Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c47g7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T11:03:36.901Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Dead Logics and Worlds: Sound art and sonorous objects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2015

Martyn Hudson  and
Tim Shaw
Martyn Hudson*
Affiliation:
Culture Lab, Newcastle University, Grand Assembly Rooms, King’s Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE1 7RU
Tim Shaw
Affiliation:
Culture Lab, Newcastle University, Grand Assembly Rooms, King’s Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear NE1 7RU
*
*Email: Martyn.hudson@newcastle.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

From the early experimentation with specific sounds in musique concrète (Palombini 1999) to the ‘anecdotal’ music of Luc Ferrari (1996) and the ecological sound activism of Hildegard Westerkamp (2002), the collecting, composition and recomposition of sonorous objects has been central to sound practice. Some sound art has privileged a relationship with visual arts and the structuring of objects in curated spaces (Licht 2007), others with the sound worlds beyond the exhibition (Schafer 1994). By examining a specific sound art installation, Sound and Seclusion by Tim Shaw, this article reworks the idea of sonorous objects as artefacts displaying different kinds of representations, knowledges or data. This question of sonorous ‘knowledge-objects’ is particularly important as ‘collected sounds’ become incorporated into compositions away from their, often remote, spatio-temporal origin out there in the landscape. This article raises three areas for discussion. First, what can sonorous objects tell us about the pre-compositional world (Impett 2007)? Second, in what ways can we understand sonorous objects as they are reworked in compositions which re-narrate them? Third, how can we understand sonorous objects as traces and pieces of data as well as aesthetic productions? The article concludes with a case for reworking the very idea of a sonorous object in sound practices as a product of dead logics and dead worlds as it emerges in new ensembles of composition away from its origin.

Type
Articles
Information
Organised Sound , Volume 20 , Special Issue 2: Sound Art and Music, Historical Continuum and Mimetic Fissures , August 2015 , pp. 263 - 272
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

