those developed through abstraction, are considered antithetical to sounds ‘being themselves’. This article argues that musical sounds are not just material objects, and that musical notations, on paper or in computer code, are not just symbolic abstractions, but instructions for embodied actions. When notation is employed computationally to control resonance and gestural actuators at multiple acoustic, psychoacoustic and conceptual levels of music form, vibrant sonic morphologies may emerge from the quantum-like boundaries between them. In order to achieve that result, it is necessary to replace our primary focus of compositional attention from the Digital Audio Workstation sound transformation tools currently in vogue, with those that support algorithmic thinking at all levels of compositional design.

The Chicago Sound Show mounted by the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago invited a number of local artists to produce site-specific sound installations that revealed both the possibil...

With this article we want to offer a critical approach to participatory practices within sound art. To this end, we will analyse the work of two groups of sound artists who have placed participation and collaboration at the centre of their work and of their definition of sound art itself, using two very different approaches: Ultra-red and Escuchatorio. Both groups understand listening as a political action which always implies a relationship with others and with the environment. However, their very different ways of activating the collective listening may encourage us to consider how collaborative art is understood and practised at a time when the interest in participation from different artistic and cultural institutions (also political) keeps growing.By considering Escuchatorio and Ultra-red, we want to ask ourselves how it can be decisive who proposes to perform the sound action: whether it is a community in struggle or a group of artists, or a gallery/institution. Different proposers generate different receptors/participants and also different ways of understanding which values are at stake and how they are distributed. Who is able to participate and how it can be done entail different degrees of involvement, impact and barriers. For a specific group that meets in a specific place participatory art can foreground the differences between people who are close to each other (Ultra-red), whereas the participation of anyone who can use any type of recording device and upload recordings to the network emphasises the similarities between people who are otherwise strangers (the expanded radio of Escuchatorio).

To understand the emergence of new sound instruments through media technology, it is helpful to overcome the limitations of thought that arise from the history of European art music. The Western European cultural tradition of the instrumental production of sounds is almost opposite to the concept of sound art. It follows the tradition of abstraction from concrete sound in favor of melodic and later harmonic structure. Here an instrument is necessary tomake the signs of time and pitch of the written score (re-)sound. More precisely, the sound of an instrument is an accidental property of the tone, which is defined by its frequency, its pitch. Not until the twentieth century, with its emancipation of noise, did the paradigm of pitch leave the “universe of tone,” which contrasts with the “universe of sound.” The development of technical media of sonic writing, most of all the phono-graph, which for the first time made it possible to record acoustic events in their own sound, had a decisive influence on this change. To understand the emergence of new sound instruments through media technology, it is helpful toovercome the limitations of thought that arise from the history of European art music. TheWestern European cultural tradition of the instrumental production of sounds is almostopposite to the concept of sound art. It follows the tradition of abstraction from concretesound in favor of melodic and later harmonic structure. Here an instrument is necessary tomake the signs of time and pitch of the written score (re-)sound. More precisely, the soundof an instrument is an accidental property of the tone, which is defined by its frequency, itspitch. Not until the twentieth century, with its emancipation of noise, did the paradigm ofpitch leave the “universe of tone,” which contrasts with the “universe of sound.” Thedevelopment of technical media of sonic writing, most of all the phono-graph, which forthe first time made it possible to record acoustic events in their own sound, had a decisiveinfluence on this change.

This essay addresses the silences and soundings of Rebecca Belmore's (Anishinaabe) and Julie Nagam's (Anishinaabe/Métis/German/Syrian) sound art, which reflects their environmentalism and profound commitment to Indigenous ways of knowing, making, and listening. Working at the intersection of sound art and politics, the two perform sonic interventions into settler colonial spaces—the National Parks system and the gallery, respectively. Belmore's Wave Sound (2017) and Nagam's Our future is in the land: If we listen to it (2017) illustrate how their sound art gravitates toward the ecological and considers what healthy and unhealthy relationships between humans and the nonhuman world—plants, animals, resources—sound like. Belmore and Nagam introduce marginalized perspectives and voices to address the problematic authority of whiteness that conspicuously dominates the discourse on music, sound, and environment—a relatively homogenous and exclusionary artistic, technological, and scientific discussion.

Chapter in forthcoming 'Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art' Introduction The voice is produced and shaped by a body. When heard, it also suggests a body. This tension between the relationship of the voice and the body has been a productive force in the creation of a variety of works within sound arts. In previous publications I have investigated how women sound artists have used voice, both literally and metaphorically, in their work to challenge contemporary historical and contemporary cultural assumptions about women’s voices and the male normative within sound arts practice (Lane 2016). This was ignited by research into gender differences in the work produced by students of Sound Arts and Design at London College of Communication, a significant finding of which was that many female students used spoken voice in their work. Through an investigation of some of the ways that women’s voices have been demonized and ridiculed within the public sphere and the analysis of how voice was being used in works by sound artists Hildegard Westerkamp, Janet Cardiff, and Jasmeen Patheja the paper went on to conclude that “The act of using one’s own voice and language in one’s own way is a radical move within electroacoustic music and sound art and women sound artists use voices, their own and others, in ways that subvert commonly held historic, socio-cultural prejudices against the existence of women’s voices in public spaces. (Lane 2016, 109) In subsequent presentations (Lane 2017) this research has been extended and developed to consider some of the mechanisms by which some voices have been excluded from the sound arts canon through an uncritical acceptance of what Jennifer Stoever-Ackermann has termed our “raced, gendered, and historicized ‘listening ears’” (Stoever-Ackerman 2010) accompanied by an obedience to normative notions of attentive and “expert” listening. In recent work this has been further developed by investigating the ways that the separation of the voice from the body has offered ways of silencing women in the public sphere through likening them to animals, and also allowed artists such as Laurie Anderson to play with creating new persona through manipulation of the voice (Lane 2018). Examining works by a variety of contemporary artists who work primarily with sound, this chapter aims to look at how the voice and voiced sounds, such as audible breathing and other nonlinguistic utterances, are used to both express and investigate notions of intimacy and their relation to gender. I have chosen to group the works together according to the category of sound used in the work, namely the sounds of female sexual pleasure, breath, and voice. In each case, these sounds are used by the artists to explore or express significantly different aspects of intimate experience and their relationship to notions of public, private, and political. Of course the works share aspects in common that transcend the choice of sounding material and where possible these will be discussed in relation to each other. Artists whose works are discussed include: Anna Raimondo, Yashas Shetty, Annea Lockwood, Khaled Kaddal, Ansuman Biswas, Ain Bailey, Hildegarde Westerkamp, Tomoko Hojo, Viv Corringham and Mikhael Karikis.