Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T03:15:46.997Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Politics of Sound and the Biopolitics of Music: Weaving together sound-making, irreducible listening, and the physical and cultural environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2015

Agostino Di Scipio
Agostino Di Scipio*
Affiliation:
Via Salaria Antica Est 33/a, 67100, L’Aquila, Italy
*
Email: discipio@tin.it
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The ever-increasing focus on sound in recent creative practices has ideological implications and seems to reframe and problematise ontological perspectives on music. Today it is possible to contrast notions of music as identical with sound (as in the discursive framework of ‘audio culture’) with artistic practices where sound and music are not at all identical, and the usually implicit hierarchy between them is probably twisted. This article discusses such matters from a methodological position that weaves together issues usually discussed in different areas of concern: it understands ecologically informed notions of sound and auditory experience as strictly intertwined with critical and inventive attitudes on technology, particularly as their intertwining is elaborated through performative practices. It suggests that, in music as well as in sound art, what we hear as sound and in sound is the dynamics of an ecology of situated and mediated actions, as a process that binds together (1) human beings (practitioners and listeners, their auditory inclinations), (2) technical agencies (the domain where means and ends are dialectically negotiated as practitioners strive to achieve a certain freedom in action across the public space of technological mediations and delegations) and (3) the environment (the physical and cultural context where sound-making and listening practices take place). The general idea is that the manners by which we shape up our relationship to sound and appropriate the technical mediations involved in working with it, are of biopolitical relevance for social endeavours that might (still) be ‘music’

Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 20 , Issue 3: Aesthetic Radicalism, Future and Past , December 2015 , pp. 278 - 289
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agamben, G. 1995. Homo Sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita. Torino: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Agamben, G. 1996. Mezzi senza fine. Note sulla politica. Bollati-Boringhieri: Torino.Google Scholar
Agamben, G. 2006. Che cos’è un dispositivo? Rome: Nottetempo.Google Scholar
Althusser, L. 1969. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (notes towards an investigation). In L. Althusser (ed.) Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays. London: NLB.Google Scholar
Auinger, S. and Odland, B. 2009. Reflections on the Sonic Commons. Leonardo Music Journal 19: 63–68.Google Scholar
Balzano, G. J. 1986. What are Musical Pitch and Timbre? Music Perception 3: 297–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Born, G. 2005. On Musical Mediation: Ontology, Technology and Creativity. Twentieth-century Music 2: 7–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bull, M. and Back, L. (eds.) 2003. The Auditory Culture Reader. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Bussolini, J. 2010. What is a dispositif? Foucault Studies 10: 85–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, C. 2011. Beyond Representation and Signification: Toward a Sonic Materialism. Journal of Visual Culture 10(2): 145–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, C. and Warner, D. (eds.) 2004. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. New York: Continuum Press.Google Scholar
Croft, J. 2007. Theses on Liveness. Organised Sound 12(1): 59–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Demers, J. 2010. Listening through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Scipio, A. 1998. Questions Concerning Music Technology. Angelaki. Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 3(2): 31–40.Google Scholar
Di Scipio, A. 2003. Sound is the Interface. From ‘Interactive’ to ‘Ecosystemic’ Signal Processing. Organised Sound 8(3): 269–277.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Scipio, A. 2006. Mediation and Responsibility, in Sound. Questions and Statements on ‘Music Technology and Society’. Actas del Congreso Internacional de Musica y Tecnologia Contemporaneas, Universidad de Sevilla (no pagination, CD rom publication).Google Scholar
