‘And I Listened to the Whistlings and Patterings Outside’

2021 ◽  
pp. 286-306
Author(s):  
Angus Carlyle
Keyword(s):  
Nature Writing ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Spatial Parameters

The notion of the wild is one that has developed a richer currency in recent years, simultaneously enrolled as a branding device for leisure activities and employed to account for the potential planetary consequences of a shift towards the Anthropocene. Noting parallel amplifications of wild sound in both the philosophical concept of the sublime and in the literary genre known as nature writing, this chapter critically accounts for the ways in which creative sound practices have deployed listening and recording to manifest the spatial parameters of the wild. These sound art practices are shown to reveal tensions in terms of any strictly demarcated border between the wild and the cultivated, in terms of the technical assemblages that are taken to the wild and that render what is heard there audible, and in terms of the wild as a space that is to be accessed through solitary, silent and arduous effort.

Sound and Wonder

2021 ◽  
pp. 126-140
Author(s):  
Ray Lee
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
The State ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Art Works ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sense Of Wonder

Starting by describing his experience of becoming lost in wonder at the Bakken Museum of Electricity and Life in Minneapolis, in this chapter the artist Ray Lee explores his fascination with the state of wonderment. Referencing his internationally touring sound art works Siren and The Ethometric Museum he reviews the strategies that he has used to attempt to create a sense of wonder, and why this has become both a valuable aspect of his practice and a distinctive part of the audience experience. Throughout the history of science wonder has been a driving force for discovery, yet the sublime, with its suggestion of the spiritual, has more often been used to describe the experience of art. The chapter looks at how wonder creates a sense of creative uncertainty, de Certeau’s ‘rift in time’ or, as Bataille puts it, a state of ‘intolerable non-knowledge, which has no other way out other than ecstasy’.

American Nature Writing and Japan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Masami Yuki
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Nature Writing ◽  
Environmental Awareness ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Environmental Sensitivity ◽  
American Counterculture

Although largely disregarded since the humanistic turn of ecocriticism at the beginning of the 21st century, nature writing has continued to play an important role in nurturing trans-Pacific, and transnational, literary environmentalism. Euro-American traditions dominate this literary genre, but it nevertheless involves cross-cultural traffic of ideas and thoughts. Its trans-Pacific presence, mostly through American influences on works in Japan, demonstrates in three ways how American nature writing has been cultivating Japanese literary soil and has in turn been nurtured by it, albeit less conspicuously. First, Henry David Thoreau’s influence on Japanese literary environmentalism, especially his philosophy of plain living and high thinking, helped engender a tradition of nature writing in Japan that began with Nozawa Hajime—often called the “Japanese Thoreau”—and has been developed by those who followed, including Ashizawa Kazuhiro and Takada Hiroshi. Second, interactions between pastoralism and a new mode of environmental awareness show that the seemingly American notion of “wild awareness” and the Japanese concept of aware have materialized as a new environmental sensitivity in Japan and in the United States, respectively, reflecting cross-cultural nurturing of environmental ideas, thoughts, and practices. Finally, there has been a subtle yet radical impact of American counterculture on Japanese nature writing, exemplified by Nashiki Kaho’s literary hybridity, based on her integration of the traditional with the radical.

Sublime Visions: Piranesi and his Carceri Prints

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gloria Bell
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Experience ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Aesthetic Theory ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Work Of Art ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Gothic Arch ◽  
Architectural Spaces

This paper examines the philosophical concept of the sublime and its impact in the work of the artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The main focus of the paper is Piranesi’s Carceri series, created during the period of 1740 – 1760 in Rome. Although Dionysius Longinus wrote of the sublime several centuries earlier, this concept became popular in 18th century aesthetic theory, and Piranesi had access to the writings of Longinus and 18th-century followers of his ideas. According to Longinus’ theory, creating a sublime work of art required daring and great thinking. The sublime was a quality of experience meant to move the soul to a higher realm. Piranesi attempted to emulate this quality in his own works by invoking the grandeur of ancient Rome. Piranesi was surrounded by ancient ruins and he was actively involved in archaeological digs. He wrote on the wonder of observing the ruins of Rome, “these speaking ruins have filled my spirit”. At the same time, Piranesi was not only surrounded by classical concepts; the motif of the gothic arch, which conveys the idea of architecture reaching up to heaven, also plays a role in his prints and their evocation of the sublime. His techniques with etching, composition, and depiction of light show his creativity, skill, and ambition, consistent with Longinus’ ideas. The iconography of the Carceri prints, especially Plates XIII, XIV, XVI, expresses Piranesi’s interest in the sublime through imaginative compositions, relating tiny figures to lofty architectural spaces, and through his demonstrated pride in ancient Rome.

‘Man carries all animals within himself’

2022 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 216-247
Author(s):  
Aneta Georgievska-Shine
Keyword(s):  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Private Collection ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Grotesque

This article addresses Rubens’s perspective on the human-animal by focusing on the satyr as one of his favourite mythological characters. This profoundly liminal being appears in a variety of roles throughout his oeuvre, including several paintings that remained in his private collection. In some of them, the satyr is primarily a figure for unbridled lustfulness and sensuality. In many others, however, this hybrid creature appears to hold the key to some of the mysteries of nature itself. Another facet of this analysis concerns the long-standing connection between this mythological character and literary satire. Rubens’s satyr-themed images bear a number of salient qualities of this literary genre as one that destabilizes boundaries: between the beautiful and the repulsive, the tragic and the comical, the sublime and the grotesque.

