Re: Re: [microsound] re: wrong kiosk .. list on the exhibition

[suckaphish@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

I have to say I agree with you Julian - the boundaries of sound art and music are too blurred to make heavy distinctions... so many techniques, formal aesthetic and conceptual have been pioneered by artists and musifcians alike, and incorporated into both visual and sonic arts. There's often an attitude in sound art discourse that somehow sound art stands above and beyond 'music' - most of the time, sound art that makes lengths to define itself as sound art is often the most uninspoiring and non innovative sound (for me anyway). A lot of the sounds I produce end up in musical forms and structures, this is a language I find very effective speaking - tho my interests and inspiration often comes from sound art, visual arts and the various discourses within.... its cross pollination, as art forms become more blurred, some are trying to grab on tight to some definition of what art is, and how it is different from everything else, even when it co-opts and absorbs other forms - you know, it
still has to be art, and its not music, its not theatre, its not cinema blkah blah blah... Im actually excited to see boundaries collapse between these forms - of courser there will always be art that is art, and music that is just music, and cinema that is just cinema - buit those grey areas are a lot more interesting to me, swingin back and forth.... but maybe Im just a genre whore...

peas

EjEss
>
> From: Julian Knowles <julianknowles@xxxxxxx>
> Date: 15/01/2004 13:24:02
> To: microsound <microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: [microsound] re: wrong kiosk .. list on the exhibition
>
> On Thursday, January 15, 2004, at 12:42  PM, dunja kukovec wrote:
>
> >
> > am an art historian. if you all realized there has been a great
> > interest in the last couple of years in  the 'sound art' and in the
> > sound and music itself.
> >
> > my view:
> > so sound art, with historical connotations (because of the rigid
> > combination of sound and art, and its long history in the previous
> > century)
>
> ?
>
> Are you saying that 'sound art' history only goes back to the 20thC?
>
> Please understand I am being deliberately provocative here, not so much
> to be 'difficult' or annoying'. but in order to provoke some debate.. It
> seems that you are inferring that there is some difference between
> 'sound art' and 'music'? Perhaps I have misinterpreted your post.
>
>
> > for me means the xperiments with frequency, tonality..be whatever
> > formal aspect..so it is more formalistic..as it also has historical
> > connotations.
> >
> > so now in 004 all the other things with the sound, music, tools, open
> > source, rave parties as everyday protest etc online publishing and
> > distribution.. the social aesthetic is beside formal aestehic..so here
> > we go with ungrasping definitions..of what today a 'sound art' is..
>
> I don't think anyone knows... At the risk of being called a cynic (or
> deliberately provocative!!) , I would say it is music made by people
> who, for whatever reason, are uncomfortable calling themselves
> /musicians'. I wrote a paper about this issue in the mid 90s to
> coincide with a major sound art exhibition here called 'Sound in
> Space'. At the time I saw the difference between sound art and music as
> ideologically framed and based on a desire for the visual arts world to
> obtain some 'ownership' and perceived credibility in the presentation
> of 'music' events. Call me a hard liner, but I just could not see any
> evidence to the contrary. I would be interested in someone explaining
> to me the difference between sound art and music... That said, the main
> problem I have with people attempting to cleave off sound art from
> music is the effect that it has on discourse,... It seems to me that
> cleaving off 'sound art' from 'music' runs the risk of promoting an
> ahistorical approach to understanding contemporary music practices and
> seems to elicit a swathe of wild claims that all kinds of 'experimental
> sound art' practices demonstrate 'new', approaches.  What I have
> noticed, is that the most vigorous proponents of the 'sound art' term
> often exhibit the weakest understandings of music history.  It seems to
> me that to comfortably use the term 'sound art' as distinct from
> 'music'  one needs to  to have a somewhat distorted position on, or
> selective view of, music history. A lot of digital art theory has this
> tendency. Is this the result of the more extensive power base of the
> visual arts in the digital/new media world? Was that a rhetorical
> question? (!!!!)
>
> That said, I would say that many 'art music' institutions aided and
> abetted this practice by being so ridiculously narrow minded and
> insular in their own approach to programming and support. So I would
> see it as a convergence of forces. This is perhaps tangential to the
> original question, but it is an issue which continues to bug me, as I
> listen to the discourse surrounding new electronic music practice (or
> indeed 'sound art' or 'experimental audio practice' or substitute
> whatever 'non-music word' you like...)
>
>
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