Di Scipio, A. 2008. Émergence du son, son d’émergence. Essai d’épistemologie expérimentale par un compositeur. Intellectica – Revue de l’Association pour la Recherche Cognitive (Paris) 48/49: 221–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Scipio, A. 2011. Listening to Yourself through the Otherself. On Background Noise Study and other Works. Organized Sound 16(2): 97–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Scipio, A. 2012. Il suono come dono non disinteressato. Spunti per una biopolitica della musica. In L. M. Sicca (ed.) I linguaggi dell'organizzare. Musica e testo tra dono e disinteresse. Napoli: Editoriale Scientifica.Google Scholar
Di Scipio, A. 2014a. Sound Object? Sound Event! Ideologies of Sound and the Biopolitics of Music. Soundscape. The Journal of Acoustic Ecology 13(1): 10–14.Google Scholar
Di Scipio, A. 2014b. A Constructivist Gesture of Deconstruction. Sound as a Cognitive Medium. Contemporary Music Review 33(1): 87–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Scipio, A. 2015a. The Ideology of the Sound Object: A Cognitive Inversion (notes for the biopolitics of music). Paper presentation at the international conference Compositional Aesthetics and the Political, Goldsmith College, University of London, 20–22 February.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Di Scipio, A. 2015b. Dwelling in a Field of Sonic Relationships. ‘Instrument’ and ‘Listening’ in an Ecosystemic View of Live Electronics Performance. In F. Sallis, L. Zattra, I. Burleigh and V. Bertolani (eds.) Live Electronic Music: Composition, Performance, Study. New York: Routledge (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Döbereiner, L. 2014. How to Think Sound in Itself? Towards a Materialist Dialectic of Sound. In Proceedings of the 2014 Electroacoustic Music Studies Network Conference. www.ems-network.org/spip.php?article374 (accessed 26 August 2015).Google Scholar
Dunn, D. 2007. Untitled Conversation with Steven M. Miller. Soundscape. The Journal of Acoustic Ecology 7(1): 13–18.Google Scholar
Emmerson, S. 2007. Where Next? New Music, New Musicology. Proceedings of the 2007 Electroacoustic Music Studies Network Conference. www.ems-network.org/spip.php?article293 (accessed 26 August 2015).Google Scholar
Erlmann, V. (ed.) 2004. Hearing Cultures: Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Farnell, A. 2010. Designing Sound. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Feenberg, A. 1991. Critical Theory of Technology. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Feenberg, A. 1995. Subversive Rationalization: Technology, Power, and Democracy. In A. Feenberg and A. Hannay (eds.) The Politics of Knowledge. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. 2003. Society Must be Defended. Lectures at the Collège de France 1975–76. New York: Picador.Google Scholar
Gaver, W. W. 1993. What in the World do we Hear? An Ecological Approach to Auditory Source Perception. Ecological Psychology 5(1): 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Godøy, R. I. 2001. Imagined Action, Excitation, and Resonance. In R. I. Godøy and H. Jørgensen (eds.) Musical Imagery. Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.Google Scholar
Goguen, J. 2004. Musical Qualia, Context, Time, and Emotion. Journal of Consciousness Studies 11(3/4): 117–147.Google Scholar
Green, O. 2013. User Serviceable Parts. Practice, Technology, Sociality and Method in Live Electronic Musicking. PhD thesis, City University, London.Google Scholar
Guattari, F. 1989. Les trois écologies. Paris: Galilée.Google Scholar
Handel, S. 1995. Timbre Perception and Auditory Object Identification. In B. C. J. Moore (ed.) Hearing. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Hallam, H. 2012. The Production of Listening: On Biopolitical Sound and the Commonplaces of Aurality. Journal of Sonic Studies, 2(1), no pagination. journal.sonicstudies.org/vol02/nr01/a07 (accessed 26 August 2015).Google Scholar
Heidegger, M. 1977. The Question Concerning Technology. New York: Harper and Row (orig. pub. Vorträge und Aufsätze, 1954).Google Scholar