Getting Out of the Black Box: analogising the use of computers in electronic music and sound art

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-199 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damien Charrieras ◽  
François Mouillot
Keyword(s):  
Electronic Music ◽  
Computer Software ◽  
Sound Art ◽  
Music Software ◽  
Black Boxes ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
Technical Specifications

The process of creating computer-based music is increasingly being conceived in terms of complex chains of mediations involving composer/performer and computer software interactions that prompt us to reconsider notions of materiality within the context of digital cultures. Recent scholarship has offered particularly useful re-evaluations of computer music software in relation to musical instrumentality. In this article, we contend that given the ubiquitous presence of computer units within contemporary musical practices, it is not simply music software that needs to be reframed as musical instruments, but rather the diverse material strata of machines identified as computers that need to be thought of as instruments within music environments. Specifically, we argue that computers, regardless of their technical specifications, are not only ‘black boxes’ or ‘meta-tools’ that serve to control music software, but are also material objects that are increasingly being used in a wide range of musical and sound art practices according to an ‘analog’ rather than ‘digital’ logic. Through a series of examples implicating both soft and hard dimensions of what constitutes computers, we provide a preliminary survey of practices calling for the need to rethink the conceptual divide between analog and digital forms of creativity and aesthetics.

Now in the Network

2021 ◽  
pp. 86-102
Author(s):  
Michael Rofe
Keyword(s):  
Sound Art ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Virtual Spaces ◽  
Music Practice ◽  
Temporal Relationships ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
The Moment ◽  
Network Technologies ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Short Time Delay

Network technologies have played an increasingly prominent role in sound art practices over the last forty years. The consequent creative possibilities associated with space and locality are clearly apparent: networks enable connections between geographically remote locations, and allow the creation of new virtual spaces for sound art to inhabit. Less immediately apparent—though equally significant—are the ways in which network technologies have enabled artists to explore temporal relationships in their work. In particular, network technologies inevitably involve latency—a short time delay between the moment a signal is created at one location and the moment it is perceived at another. Taking traditional notated music practice as a point of reference, this chapter considers a number of case studies in which sound artists have explored new types of temporal relationships in their work, as a consequence of their use of network technologies. This investigation is framed in the context of Bergson’s concept of durée and Clarke’s concept of subject position.

Introduction: Exiled from Oneself– Art and Other Strange Migrations …

Sublime Art ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Stephen Zepke
Keyword(s):  
Dominant Mode ◽  
Critique Of Judgment ◽  
Philosophical Concept ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
Conditions Of Possibility ◽  
Is Development ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
Antonio Negri

The sublime is a philosophical concept for an experience or sensation that exceeds its subjective conditions, and as such is unrepresentable. The introduction will sketch its development from Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) where it is distinguished from the beautiful and associated with terror, to Kant’s extension of it in his Critique of Judgment (1790). As Kant remains the source of all the contemporary versions of the sublime we will be concerned with, it will be important to have an understanding of his work. In particular, Kant’s affirmation of the autonomy of the aesthetic realm of sensation, and is development of the sublime as an experience that goes beyond its human conditions of possibility will be central to the book. The sublime experience itself can appear within a variety of different affects, but its dominant mode, beginning with Burke, is one of overwhelming terror and pain. Although this affect is important to its aesthetic trajectory, we shall understand the sublime in the somewhat altered sense in which Nietzsche claimed overcoming the human involved the pain of childbirth. In other words the experience of the sublime, and the emergence in Kant’s account of the transcendental realm of the Ideas that reconstitutes human subjectivity, will be rethought as a generative and aesthetic event that takes us beyond our bio-political conditions of possible experience, and expresses the vital force of the future as the transcendental dimension of our material reality. As Antonio Negri has put it, sublime art is the embodiment of an event in action, and as such ‘Art is simultaneously the creation and reproduction of the absolute singular’ (Art and Multitude (Polity press, 2011)).

Perceived Voice Disorders in Older Adults and Impact on Social Interactions

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Connie K. Porcaro ◽  
Clare Singer ◽  
Boris Djokic ◽  
Ali A. Danesh ◽  
Ruth Tappen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Engagement ◽  
Leisure Activities ◽  
Treatment Strategies ◽  
Voice Disorders ◽  
Community Dwelling ◽  
Vocal Performance ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Cross Sectional

Purpose Many aging individuals, even those who are healthy, report voice changes that can impact their ability to communicate as they once did. While this is commonly reported, most do not seek evaluation or management for this issue. The purpose of this study was to investigate the prevalence and differences in voice disorders in older adults, along with the effect of fatigue on their social interactions. Method This is a cross-sectional investigation of a community-dwelling sample of individuals aged 60 years or older. Participants completed the Questionnaire on Vocal Performance, the Social Engagement Index subset “Engagement in Social or Leisure Activities,” and the Fatigue Severity Scale. Results Results indicated 32.5% of the 332 participants reported symptoms of voice problems with no difference found between male and female respondents. A slight increase in report of voice problems was noted with each year of age. Participants who self-reported voice problems indicated less interaction in social activities involving communication than those who did not. Finally, as severity of self-reported voice problems increased, an increase was reported by the same individuals for signs of fatigue. Conclusions Voice problems and resulting decreased social interaction are commonly experienced by older individuals. Voice symptoms in older adults have been found to benefit from evidence-based treatment strategies. It is critical to provide education to encourage older individuals to seek appropriate evaluation and management for voice issues through a speech-language pathologist or medical professional.

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