This article aims to sketch a theory of sound sculpture, one that would explain the variety of forms this artistic practice might take on and define it in relation to other art forms. My hypothesis is that in order to do this we must focus on the traits of sound sculpture connecting it to music rather than on those separating the two. A useful instrument to analyse this connection is Harry Partch’s concept of corporeal music. In contrast to Western classical music, which he viewed as abstract and devoid of life, Partch envisioned a music that would emphasise the physicality of sound-making and engage the listener on a more visceral level. Investigating a number of works from all parts of the sound sculpture spectrum, I argue that all the various practices that comprise the art form present the core traits of Partch’s musical ideal (physicality of music, audience engagement, and unity of the sonic and the visual) to a substantial extent. Analysing sound sculpture in light of its connection to music brings to the fore a number of musical issues for which this new art form provides a new perspective. Among these are the agency of the composer and the listener, the function and nature of a score, as well as the role of technology in music-making. These issues, along with the general idea of corporeality of music, compose a discourse that transcends the boundaries of different subgenres of sound sculpture, allowing for theorisation of the art form as a whole.
Audience participation is a prominent thread running through much of sound art practice, yet it remains largely absent from the sound art scholarship. In this article, I argue that the most widespread methodologies employed in sound art research – roughly split into the phenomenological branch and the object-oriented branch – are ill equipped to tackle the questions of sociality and participation. Instead, I offer a framework for the study of participation in sound art – and, more broadly, for sound aesthetics in general – rooted in the pragmatist tradition. My starting point is John Dewey’s conceptualization of an artwork as an aesthetic experience developing in cycles of doing and undergoing – a structure, he claims, present in both the creative process and the reception of artworks, putting them on equal footing. I then expand this notion by turning to the contemporary pragmatist trends in creativity studies, ANT and affordance theory, introducing the concepts of we-creativity, mediation and affordance. The second half of the article focuses specifically on affordance – a relationship between a sound artwork and its audience delimiting and facilitating the possibilities for participation. I discuss the low-level affordances (facilitating elementary action) for creative listening and soundmaking and high-level affordances (facilitating complex behaviors) for creativity, experimentation and connectivity. I conclude that the pragmatist framework allows to go beyond the subject- or object-centeredness of phenomenological or object-oriented methodologies, bringing to the foreground the relational and social character of sound art.
This article makes an argument for the postcritical treatment of the politics of sound art. Counterpointing an autoethnographic analysis of Kristina Kubisch’s Electrical Walks with Seth Kim-Cohen’s critical reading of the same work, I show how a critical position detached from the lived experience leaves behind a wealth of meanings necessary to understand the political potential of sound art. This gap, I argue, necessitates a ‘radical empiricist’ approach shifting the focus from the artistic intent to the lived experiences of the audience and the effects sound art may have on their lives. Drawing on autoethnographic and ethnographic accounts of Kaffe Matthews’s sonic bike rides and Benoît Maubrey Speaker Sculptures, as well as Rita Felski’s project of postcritical reading, I develop a theoretical framework for the politics of sound art based around the concept of affordance. The term ‘affordance’ in this context refers to the possibilities of political meaning or political action an artwork offers to the participants without imposing a particular interpretation on them. I finish by discussing three aspects of political affordances in sound art: meaning-making, uses of sound art and access to participation.
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