Week 13

SOUND ART AND SCULPTURE                                                             

Artists’ and architects’ sound installations and sonic sculptures. Works studied may include those of Maryanne Amacher (Sound Characters, Volume: Bed of Sound, Videotaped interview w/ New Musicbox), Laurie Anderson, Mark Bain, Maja Bajevic, Michael Brewster, Janet Cardiff, Trisha Donnelly (2005 Artpace exhibition,) Brian Eno, Bill Fontana (Resoundings), Christina Kubisch, Hans Peter Kuhn, Bernhard Leitner, Skip Leivsay, Alvin Lucier (Volume: Bed of Sound, Interview w/ pianist Thomas Moore, I am sitting in a room, IASIAR on Ubuweb), Jennifer & Kevin McCoy, Paul Miller, Robin Minard, Max Neuhaus, Bruce Odland, Steve Roden, Murray Shafer, Barry Truax, Richard Teitlebaum, Trimpin, Ultrared, Stephen Vitiello, Achim Wollscheid, Iannis Xenakis, composer Lutz Glandien and architect Malte Lueders.

• Brandon LaBelle & Steve Roden, Eds., Site of Sound: of Architecture & the Ear (Errant Bodies Press, 1999).
• Brandon LaBelle, Site Specific Sound (Errant Bodies Press, 2004).(unavailable, too costly)
• Andra McCartney, “Soundscape Works, Listening, and the Touch of Sound” In Jim Drobnick, Ed., Aural Cultures (YYZ Books, 2004): 179-185.  
• Following are in class files
• Maryanne Amacher, “Synaptic Island” In Elizabeth Martin, Ed., Architecture as a Translation of Music (Princeton Architectural Press (Pamphlet Architecture 16), 1994): 32-35.(requested ILL)
• Zeug Design, “Instrument as Architecture” In Elizabeth Martin, Ed., Architecture as a Translation of Music (Princeton Architectural Press (Pamphlet Architecture 16), 1994): 50-54. 
• Ellen Fullman, “Sonic Space of the Long-Stringed Instrument” In Elizabeth Martin, Ed., Architecture as a Translation of Music (Princeton Architectural Press (Pamphlet Architecture 16), 1994): 46-49.  (personal library)

Supplemental Readings:

• Helga de la Motte-Haber, Ed., Klangkunst:  Tönende Objekte und klingende Räume.
• Helga de la Motte, Bernhard Leitner, Bernd Schultz, Eds., Resonaces (Kehrer Verlag, 2003).
• Terry Fox, Eva Schmidt, Bernd Schulz, Eds., Works with Sound (Kehrer Verlag, 2003).
• Douglas Kahn, Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (MIT, 2001).
• Robin Minard, Helga de la Motte, Silent Music (Kehrer Verlag, 2003).
• Ken Erlich & Brandon LaBelle, Eds., Surface Tension: Problematics of Site (Errant Bodies Press, 2003).
• MASSMoCA, "In Your Ear: Hearing Art in the 21st Century" Sound Art @ MASS MoCA
• N.B. Aldrich, "What is Sound Art?" The EMF Institute
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Links:

• Ann Hamilton: corpus, on Art:21
• Ben Rubin's Ear Studio; Metropolis article
• Diapason Gallery, devoted to sound art
• Experimental Studio of Slovak Radio, "Radio Art"
• Jody Elff (not working)
• Medien Kunst Netz, "Audio Art" 
• Netherlands Media Art Institute techno2 exhibition
• New Adventures in Sound Art
• New Sound New York 2004; NSNY programs on WNYC
• Not for Sale: New Media and Sound, Panel @ NYU, 4/21/05
• Quiet American's Sound Art Resources
• RadioDays
• SFMoMA's 6th Annual Activating the Medium Festival, 2003
• Silophone, from the New Museum's 2001 Emplacement/Déplacement, Location/Dislocation Exhibition
• Slowscan:Soundave installation
• Sonic Architecture: interactive sculptural environments
• Sound Art class @ MICA
• Sound Art/Installation Resource
• Tara Rogers' "History of Sonic Art" course @ SMFA Boston & bibliography
• ubuweb: historical and contemporary sound art
• White Noise | White Light, Athens 2004 

This week's readings are a collection of writings and links that introduce a variety of sound artists who work in special consideration of space, as opposed to, for example, narrative.The realm of space and sound seems necessarily more abstract rather than sequential, although it is unclear if that is an essential aspect of this kind of art.

Maryanne Amacher, for example, works to alter the sensory perception in various ways. While I was familiar with her piece "Head Rhythm," "Synaptic Island" covers a similar kind of terrain. The vibrations play inside one's body cavities. You are, in fact, the instrument and the vibrations create a kind of sonographic map of your body. These kinds of experiments with space, with the body, are the most interesting to me in the collection, "Architecture as a translation of Music."

Somehow the fact that Amacher uses the body makes the exploration of the mathematical properties of sound(she explains in the article how middle C usually only transmits at 4 feet, and in her manipulation of space you can feel it at 20 feet) more personal, less meaningless. As I move away from the territory of narrative into abstract sound works I often feel uncomfortable-are these gratuitous exercises?

For example, Zeug Design's "Freeway as Instrument" reads more like a joke than a real proposal for a sound art piece. Perhaps that is the point, that freeways create unintentional sound that is unpleasant, why can't freeways create intentional sound that is pleasant? But isn't almost any sound unpleasant after a time? Andrea McCartney's essay brings a counterpoint- soundwalks help us see how freeways are music and inspiration for new music, in a quote by James Tenney, 

"From this image, then, of traffic noises – and especially those heard in the tunnel, where theover-all sonority is richer, denser, and the changes are mostly very gradual – I began to conceive a musical composition that not only used sound elements similar to these, but manifested similarly gradual changes in sonority. I thought also of the sound of the ocean surf –
in many ways like the traffic sounds"

In some ways, even after exploring many sculptural works, I feel stuck thinking about sound as inspiration for more sound, or as completion of narrative- not sound as an interpretation of space. Perhaps as a musical person, creating sound is integral to what I want to feel and experience. Sound as architecture or sound as sculpture makes material something that I want to be in process with.