RE: [microsound] sound art / music

[Josh Harris <mashoogana@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

In addition, they can coexist within each other either intentionally or in completely stochastic, chaotic events. 


----------------------------------------
> From: bruce@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2008 15:09:24 -0400
> To: microsound@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [microsound] sound art / music
> 
> well put, andrew. you delineated a lot of my own thinking in a nicely  
> direct and clear way. for me, discovering John Cage back in the late  
> 60's was formative - having been both an artist and musician since  
> before i can remember, i had struggled for years to create contexts  
> for them to co-exist. (i guess i'm something of a synaesthete.) Cage  
> broke those boundaries for me, and i ended up getting my master's in  
> multimedia back in the late 70's, when that term meant "performance/ 
> installation/video/sound/whatever". it didn't hurt that i was  
> studying at Rutgers University in New Jersey, known affectionately as  
> the "Fluxus Rest Home", the teaching staff being populated by a  
> number of distinguished Fluxus artists such as Bob Watts, Geoff  
> Hendricks, Dan Goode and Phil Corner, all of whom played a role in  
> showing me a path that wound around all of the obstructions of  
> classifications.
> cheers
> b
> 
> On Oct 22, 2008, at 2:31 PM, Andrew Benson wrote:
> 
>> For me, the distinction is so much about context and the intention  
>> of the maker and audience expectation.  For example, I come from a  
>> fine arts background and have studied the formal aspects of sound  
>> in great detail and experimented with sonification in various forms  
>> for several years, and use that knowledge to create performative  
>> and installation works of sound (as well as other media).  I don't  
>> use the term 'music' to describe my work because to call it music  
>> would be to draw attention away from the site-specificity, the  
>> physical relationships involved in the performance, the context of  
>> the sound, and other aspects that are integral parts of my artistic  
>> intentions.   While there may be certain features of my work that  
>> engage musicality, I have no interest in producing music proper.   
>> There are audience expectations and critical foundations that have  
>> been established for the reception of music over centuries, and I  
>> simply don't think that it is necessary to force sound art to be  
>> music or for music to be sound art.  They of course share a common  
>> history, a common set of tools, a lot of common practitioners and  
>> exchange, and nobody can deny the importance of sound artists  
>> understanding music as another type of organized sound, but the  
>> critique and reception of each is different.  However vague the  
>> distinction may seem, it is important to respect the specific  
>> context that an artist works within as being part of our experience  
>> and expectations of their work.  That said, I don't think anyone is  
>> interesting in drawing a thick black line between the two  
>> practices, as exchange between the two can only foster higher- 
>> quality and more thoughtful work in each. Anyways, I am happy to  
>> see this topic discussed as part of the microsound discourse, and  
>> look forward to more thoughtful discussion on the matter.  As an  
>> educator, I find that posing these types of questions to students  
>> is a useful way to draw out underlying preconceptions and biases  
>> about the use of sound.
>>
>> Best,
>> Andrew Benson
>>>> Hello All,
>>>>
>>>> So, I have a basic -- and perhaps naïve -- question for the  
>>>> group: what is
>>>> the difference between sound art and music?
>>>>
>>>> Kim's remark about microsound being a philosophical position  
>>>> within sound
>>>> art sparked this question for me. I'm pretty sure there's no  
>>>> absolute
>>>> distinction we can make, but I'm ignorant about what the common
>>>> distinctions
>>>> are.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for any help,
>>>> -greg
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>>
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> 
> bruce tovsky
> www.skeletonhome.com
> 
> "Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it.."
> Philip K. Dick
> 

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