Introduction to Sound By Artists

The desire to compile this anthology was driven by the noticeable lack of information and critical analysis regarding an art of sound. Although there has been an abundance of activity centred around explorations into sonic expression, there is no sound art movement, as such. In relation to artists' works, sound occupies a multitude of functions and its employment is often coupled with other media, both static and time-based. As a result, it is not possible to articulate a distinct grouping of sound artists in the way one is able to identify other art practices. As the reader will discover, the ideas and projects put forth between the covers of this book are diverse and at times at odds with one another. The contributors included span many disciplines: critic, curator, writer, composer, video artist, installation artist, visual artist, performance artist and some more aptly described as sound, audio or radio artist. Sound By Artists is a collection of information pertaining to a disparate art form, presented in the hopes of stimulating dialogue.

The terms experimental music and sound art are considered by some to be synonymous and interchangeable. In fact, it is difficult to identify an art of sound precisely because of its historical attachment to music. Although music is sound, the tendency has been to designate the entire range of sonic phenomenon to the realm of music. With the introduction of noise -- the sounds of life -- into a compositional framework, tending towards the ephemeral and avoiding the referential, artists and composers have created works based on the assumption that all sounds uttered are music. Futurist Luigi Russolo, envisioning an all-inclusive music, states in The Art of Noises: Futurist Manifesto (1913) that:

We want to give pitches to these diverse noises, regulating them harmonically and rhythmically. Giving pitch to noises does not mean depriving them of all irregular movements and vibrations of time and intensity, but rather assigning a degree or pitch to the strongest and most prominent of these vibrations. Noise differs from sound, in fact, only to the extent that the vibrations that produce it are confused and irregular. Every noise has a pitch, some even a chord, which predominates among the whole of its irregular vibrations.[f1]

Noise is considered by Russolo for its expressive musical qualities only and not for any other significant meaning(s) that it may hold. Here, we have a definition of music that considers all (organized) sound as music, limiting the possibilities for an art of sound autonomous from the structures and presuppositions traditionally attached to musical composition and reception. The imposition of a ``musical template" onto the sounds that otherwise, in a day to day context, have meanings otherthan musical ones, leads us to a dead end conclusion: all sound is music. In defense of a music autonomous from noise, Chris Cutler, drummer and critic has written:

But if, suddenly, all sound is ``music," then by definition, there can be no such thing as sound that is not music. The word music becomes meaningless, or rather it means ``sound." But ``sound" already means that. And when the word ``music" has been long minted and nurtured to refer to a particular activity in respect of sound -- namely its conscious and deliberate organization within a definite aesthetic and tradition -- I can see no convincing argument at this late stage for throwing these useful limitations into the dustbin...[f2]

The ``useful limitations" that constitute and enrich a musical art practice, restrain and limit an art of sound. The stripping away of meaning from the noise of our world constitutes a refusal -- fetishizing the ear, while ignoring the brain -- to engage ourselves in dialogue with the multiplicity of meanings conveyed by the sounds we produce, reproduce and hear. If a critical theory of sound (noise) is to develop, the urge to ``elevate all sound to the state of music," will have to be suppressed. Noise -- your lover's voice, a factory floor, the television news -- is ripe with meaning and content distinguishable from the meaning and content of musical expression. It is this content that constitutes any possibility for an art of sound.

Recorded sound, like the photographic picture, is a form of representation and whether the method employed is optical film, magnetic tape or digital sampling, recording is fundamental to the development of the audio arts. Although photography, for which theories of representation are well established, preceded that of sound recording, a theory of phonography (recorded sound) has yet to emerge. In fact, the process involved in both media is similar. A mechanical instrument is used to collect data which is edited, then manipulated and finally presented as a finished work of art, conveying a particular point of view and revealing the political and social attitudes of its author. And yet, compared to the visual arts, for which theories of representation are well developed and refined, phonography, as a form of cultural and social representation, exists in a vacuum, devoid of any substantial critical discourse.

