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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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