Over the past century, an art form has emerged that draws from the worlds of visual art and music. Sound art’s roots can be found in the experimental work of Italian Futurism, Dada, and later the Fluxus group and the pioneering efforts of the American composer and artist John Cage. In the wake of this groundbreaking work, sound art began to mature into a movement, and artists explored the interactive possibilities of sound and in turn created entirely new modes of experiencing and engaging with art. In this volume, the complete story of sound art is told by one of the country’s leading critics and scholars. The author traces the history of this form of art–highlighting the convergence of the indie world bands such as Sonic Youth with the art world–looking at the critical cross-pollination that has led to some of the most important and challenging art being produced today, including work by Christian Marclay, LaMonte Young, Janet Cardiff, Rodney Graham, and Laurie Anderson, among many others.
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About the Author
Alan Licht is an American composer, guitarist, music writer, and a widely respected figure on the experimental music scene. He is not only responsible for important album reissues, but was a member of the cult classic NYC bands Love Child and Run On. He currently lives in New York City. Jim O’Rourke is an American musician and producer, and most widely known as a member of the rock band Sonic Youth. Considered an expert on experimental music, he has scored films for Werner Herzog and Olivier Assayas.
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Everyone has a diferen t poin t at whic h they ari ve at the ques tion "is ar t sound , and is sound ar t?" First separating sound from music can lead someone down a path of falling under the spell of the sound of an empty coffee can, and quite possibly be suitably satisfied. Others may feel the need to return that coffee can back to the counter and set it into some kind of constellate that organizes sounds into space. If that can is suitably attractive, it may come to mind that the sound is married to that can, and what that can means in a larger social sense. It's quite possible the absence of the coffee, or more precisely the sound of the coffee, would lead to some reverie over whether sounds have lives of their own, and if they miss each other when they leave. This most usually leads to trying to find the sound which is not a sound, which in its lack of soundness implies all sounds and we're right where we started. So, in short, sound art may well be what you call it, and where you are coming from. If you're an artist, in the (relatively) traditional sense, and you find that neon tube is better heard and not seen, it could be sound art. If you're a musician and the sound of the piano lid closing on someone's fingers, who just can't seem to correctly play the rhythms derived from the gravitational pull of the sun, you may well have some sound art. Of course, that's up to you. This book examines a wide range of possibilities of redefining not only the context in which sound is presented and framed, but in how we choose to look at it. And when you look at sound, you may ask yourself, is it sound or is it art, and we're right back where we started. -- Jim O'Rourke
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
great documentation but take the history with a grain or two of salt,
By
This review is from: Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories (Book & CD) (Hardcover)
as with most rizzoli books, this one seems to have had a budget and a research team for images. it has photo documentation of pieces i've only seen in rare gallery exhibition catalogs or in some case, only heard stories of. licht has included many works sorely missed in other sound art specific books (kahn, labelle, de la motte haber etc) and for that reason the book is well worth the cost when it comes out in soft cover. the writing however, as has been mentioned in other postings, is informal compared to most histories of the sort and in places, value judgements are made which make the text read as too personal to be trusted as a history as such and should have been caught by an editor. the history also has gaps, and suffers from the same problem of most sound art history writing: too much time spent on deciding what is included and excluded from the genre by definitions and not enough space devoted to close readings of individual works as exemplars of practice. this book paired with Brandon LaBelle's 'Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art' (low on documentation, but very theoretical) and perhaps the new 'Autumn Leaves: Sound and the Environment in Artistic Practice' produced by CRISAP and edited by Angus Carlyle (not available on amazon yet), would make a balanced sound art history.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Oh, it's not so bad,
By
This review is from: Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories (Book & CD) (Hardcover)
I produce an occational podcast; I'm familiar with compiling and creating sounds for fun.
