The Loudspeaker: Transformative and Tactile Aspects of the Object

<p>Traditionally the loudspeaker has been viewed as a functional object. Whilst also serving as a design artifact and object of consumer fetishism, it is subject to the overriding purpose of the reproduction and replication of sound material. However, within sound-based arts, other understandings and uses of the loudspeaker are emerging. This object is now being recognised for its ability to transform sound, taking a proactive stance within sound-based arts. Through exploration of the psychoacoustic effects of the object, the loudspeaker’s ability to transform the musical object is being recognised. At the opposing pole, through physical interaction and exploiting physical aspects of the object, the loudspeaker becomes instrumental in creating its own musical objects. My research delves into examples of sound and sonic art where the loudspeaker is exploited for its aural, physical and visual characteristics; where specific qualities of loudspeakers, as well as various transformations of the loudspeaker’s physical construction and function, are integral to a particular work. Whilst examining sound installation, sculpture and performance, I will also be unpacking the loudspeaker as an object that permeates everyday life, not least within a consumerist context, and how we have come to understand and listen to loudspeakers, looking at the effects this may have on our perception of sound and listening more generally.</p>

The Loudspeaker: Transformative and Tactile Aspects of the Object

<p>Traditionally the loudspeaker has been viewed as a functional object. Whilst also serving as a design artifact and object of consumer fetishism, it is subject to the overriding purpose of the reproduction and replication of sound material. However, within sound-based arts, other understandings and uses of the loudspeaker are emerging. This object is now being recognised for its ability to transform sound, taking a proactive stance within sound-based arts. Through exploration of the psychoacoustic effects of the object, the loudspeaker’s ability to transform the musical object is being recognised. At the opposing pole, through physical interaction and exploiting physical aspects of the object, the loudspeaker becomes instrumental in creating its own musical objects. My research delves into examples of sound and sonic art where the loudspeaker is exploited for its aural, physical and visual characteristics; where specific qualities of loudspeakers, as well as various transformations of the loudspeaker’s physical construction and function, are integral to a particular work. Whilst examining sound installation, sculpture and performance, I will also be unpacking the loudspeaker as an object that permeates everyday life, not least within a consumerist context, and how we have come to understand and listen to loudspeakers, looking at the effects this may have on our perception of sound and listening more generally.</p>

Sound-as-Art: The Rise of the Corporeal and Noise in Twentieth-Century Art Practice

<p>This thesis explores the relationship between human corporeality, space, sound and noise in twentieth-century art. The thesis introduces some novel concepts, notably that corporeality, noise and the notion of an expanded field form the bedrock of contemporary sound-based art practice, or what the author refers to as sound-as-art. The terms Corporeal Sound Art and Non-Corporeal Sonic Art are introduced as a way to highlight the traditional distinction between corporeally inclusive sound art and corporeally exclusive acousmatic music. Ultimately, this thesis extols extramusical elements in the realization of sound-based artwork and champions human corporeality and noise as central concerns for sound artists and sonic artists in our current age of digital mediatization.</p>

Sound-as-Art: The Rise of the Corporeal and Noise in Twentieth-Century Art Practice

<p>This thesis explores the relationship between human corporeality, space, sound and noise in twentieth-century art. The thesis introduces some novel concepts, notably that corporeality, noise and the notion of an expanded field form the bedrock of contemporary sound-based art practice, or what the author refers to as sound-as-art. The terms Corporeal Sound Art and Non-Corporeal Sonic Art are introduced as a way to highlight the traditional distinction between corporeally inclusive sound art and corporeally exclusive acousmatic music. Ultimately, this thesis extols extramusical elements in the realization of sound-based artwork and champions human corporeality and noise as central concerns for sound artists and sonic artists in our current age of digital mediatization.</p>

Sonic Sentimentality and the Unification of the Listening Space: Exploring the intersections of oral history and sonic art

