Why does sound art remain so profoundly undertheorized, and why has it failed to generate a rich and compelling critical literature? It is because the prevailing theoretical models are inadequate to it. Developed to account for the textual and the visual, they fail to capture the nature of the sonic. In this article, the author proposes an alternative theoretical framework, a materialist account able to grasp the nature of sound and to enable analysis of the sonic arts. He suggests, moreover, that this theoretical account can provide a model for rethinking the arts in general and for avoiding the pitfalls encountered in theories of representation and signification.

This essay develops an ontology of sound and argues that sound art plays a crucial role in revealing this ontology. I argue for a conception of sound as a continuous, anonymous flux to which human expressions contribute but which precedes and exceeds these expressions. Developing Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's conception of the perceptual unconscious, I propose that this sonic flux is composed of two dimensions: a virtual dimension that I term 'noise' and an actual dimension that consists of contractions of this virtual continuum: for example, music and speech. Examining work by Max Neuhaus, Chris Kubick, Francisco Lopez and others, I suggest that the richest works of sound art help to disclose the virtual dimension of sound and its process of actualisation.

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Recent philosophical tendencies of “Actor-Network Theory,” “Object-Oriented Ontology,” and “Speculative Realism” have profoundly challenged the centrality of subjectivity in the humanities, and many artists and curators, particularly in the UK, Germany, and the United States, appear deeply influenced by this shift from epistemology to ontology. October editors asked artists, historians, and philosophers invested in these projects—from Graham Harman and Alexander R. Galloway to Armen Avanessian and Patricia Falguières to Ed Atkins and Amie Siegel—to explore what the rewards and risks of assigning agency to objects may be, and how, or if, such new materialisms can be productive for making and thinking about art today.

Music, Science, and the Interpretation of ExistenceNietzsche is among a handful of philosophers for whom music was a powerful force and an abiding influence. A pianist, improviser, and composer, he contemplated a career in music before abandoning it to pursue philology and philosophy. His stormy relationship with Richard Wagner -the man and his music -found ample expression in Nietzsche's philosophical writing, from his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, to one of his last, The Case of Wagner. And remarks on the music of Beethoven, Bizet, Berlioz, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Schumann, and others are sprinkled throughout Nietzsche's corpus. Late in his career, Nietzsche bluntly concluded: "Without music, life would be an error" (TI, "Maxims and Barbs," 33).But just what is music for Nietzsche? And what is it about music that he found so important and philosophically compelling? In a telling passage, he explains how one might wrongly answer these questions and, in so doing, suggests the route to a more adequate response. Entitled " 'Science' as Prejudice," section 373 of The Gay Science is framed by the claim that "scholars, insofar as they belong to the spiritual middle class, can never catch sight of the really great problems and question marks." Among such scholars, one particular group is singled out for its intellectual inadequacy:[S]o many materialistic natural scientists rest content nowadays [with] the faith in a world that is supposed to have its equivalent and its measure in human thought and human valuations -a "world of truth" that can be mastered completely and forever with the aid of our square little reason. What? Do we really want to permit existence to be degraded for us like this -reduced to a mere exercise for a calculator and an indoor diversion for mathematicians? Above all, one should not wish to divest existence of its rich ambiguity: that is a dictate of good taste, gentlemen, the taste of reverence for everything that lies beyond your horizon. That the only justifiable interpretation of the world should be one in which you are justified because one can continue to work and do research scientifically in your sense (you really mean, mechanistically?) -an interpretation that permits counting, calculating, weighing, seeing, and touching, and nothing more -that is a crudity and naivety, assuming that it is not a mental illness, an idiocy. Would it not be rather probable that, conversely, precisely the most superficial and external aspect of existence -what is most apparent, its skin and sensualization -would be grasped first