Adorno, T. W. 1989. Introduction to the Sociology of Music. Trans E. B. Ashton. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Andean, J. 2010. The Musical-Narrative Dichotomy: Sweet Anticipation and Some Implications for Acousmatic Music. Organised Sound 15(2): 107–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bartholomew, D. 1989. Preamble to a Phenomenology of Music. In F. Joseph Smith (ed.) Understanding the Musical Experience. New York: Gordon and Breach.Google Scholar
Bowers, J and Shaw, T. 2014. Reappropriating Museum Collections: Performing Geology Specimens and Meterology Data as New Instruments for Musical Expression. Proceedings of the 2014 New Interfaces for Musical Expression. London: Goldsmiths, University of London.Google Scholar
Brassier, R. 2007. Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bryant, L. R. 2011. The Ontic Principle: Outline of an Object-Oriented Ontology. In L.R. Bryant, N. Srnicek and G. Harman (eds.) The Speculative Turn: Continental Materialism and Realism. Melbourne: Re.press.Google Scholar
Causton, R. 1995. Berio’s ‘Visage’ and the Theatre of Electroacoustic Music. Tempo 194: 15–21.Google Scholar
Caux, J. 2012. Almost Nothing with Luc Ferrari. Trans J. Hansen. Berlin: Errant Bodies.Google Scholar
Cremaschi, A. and Giomi, F. 2004. Parrole: Berio’s Words On Music Technology. Computer Music Journal 28(1): 26–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DeNora, T. 2003. After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dominguez Rubio, F. and Silva, E. 2013. Materials in the Field: Object-trajectories and Object-positions in the Field of Contemporary Art. Cultural Sociology 7(2): 161–178.Google Scholar
Eco, U. 1989. The Open Work. Trans. A. Cancogni. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Emmerson, S. 1986. The Relation of Language to Materials. In S. Emmerson (ed.) The Language of Electroacoustic Music. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferrari, L. 1996. I Was Running in So Many Different Directions. Contemporary Music Review 15(1–2): 95–102.Google Scholar
Garro, D. 2012. From Sonic Art to Visual Music: Divergences, Convergences, Intersections. Organised Sound 17(2): 103–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giomi, F., Meacci, D. and Schwoon, K. 2003. Live Electronics in Luciano Berio’s Music. Computer Music Journal 27(2): 30–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harman, G. 2002. Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects. New York: Open Court.Google Scholar
Harman, G. 2009. Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics. Melbourne: Re.press.Google Scholar
Harman, G. 2011. Autonomous Objects. New Formations 71: 125–130.Google Scholar
Hennion, A. 2008. The Musicalisation of the Visual Arts. Music, Sound and the Moving Image 2(2): 175–182.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, M. 2000. The Clerk of the Forester’s Records: John Berger, the Dead, and the Writing of History. Rethinking History 4(3): 261–279.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, M. 2002. On the Dead of World History. Race and Class 43(4): 26–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, M. 2014a. What, am I Hearing Light? Listening through Jean-Luc Nancy. HZ Journal 19. /www.hz-journal.org/n19/hudson.html (accessed 26 July 2014).Google Scholar
Hudson, M. 2014b. Music, Knowledge and the Sociology of Sound. Sociological Research Online 19(4), 2. www.socresonline.org.uk/19/4/2.html (accessed 08 December 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, M. 2015. Archive, Sound and Landscape in Richard Skelton’s Landings Sequence. Landscapes 16(1).Google Scholar
Impett, J. 2007. Shadow Boxing: Sequenza X for Trumpet and Piano Resonance. In J. K. Halfyard (ed.) Berio’s Sequenzas: Essays on Performance, Composition and Analysis. Farnham: Ashgate.Google Scholar
Ingold, T. 2007. Lines: A Brief history. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingold, T. 2011. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendall, G. S. 2010a. Meaning in Electroacoustic Music and the Everyday Mind. Organised Sound 15(1): 63–74.Google Scholar
Kendall, G. S. 2010b. Spatial Perception and Cognition in Multichannel Audio for Electroacoustic Music. Organised Sound 15(3): 228–238.Google Scholar
Kolber, D. 2002. Hildegard Westerkamp’s Kits Beach Soundwalk: Shifting Perspectives in Real World Music. Organised Sound 7(1): 41–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
LaBelle, B. 2007. Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Landy, L. 1991. What’s the Matter with Today’s Experimental Music? Organized Sound Too Rarely Heard. Chur: Harwood.Google Scholar
Landy, L. 2007. Understanding the Art of Sound Organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Licht, A. 2007. Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories. New York: Rizzoli.Google Scholar
Lynch, M. 1985. Discipline and the Material Form of Images: An Analysis of Scientific Visibility. Social Studies of Science 15: 37–66.Google Scholar
McCartney, A. 2000. Hildegard Westerkamp’s Moments of Laughter: Recording Childhood, Performing Motherhood, Refusing to Shut Up, and Laughing. Perspectives of New Music 38(1): 101–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meillassoux, Q. 2008. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. Trans. R. Brassier. London: Continuum.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, S. F. 2005. Sensing the Place: Sounds and Landscape Perception. In D.W. Bailey, A. Whittle and V.M. Cummings (eds.) (Un)settling the Neolithic. Oxford: Oxbow Books.Google Scholar
Mills, S. F. 2014. Auditory Archaeology: Understanding Sound and Hearing in the Past. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.Google Scholar
Osmond-Smith, D. 1985. Playing on Words: A Guide to Luciano Berio’s Sinfonia. London: Royal Musical Association Monographs, no. 1.Google Scholar
Palombini, C. 1999. Musique Concrète Revisited. Electronic Musicological Review 4(June). www.rem.ufpr.br/_REM/REMv4/vol4/arti-palombini.htm (accessed 12 December 2014).Google Scholar
Pearson, M. and Shanks, M. 2001. Theatre/Archaeology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Parmar, R. 2012. The Garden of Adumbrations: Reimagining Environmental Composition. Organised Sound 17(3): 202–210.Google Scholar
Robindoré, B. and Ferrari, L. 1998. Luc Ferrari: Interview with an Intimate Iconoclast. Computer Music Journal 22(3): 8–16.Google Scholar
Schafer, R. M. 1994. Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester: Destiny Books.Google Scholar
Shaw, T. 2013. Sound and Seclusion. http: //tim-shaw.net/sound-and-seclusion/ (accessed 8 September 2014).Google Scholar
Steiner, G. 1972. Extra-Territorial: Papers on Literature and the Language Revolution. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, T. 1998. Music and Ideology: Notes Towards a Sociosemiotics of Mass Media Music. Popular Music and Society 22(4): 25–54.Google Scholar
Voegelin, S. 2010. Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Westerkamp, H. 2002. Linking Soundscape Composition and Acoustic Ecology. Organised Sound 7(1): 51–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wishart, T. 1986. Sound Symbols and Landscapes. In S. Emmerson (ed.) The Language of Electroacoustic Music. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Wishart, T. (ed.) 1996. On Sonic Art. New and rev. edn by Simon Emmerson. Amsterdam: Harwood.Google Scholar