This article aims to explore how the theoretical and pedagogical intersections of sonic art and creative oral history may work together to enhance the public response of socially engaged, interdisciplinary artwork. The main topics of discussion will include Panos Amelides’s paper ‘Acousmatic Storytelling’, the socio theoretical approach suggested by Salome Voegelin in her paper ‘Sonic Memory Material as “Pathetic Trigger”’, the behavioral study from the oral history sound installation by Dr Luis Sotelo Castro called Not Being Able to Speak is Torture, and the Deep Listening and Sonic Meditation practices and teachings of Pauline Oliveros, as well as compositions by Yves Daoust, Hildegard Westerkamp and Trevor Wishart. One consistent theme revealed through these investigations was that socially engaged, aurally focused artwork informed and woven by familiar and documented ‘life’ sounds or nostalgic sound events increases emotional triggers for the audience, creating a deeper engagement with the art piece or performance. Furthermore, an informed and host-led directive encouraging participatory and attentive listening through either meditation or discussion increases audience reception and takeaway, thus inspiring and unifying mass group empathy. This article suggests that the application of these techniques by electroacoustic composers, sonic artists, oral historians and interdisciplinary artists will create informed, passionate and empathetic listening spaces that live beyond the insular, creative experience itself.

Heraclitus and Sonic Thinking

“The material Flux”; “the hidden mobility beneath”; “Sonic Logos.” Any classicist familiar with the fragments of Heraclitus would be surprised to find these concepts developed in today’s theories about sonic art from authors from different traditions such as Salomé Voegelin, Julian Henriques, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Christoph Cox. The present paper intends to open a dialogue between these authors and Heraclitus, claiming that there is an underlying connection beyond mere coincidence. Sonic thinking proposes listening as the way to access or produce a particular knowledge—one that would otherwise be too difficult or impossible to grasp. This knowledge is produced by practices such as listening and musical meditation instead of intellectual activity alone. To make the case, the authors will present a general outline of what sonic thinking entails to compare it with the relevant points in Heraclitus’s philosophy. The purpose of this paper is twofold: to provide a new sonic framework to read Heraclitus and to provide an old framework to read sonic thinking.

my monstituces composer: Looking for the Pre-Emergent Social Consciousness of AI in Small Data Literary Synthesis

In the context of an algorithmically designed workplace, the glitch traces the form of the unforeseen social reality. What this paper does is present glitch poetics as a methodology for exploring futures of language-technology hybridity that do not emerge from philosophical, social science, or computer science research. Glitch poetics is concerned with linguistic errors in the same way that Glitch Art was concerned with the pixelations and clicks of 1990s and early 2000s compression mechanisms. AI-authorship is a potent area of study for glitch poetics because it is distinguishable by evidently faulty language forms, whose faultiness contains a recognizably contemporary “texture.” The first half of the paper includes an overview of AI research and practice from philosophical, technical, visual and sonic art fields, and current ideas in concept-forming, error, and innovation, such as “hyperstition,” “diagramming” and “glitch.” I then turn to the specific case of language acquisition and synthesis in AI and what the glitch method might have to offer in this area. Drawing on the work of Peli Grietzer, I ask whether AI-authored texts can be said to have a “vibe” distinct from that of the author’s whose text it is trained on, and therefore has its own basis for forming new social possibility. In one attempt to answer such a question, I make an AI produce faulty, glitchy texts, using a deliberately small corpus, in which the notion of a single-author-trained AI is broken down and confused. I close-read the odd language-salad of the texts written by this “small data synthesis” glitch method in order to discern whether there is a “structure of feeling” (Williams) in them: a pre-emergent sign of a social being-to-come. The paper concludes that making AI produce texts that are manifestly wrong offers a different trajectory for what AI can offer intellectual thought: one that is more potent than the progression towards more and more human-like textual impersonations. What is necessary, however, in order to take advantage of these strange new language forms, is to divert attention towards them in genuinely experimental, thoughtful situations, and to seek to absorb them into contemporary discourse. My proposition is that, along with “machine behavior,” there should be a concerted effort to invoke and interpret “machine misbehavior” as a form of thinking to come, both within and beyond the field of language-synthesis.

Soundwalks: An experiential path to new sonic art

The diverse practice of soundwalking is approached through its constituent parts (walking and listening) as an ideal ‘way in’ to the appreciation of new sonic art. It is argued that, because it engages the subject in a manner that encourages an aural perception of the environment not only as a physical space but also as a space of social and political tensions, divisions and flows, it can act as an experiential foundation for understanding how sound inflects our thoughts about and our relationships to agencies, human or not, that we interact with. This in turn renders possible modes of listening that are particularly adapted to contemporary forms of sonic art. Furthermore, soundwalking ties in to important contemporary discussions about participation, its potential for radical engagement of audiences and also the various forms of mediation it involves.