There's a lot that is touched on here in "Sound Art": sound playgrounds, DJ experience, Laurie Anderson, 1950s tape recordings, artist crossovers, Walter Murch, Maryanne Amacher, Stephen Vitiello, Max Neuhaus, Christian Marclay, LaMonte Young and especially John Cage. Eleven pages of footnotes. Four Hundred index entries. Despite what others have written here "Sound Art" is not the worst book ever of all time. The pictures are crisp and there are lots of pictures. Quotations are set apart in blue ink. It has heavy paper. The dust cover flap says that "... Alan Licht lays bear the origins of sound art...". Those funny flap writers, afraid of yogi bare. "Sound Art" sets itself up as authoritative but it is limited to thoughts about installation pieces, about conjured electrical mechanical inventions, about sound reflecting physical space, about the marriage of audio with photos or paint or rope or wood. "Sound Art" is a narrow look at the intersection of visual art and noise. The subtitle after all is "Beyond Music Between Categories." This is disappointing to me as I want to learn more about artists who creatively use found sounds, clips of voice, clips of music. But that's not this book. So while there's a nod to The Beatles for the white album cover, and several nods to Yoko Ono, there's not a word here about the most listened-to sound-art piece in the history of humanity, Revolution #9. Where are the scripted audio collages of Joan Schuman? Where are the field recordings of Michael Oster? Where are artists moving occasionally into sound, like Lorna Simpson? Where's spoken word poetry art? Jim O'Rourke, 6-year bassist/guitarist for Sonic Youth and prolific record producer, provides a useless 250 word introduction. His name appears on the cover, though. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Think of it this way: for 30 quid you can buy original digitized-duplicate sound art and get the 300 page liner notes for free. The compilation CD, about 50 minutes, is slipped into a blue paper envelope attached to the inside back cover. There are six pieces, of mediocre audio quality (as originally made) but robustly presented: Harmonic Bridge (Bill Fontana) [11 minutes of sound of the Millenium Bridge, as broadcast into London's Tate Modern]. Rust (Steve Roden)[3+ minute sounds emanating from a steel chair]. Terre Foisonnante (Jean Dubuffet) [The famous artist's 6+ minute 1960 furious instrument scream across the sky. They were recorded using two tape recorders and here are the only creative use of stereo on this compilation.] Jam Smear (Destroy All Monsters) [6 minute, 1970's band from Detroit playing anti-music on anti-instruments] Still And Moving Lines of Silence in Families of Hyperbolas (Alvin Lucier)[almost 17 minutes of minimalist tone, written 1974 and recorded here 2005] 57A (Bernhard Gal) [7 minute recording of place, from Germany - my favorite, and the one piece that fits most closely to my list of omitted sounds.]
13 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Just don't call it music...,
By Jeff Abell (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories (Book & CD) (Hardcover)
Years ago, a critic remarked that so-called Performance Art might have been called either Theater or Dance if those media were less uptight. That's how I feel about sound art - if Music were more open as a discipline, we wouldn't need to have a special category of stuff called sound art. We would simply recognize that for most of the 20th century, music and visual art blurred into each other, and the artistic use of so-called non-musical sounds became increasingly important. Today, in the age of the sample, where Foley artists and composers are often one and the same, and most undergrad art students have made at least one sound piece in their lives, it's useful to have Alan Licht's clearly written, well-illustrated, handsomely designed volume on how composers and artists have worked with sound in the 20th century. Licht hits all the significant movements (Futurism, Dada, Fluxus, etc.) that contributed to sound art, and does a good job of exploring the range of possibilities (from sound sculpture to sound installation to Christian Marclay's floor covered with vinyl records). While I might wish that some of the younger contemporary artists working with sound got more space, you can't have everything. A few years ago, the Pompidou Center in Paris did an exhibit called Son et Lumiére, and if you can find the catalog (and read French) it provides the history of the connection of music and visual art missing in Licht's book. But until that's available in an affordable English version, Licht's book is probably the best available on the topic. And the handy CD included means you can use your ears as well as your eyes to consider the topic, a welcome addition.
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