Audio for Audio’s Sake: Audio Art

 

What is Audio Art?

 

In a specialist art school environment the question of, what constitutes art?, is addressed early in a student’s academic career. After researching and responding to art theory essay topics relating to: aesthetics, creativity, the avante garde, imitation, conceptual art, performance art, representation, reproduction, skill and craft, objectivity and subjectivity; most 2nd-year students have a response that they can spout on demand to the question. The contexts of students participating in this CQU course are likely to be more omnifarious and less specialised in focus on the artistic nature of the application of digital audio techniques. One might assume that to assist students from such divers backgrounds as: information technology, multimedia and, journalism, to "come up to speed" in this discourse, that a definition of art should be offered. However beyond illustrating the nature of the difficulty of offering such a definition, with reference to the standard dictionary.com version, investigating the etymology of "art" will be neither the purpose nor the approach of this lecture.

A traditional definition of art that may have sufficed until modern times is apt to be deficient in the post-modern and digital idiom:

• The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.

• The study of these activities.

• The product of these activities; human works of beauty considered as a group.

• High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value.[1]

Semantic difficulty is encountered when discussing notions of "art" as "beauty". Particularly within the genres under scrutiny in this discussion, "audio art" and "sound art", a distinction that sets apart the artifacts of endeavour in these fields—though not in any exclusive sense—from notions of musicality as understood in terms of rhythm, harmony and melody, is established. This has been the case in the visual arts since, in apparent reaction to the horrors of World War I, the Surrealists began to turn traditional aesthetics on its head. And in the field of ‘music’, the composer/artist John Cage, who is famous for his deconstruction of the hierarchical opposition between noise and music in the 1940s and ‘50s, led the attack on conservative sensibilities with statements like: “Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?”[2]

It follows then, that we should discuss aural art forms, not in terms of beauty but in terms of aesthetics which can be unarguably stated as concerning the following fundamentals:

1. temporality [this means that the artifacts are meaningless without the dimension of time].

2. aurality [of, or relating to, sonics as perceived by the ear, but also including super- and sub-sonics, that are bodily experienced].

Our digital focus, by definition introduces a third criterion:

3. instrumentality [this incorporates notions of agency, algorithm, intermediacy, mediation and remediation].

And a fourth, very important, aspect affects our comprehension of works of art:

4. context [the same vocal recording could be presented and interpreted: as "news" if incorporated into a broadcast bulletin, as "educational media" if used as part of a lesson, or as "art" if played as part of a performance, in an art space or streamed from an Internet art site such as artmuseum.com].

A further definition of “art” from dictionary.com falls short of being complete because it fails to take account of the importance of context:

“Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.”

For the purpose of this survey of digital audio art, if the producer of an artefact claims that it is art, and it is presented in a context that supports the claim, then we must ask, “who are we to argue with them?”

In this sense our approach will be two-edged. It will be:

anthropological – in that it will present some observations of the origin, the behaviour, and the physical, social, and cultural development of human endeavour in the field of digital audio as art [and as the antithesis of art, anti-art], and;

phenomenological  – on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness, and, in this instance in particular, as they are perceived or understood by those who use the term art to describe the sound artefacts that they themselves produce and/or the multimedia events that they instigate and/or participate in, and/or the processes they use to generate and manipulate sounds.

In the understanding of many a commentator on artistic practice there is a notion that an artist, in his or her individual or collaborative endeavour, pursues theoretical and practical associations that are notable in that they are in some way outside of the cultural norm for the time in which they live and work. A significant feature of art practice in contemporary Western culture is that artists feel at liberty- indeed some feel it is their responsibility- to experiment with new techniques, practices and juxtapositions. Often this approach results in techniques and artefacts, that on initial consideration may be experimental 'failures' are persevered with and , in this way boundaries are pushed. This idea is taken up by a writer called Kim Cascoyne, in an article called, The Aesthetics of Failure: "Post-Digital" Tendencies in Contemporary music, which is the recommended reading for this week. You will find resonance also with the ideas of la perruque, tactics and strategies, discussed during the lecture next week (week 8, Audio in the mix).

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Reading 1:

Kim Cascoyne. The Aesthetics of Failure: "Post-Digital" Tendencies in Contemporary music. Computer Music Journal, Winter 2000. Click here for .pdf document. (Acrobat reader required)

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There is an irony or paradox observed by art theorists and practitioners in regard to the notion of the experimental, revolutionary and avant-garde artist. This is the obvious fact that once art is recognised as being successful, it becomes possessed by the status quo- shown in mass exhibitions, bought by collectors, performed in mass concerts, consumed by mass media and so quickly becomes normalised, and often de-contextualised.

Throughout modern and contemporary times there have been conscious efforts on behalf of some artists to divorce themselves from this process. The conceptual art and performance art movements of the seventies and eighties were conscious attempts to take art off the walls of 'traditional' art galleries and to "de-objectify" art. They were concerned to keep art fresh and changing, and not to leave behind any relics that could be usurped by anyone else. Today the multimedia capability, the immediacy and the ephemeral qualities of the Internet are providing a vehicle suited to the intention of many who consider themselves experimenters in the field of art- for the sake of art.          

