Sound art

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Sound art is a new media art practice rooted in early 20th century experimentation. From the Western art historical tradition early examples include the Italian Futurist "Intonarumori" or noise machines created by Luigi Russolo, and subsequent experiments by Dadaists, Surrealists, the Situationist International, Fluxus, Happenings, and many other contemporary practitioners. Russolo stated in his 1913 essay, "The Art of Noise": "This musical evolution is paralleled by the mulitplication of machines" and indeed, as technology evolves--becoming increasingly available, mobile, and integrated throughout our lives, the world of sound art has also exploded into various forms, concerns, and approaches.

Though much sound art and many sound artists are inspired by experimental or "avant garde" music (e.g. John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Iannis Xenakis, Hildegard Westerkamp, Tod Dockstader, Pauline Oliveros) it is interesting to note that works of sound art often seek to be differentiated from "Music" for a variety of formal, conceptual, and political reasons. In part, this is because notable works of sound art have been created by people working in many disciplines and mediums ranging from music composition to visual art, architecture, engineering, anthropology, and filmmaking. In part, the distinction from Music is made in order to signal a new listening experience--one that is more active or interactive than expected of a conventional work of music.

Sound art also frequently distinguishes itself from pure visual art, especially the more blatantly visual mediums of photography, painting, drawing, and video. Sound art enjoys a longstanding relation to physicality and "sculptural" or spatial concerns such as movement, mass, accumulation, and disintegration. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art is often very interdisciplinary. Common creative techniques include collage and cut-up, repetition, spatial manipulation, and electronic generation and signal processing.

Other artistic lineages from which sound art emerges are spoken word, avant garde poetry, and experimental theater. Well-known early practitioners include Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, and Henri-Martin Barzun of the Zurich-based Dada group, who in 1916 performed works of phonetic poetry or Poème Simulatane (simultaneous poems) at the Cabaret Voltaire. These illogical sound-based compositions emphasized acoustic rather than literal expression.

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