With the introduction of relatively inexpensive tape recorders, microphones and signal processing instruments, recording has become accessible. However, general usage of tape recorders remains limited to two passive acts: recording and playing back previously recorded music. By contrast, most people use their camera as a tool for documenting their family, friends, travel and other activities, not as a duplication machine to copy other photographs. Furthermore, what one sees when looking at their photographs is self-generated and self-referential: you were there. Listening to a recording (even one that you have made yourself) of pre-recorded music amounts to nothing more than the selection of a cultural product that exists with or without your ``participation." The potential of the microphone/tape recorder is boundless -- compact, battery operated, inexpensive and readily available -- as an instrument for artistic and social expression. Any social or private activity that emits sound can be recorded. Can you imagine placing a LP on the turn-table that contains the sound of your first words, your grandfather's diary or the sounds of the social function that you attended last weekend? As William S. Burroughs points out, you could:

record your boss and co-workers analyze their associational patterns learn to imitate their voices oh you'll be a popular man around the office but not easy to compete with the usual procedure record their body sounds from concealed mikes the rhythm of breathing the movements of after-lunch intestines the beating of hearts now impose your own body sounds and become the breathing word and the beating heart of the organization the invisible brothers are invading present time the more people we can get working with tape recorders the more useful experiments and extensions will turn up...[f3]

Artists whose works are specifically constructed for recording tape are aware of the possibilities brought about by the inherent properties of the medium. Contrary to other art forms such as painting and sculpture, sound recordings are not bound to a fixed space and through duplication, multiples can be distributed, allowing the work to be heard at various sites and at various times. Furthermore, what the listener hears is not a representation of the work, but the work itself. In fact, like bookworks, many listeners can be in possession of the actual artwork and, over time, gain an intimacy with the work that is impossible with traditional art forms. Given the fact that play-back systems are so abundant, and cassette tapes and postage so affordable, artists working with recorded sound have, at least theoretically, the potential to reach a wide and diverse audience autonomous from the institutions and bureaucracy associated with the contemporary art museum system.

Of course, another form of distribution is radio, which would seem to offer an unlimited space in which an art (of radio?) could proliferate. However, radio, as we have come to know it -- ``don't touch that dial" -- is already full of itself. Baudrillard states that:

in terms of the medium the result is space -- that of the FM frequency -- which is saturated with over-lapping stations, so that what was once free by virtue of there having been space is no longer so. The word is free, but I am not; the space is so saturated, the pressure of all which wants to be heard so strong that I am no longer capable of knowing what I want. I plunge into the negative ecstasy of radio.[f4]

Contemporary radio is a state-controlled medium, ever moving, always full, offering brief interludes of nostalgic re-runs from its mythical ``golden era" and attempting, endlessly, through its smooth and icy voices, to inform us of the mundane. Radio has been co-opted as a tool for the dissemination of state and corporate ideology. As a medium, radio is underdeveloped because it refuses to recognize the perpetration of its self-defined limitations. Like television, radio is a stagnant technology. Unless access to radio is gained, we may never come to realize its implementation as a vehicle for cultural expression and dissension. If radio were to become a space where imagination, experimentation and chance-taking could occur, the numerous possibilities that the medium may hold might begin to bear fruit. Although there are practitioners of radio art, the conditions governing the medium make tenuous the realization of an art of radio: the self-conscious casting out of disembodied objects, ephemeral and tangible in the same breath.

If a sound liberation is to occur it will mean confronting the meaning(s) of the noise we produce, challenging the context of its reproduction and transmission, and engaging in an active, rather than passive, investigation of sound recording technologies.

Dan Lander
July, 1989

From Sound by Artists, edited by Dan Lander and Micah Lexier. Used with permission of the Banff Centre Press. To order, or for more information, visit http://www.banffcentre.ab.ca/Writing/Press

Notes

[f1.] Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noises (New York: Pendragon Press, 1986).

[f2.] Chris Cutler, ``Editorial Afterword," R[e-] Records Quarterly , Vol.2, No.3 (London:1988).

[f3.] William S. Burroughs, The Ticket That Exploded (New York: Grove Press, 1987).

[f4.] Jean Baudrillard, The Ecstasy of Communication (New York: Semiotext(e), Foreign Agent Series, Autonomedia, 1988).