Impett, J. 1998. The Identification and Transposition of Authentic Instruments: Musical Practice and Technology. Leonardo Music Journal 8: 21–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T. 2011. Being Alive. Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jameson, F. 1991. Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Janz, T. 2010. Qualia, Sound, Ereignis. Musik-theoretische Herausforderungen in phänomnologischer Perspektive. In T. Janz and J. P. Sprick (eds.) Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie – Sonderausgabe 2010. Hildesheim: Olms.Google Scholar
Kane, B. 2007. L’Objet Sonore Maintenant: Pierre Schaeffer, Sound Objects and the Phenomenological Reduction. Organised Sound 12(1): 15–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kane, B. 2013. Musicophobia, or Sound Art and the Demands of Art Theory. nonsite.org, 8, n.p. http://nonsite.org/issue-8-the-music-issue (accessed 26 August 2015.Google Scholar
Kane, B. 2014. Sound Unseen. Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim-Cohen, S. 2009. In the Blink of an Ear: Toward a Non-Cochlear Sonic Art. New York: Continuum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krueger, J. W. 2009. Enacting Musical Experience. Journal of Consciousness Studies 16(2/3): 98–123.Google Scholar
Landy, L. 2007. Understanding the Art of Sound Organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mersch, D. 2002. Ereignis und Aura. Untersuchung zu einer Ästhetik des Performativen. Frankfurt: Surkhamp Verlag.Google Scholar
Miller, W. 1993. Silence in the Contemporary Soundscape. Master’s thesis, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC.Google Scholar
Mol, A. 1999. Ontological Politics: A Word and some Questions. The Sociological Review 46(1): 74–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molino, J. 1999. La musique et l’objet. In (no editors credited) Ouïr, entendre, écouter, comprendre après Schaeffer. Paris: Buchet/Chastel.Google Scholar
Morin, E. 2007. Restricted Complexity, General Complexity. In C. Gershenson, D. Aerts and B. Edmonds (eds.) Worldviews, Science and Us, Philosophy and Complexity. London: World Scientific.Google Scholar
Negri, A. and Hardt, M. 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press (Harvard University Press).Google Scholar
O’Callaghan, C. 2010. Constructuring a Theory of Sounds. Oxford Studies in Metaphysics 5: 247–270.Google Scholar
Rocchesso, D. and Fontana, F.. (eds.) 2003. The Sounding Object. Firenze: Mondo Estremo. www.soundobject.org/SObBook/SObBook_JUL03.pdf (accessed 26 August 2015).Google Scholar
Rosenblum, L. D. 2004. Perceiving Articulatory Events: Lessons for an Ecological Psychoacoustics. In J. G. Neuhoff (ed.) Ecological Psychoacoustics. San Diego: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Schaeffer, P. 1966. Traité des Objets Musicaux. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.Google Scholar
Schafer, R. M. 1969. The New Soundscape. Scarborough, Ontario: Berandolo Music.Google Scholar
Smalley, R. 1997. Spectromorphology: Explaining Sound Shapes. Organised Sound 2(2): 107–126.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solomos, M. 1999. Schaeffer phénoménologue. In (no editors credited) Ouïr, entendre, écouter, comprendre après Schaeffer. Paris: Buchet/Chastel.Google Scholar
Solomos, M. 2008. Bruits ‘entonnés’ et sons ‘convenables’: Russolo et Schaeffer ou la domestication des bruits. Filigrane 7: 133–148.Google Scholar
Solomos, M. 2013. De la musique au son. L’émergence du son dans la musique des XXe–XXIe siècles. Rennes: Presses Univesitaires de Rennes.Google Scholar
Teruggi, D. 2007. Technology and Musique Concrète: The Technical Developments of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales and their Implication in Musical Composition. Organised Sound 12(3): 213–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Voegelin, S. 2010. Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. New York: Continuum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waters, S. 2007. Performance Ecosystems: Ecological Approaches to Musical Interaction. Proceedings of the 2007 Electroacoustic Music Studies Network. www.ems-network.org/spip.php?article278 (accessed 26 August 2015.Google Scholar
Waters, S.. (ed.) 2011. Performance Ecosystems. Special issue of Organised Sound 16(2): 134–144.Google Scholar
Waters, S. 2013. Touching at a Distance: Resistance, Tactility, Proxemics and the Development of a Hybrid Virtual/Physical Performance System. Contemporary Music Review 32(2/3): 119–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Westerkamp, H. 1988. Listening and Soundmaking. A Study of Music-as-Environment. Master’s thesis, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC.Google Scholar