Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts [Hardcover]

Douglas Kahn (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0262112434 | ISBN-13: 978-0262112437 | Publication Date: October 8, 1999

This interdisciplinary history and theory of sound in the arts reads the twentieth century by listening to it—to the emphatic and exceptional sounds of modernism and those on the cusp of postmodernism, recorded sound, noise, silence, the fluid sounds of immersion and dripping, and the meat voices of viruses, screams, and bestial cries. Focusing on Europe in the first half of the century and the United States in the postwar years, Douglas Kahn explores aural activities in literature, music, visual arts, theater, and film. Placing aurality at the center of the history of the arts, he revisits key artistic questions, listening to the sounds that drown out the politics and poetics that generated them. Artists discussed include Antonin Artaud, George Brecht, William Burroughs, John Cage, Sergei Eisenstein, Fluxus, Allan Kaprow, Michael McClure, Yoko Ono, Jackson Pollock, Luigi Russolo, and Dziga Vertov.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"Sound saturates the arts of this century," writes Kahn, a professor of media arts at the University of Technology in Australia, in an illuminating but densely theoretical study of sound in 20th-century literature and art. Kahn begins by considering the early experiments at the Cabaret Voltaire of dadaist poets Richard Huelsenbaeck, Marcel Janco and Tristan Tzara, whose poetic and "musical" performances were intended to achieve a Rimbaudian "alchemy of the word." He then analyzes how noiseAin the form of screams and bomb blastsAfunction in such prose texts as Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front. But the artistic hero of the book is John Cage, whose monumental works with water provide the theme for the central portion of the book. Kahn devotes considerable energy to arguing that Cage's Water Music of 1952 was at least as revolutionary as his silent pieces. "Pollock's dripped and poured paintings and Cage's water sounds," he writes, "heralded a larger concurrence of fluidity, water, sound and performance" in the arts for years to come. This leads to a discussion of postmodern American composers, including LeMonte Young and Tony Conrad, who chose extreme amplifications of noise to bring the auditors back to "silence" once their ears stopped ringing. As for the "meat" part of the title, it comes from another source of theoretical inspiration to Kahn, William Burroughs's idea of "schlupping," defined as the sound of "soft innards being sucked out of a body," which is how the reader may feel attempting to get through this incisive but difficult book. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The role of sound in the spectrum of artistic disciplines is one of unique and boundless dimensions. In his new book, Kahn (media arts, Univ. of Technology, Sydney, Australia) examines the history, philosophies, politics, patterns, technology, sociology, and impact of sound in art. Emphasizing that "none of the arts is entirely mute," he surveys the potential equality of aural and visual in the artistic hierarchy, the influence of aurality on various forms of art and cultural thought (and vice versa), the fluid boundaries between the concepts of noise and music, and Western vs. Eastern definitions of the voice. He covers everything from the poetry of Kerouac, the films of Bunuel, the compositions of John Cage, and the paintings of Jackson Pollock to dripping water and body sounds. Kahn's research is impressive, and his presentation is thorough and precise. Although certainly not for the casual reader, this volume will be an asset to scholarly and academic collections.ACarol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 465 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (October 8, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262112434
• ISBN-13: 978-0262112437
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,981,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars fascinating, with a brilliant critique of Cage, August 25, 2001

By 

R. Hutchinson "autonomeus" (a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (Hardcover)

Kahn's text sprawls over 358 pages, and is filled with innovative insights into the auditory component of the 20th century avant-garde. I found the most brilliant section to be his critique of John Cage. Cage created music with the aim of "quieting the mind, to open it to divine influence." Kahn is the first to articulate what I have felt, that Cage, the zen anarchist, is just as manipulative with this goal as any tonal symphonic architect! As Kahn puts in,

"...Cagean silence...has silenced other things, as it dwells at the problematic edge of audibility and attempts to hear the world of sound without hearing aspects of the world in a sound" (p. 4) Kahn turns on its head Cage's stated aim of "just letting sound be," speaking rather of "Cage's dominion of all sound and always sound," a project to turn all sound into music! (p. 197)

Much of the rest of the book, the sections on "Water Flows and Flux" and "Meat Voices," is a wandering chronicle of various avant forms, and Kahn has fun with organic analogies. But it's a fascinating trip through little-known terrain, and Kahn is a fearless and creative guide!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new voice for the silent spots in audio-theories, July 10, 2006

By 

Andreas Halskov "Andreas K." (Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (Paperback)

If at times overly academic, Douglas Kahn's seminal work "Noise, Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts" should be required reading for any course related to sound and such audio-visual domains as film and television.

In his book Kahn adresses the historical changes (or, development?) in noise abatement, looking at noise as a cultural, musiological and essentially political phenomenon (with an apparent inspiration from Jacques Attali). Accompanying the different types of noise abatement in Western modernity (as voiced e.g. by Arthur Schopenhauer), are also - as Kahn illustrates - different experiments into the use of noise, whether defined as a strictly musical or cultural phenomenon. In music we thus find such experimental composers as John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer (exploring different types of musique concrète), in film we find early auteurs as Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Alexandrov (through the use of natural sounds, asynchronism and different sonic counterpoints). Even in other - less obviously sonic - arts may we find otherwise elaborate experiments with sounds and noise(s). Take for example the vivid attempts at breaking the rigid rules of communication and narration through distinctly phonetical, verbo-literary experiments in the works of James Joyce and William Burroughs - or the creative disruption of the organic line in the paintings of say Gerhard Richter.

Further examples could be found ad nauseum, and Douglas Kahn goes to great length in his interesting and well-documented explorations. Noise IS a part of the arts as much as our close environment, whether we register or hope to reject it.

Kahn's pioneer-footsteps, thus, leave a vivid trail for others to follow, for in his book - if nothing else - he has shown how different sonic experiments (and, more specifically, different types of noise) are all around us. Instead of conservative strategies of silencing and abatement, we should listen!

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An astonishing history of art, August 10, 2001

By 

Ken Friedman "Ken Friedman" (Oslo, Norway, and Copenhagen, Denmark) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (Hardcover)

This astonishing history of twentieth century art offers a deep and profound view of intermedia and multimedia through the aspect of sound. Kahn's narrative is beautifully written and well researched. He supports the text with a wealth of documentary sources that permit further research. This book is a seminal contribution to research in intermedia, multimedia, and media studies. KF

Book review published in Design Research News, Volume 6, Number 8, Aug 2001 ISSN 1473-3862.