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>

A Personal and Fragile Affair: The Sonic Environment and Its Place In My Compositions

<p>To begin with, I will briefly outline my compositional process. This will help to provide an understanding of my motivations. I will then pose some questions relating to the practice of field recording and the use of these materials in electroacoustic composition. Through a discussion of early electronic music, musique concrete, soundscape composition and the ideologies of composers associated with these movements, I will reveal the tensions surrounding the use of referential material in acousmatic music. Finally, I will show how I have attempted to address these tensions in my own work.</p>

A Personal and Fragile Affair: The Sonic Environment and Its Place In My Compositions

<p>To begin with, I will briefly outline my compositional process. This will help to provide an understanding of my motivations. I will then pose some questions relating to the practice of field recording and the use of these materials in electroacoustic composition. Through a discussion of early electronic music, musique concrete, soundscape composition and the ideologies of composers associated with these movements, I will reveal the tensions surrounding the use of referential material in acousmatic music. Finally, I will show how I have attempted to address these tensions in my own work.</p>

Listening and Recording In Situ: Entanglement in the sociopolitical context of place

This article considers the ways in which soundwalking and field recording entangle the listener in a sociopolitical relationship with place. The place is a physical site in which the listener encounters complex sonic sociopolitical factors, shaped not just by the interactions of people but also by involving living and material objects that voice themselves through sound and vibrations. Sets of expectations and personal identities inform listening experiences, in addition to the material-orientated tendencies in the field, deriving from soundscape composition and acousmatic music. Specific sociopolitical examples that inform sonic experiences in diverse listening situations across different geographic regions are used to uncover bias, and some of the preconceptions of listeners. The article argues for a greater reflexivity in regard to the motives that inform our listening, relationship with places and awareness of the widest spectrum of cultural, historic and sociopolitical contexts.

François-Bernard Mâche’s ‘Sacred’ Music

Drawing on François-Bernard Mâche’s writings as well as interviews and analyses by musicologists, this paper tries to describe how his music may be described as ‘sacred’ music, however devoid of any religious aspects, and what this implies for us as listeners and/or as artists. To Mâche, the sacred is the consideration of a specific relationship to the world as the object and as the subject, as the ‘why’ and as the ‘how’ of music. Musical examples from his mixed music and acousmatic music illustrate how Mâche goes from his theories to more practical aspects of his compositional technique and listening behaviours.

Acousmatic-Creationism: A creative method for acousmatic music inspired by Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro’s aesthetic theories

This article assembles and summarises the main ideas presented in the doctoral thesis entitled ‘Voice and Poetry as Inspiration and Material in Acousmatic Music’ by the author and describes his idiosyncratic method for acousmatic composition based on Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro’s aesthetic theory, which is a system that aims at creating artistic works by taking materials from reality and combining them in unexpected ways. The objective of this combination is an equilibrium between rationality and intuition in order to obtain a poem independent of the real world, in the sense of a poetic outcome which avoids traditional mimesis. This creative system, known as Creacionismo, has a central role between various other theoretical, artistic and mainly poetic sources informing the author’s creative process. Huidobro’s creative system has been applied by the author to acousmatic composition procedures generating the notion of acousmatic-creationist as a nomenclature for the process. This particular creative strategy balances rationality and intuition within acousmatic composition and places poetry as a driving force in the use of voice, merging artistic practice and theory in a recursive action.