Examples of audio in contemporary art

Only works that may be referenced via the internet have been selected as examples for you investigate in relation to digital audio as art in a contemporary sense. The representative overview is by no means a comprehensive one. Some attempt has been made to categorise the artists and their work according to the following broad fields according to distinctive contexts: performance art and art events; Internet, multimedia and software art; environmental art; conceptual, political and radical art; and alternative, digital audio “music”. All of the following hyperlinks were active at the time of writing. Apologies if you find any that have died in the meantime.

 

1/ Performance art and art events

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enoweb

http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/

Merzbow [kunstradio]

http://kunstradio.at/SPECIAL/LIVE/MERZBOW/index_e.html

"Sound work is an accumulation of pleasure, and the desire for pleasure is endless. Maybe the motivation of MERZBOW is to build a Pleasuredome of Noise - to increase power and difference…" Masami Akita/Merzbow. Live and recorded sound events are streamed from this site and associated links.

noweb.org [nomusic streaming event]

http://www.noweb.org/nomusic/

This is a call to action for a particular international streaming event that occurs on 10th September 2002. There is an archive of previous video/audio streaming events also.

RE:COMBO

http://www.manguebit.org.br/recombo/

“multimedia project of collaborative sound + vision production. The experience mixed the audiovisual material send by the collaborators from all over the world to RE:COMBO, with texts produced for the event with a 18 hours DJ set and Live P.A. during the "Abril Pro Rock Festival" (April 19-21, 2002) click around and take a look on the experience here.” [sic]

Dialtones. A telesymphony

http://www.flong.com/telesymphony/

Documentation of a concert performed entirely through the ringing of the audience's mobile phones.

flaming lips

http://www.flaminglips.com/cmp/bbox.htm

Documentation of the ”boombox experiments” of 1997.

"Most times when you walk into a rock show it's like.. you already know exactly what will happen. I hope that people can come to these shows with the whole slate wiped clean...." - Wayne Coyne 1998

Symphony for dot matrix printers

http://www.sat.qc.ca/the_user/dotmatrix/en/intro.html

Self-explanatory, isn’t it?.

Bill Viola

http://www.artmuseum.net/viola2/fr_splash.html

Well established, “grand Daddy” of multimedia performance art.

386DX

http://www.easylife.org/386dx/

Synchronized text-to-speech and midi synthesis. Sort of fits the following category too.

2/ Internet, multimedia and software art

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artstream

http://www.mediascot.org/artstream/

“artstream is an experimental project exploring the potentials of artists' use of streaming media. artstream comprises occasional projects with live and prerecorded material.”

soundtoys

http://www.soundtoys.net/a/indexa.html

“Artists who use new musical interfaces and explore the relationship of the audio visual. The interface as an experience for play and interaction. Works exhibited express a current fascination to provide a different sort of musical experimentation.”

Many of the works employ what have come to be known as generative techniques. Using code they provide interactive experiences that respond to user input and so each experience is unique.

The Central City

http://www.thecentralcity.co.uk/

This is just one example of generative audio-visual work for the Internet by this prolific artist who goes by the name Stanza.

More generative art and music…

http://www.imaja.com/change/tonecolor/genartmus.html

This site offers a short compendium of works in this genre researched by Greg Jalbert.

Phillip Natzke

http://www.natzke.com

Phillip is probably more of a visual artist but he does also work with sound and his work on the latest Mick Jagger video clip sort of qualifies him for a mention here.

Freznel Lizard

http://www.activewebimages.com.au/frezard/index.html

Audio loops combined with photomedia by yours truly [alias ‘spans’] which was included in the on-line exhibition called “Post-Cagian Interactive Sounds” at the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, Japan, in 2001. For the complete exhibition see: http://art.by.arena.ne.jp/mcmogatk/2001/

Algorhythm

http://www.activewebimages.com.au/algo/index.htm

Another work by moi in collaboration with Adelaide beat-loop artist, Matthew Hawker. This one was included in an international exhibition called “Tech Flesh”, at ctheory multimedia: http://ctheorymultimedia.cornell.edu/issue2/

3/ Environmental art

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black hole – sound acts

http://www.blackhole.cymes.net/home.htm

“black hole - sound acts is a laboratory for audio/visual arts projects founded in 1997 by Elke Utermöhlen and Martin Slawig - home base in Braunschweig/ Germany.

The laboratory develops sound and video installations, sound objects, interactive environments and performances.”

Singing Bridges

http://www.singingbridges.net/about/index.htm

Australian artist, Roz Cheney, travels the world playing the cables of stay-cabled and suspension bridges as musical instruments, recording the results and presenting them as sonic sculpture.

Infrasonic Soundscape

http://www.thejetty.org/thesis/

“…an interactive online artwork created by Hidekazu Minami, is an interface which articulates an idea of New York City becoming an instrument and a sonic geographical browser by mapping the city with the ambient sounds.”

Wild Sanctuary

http://www.wildsanctuary.com/frameset.html

“...the voice of the natural world” [Not sure if this is art- you decide!]

4/ Conceptual, political and radical art

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plundertronics / improbable music / somnambulab

http://www.6q.com/

“Back in the 80's, lo-fi music savant John Oswald released a homemade CD called Plunderphonic that sampled and shredded pop artists from Metallica to Michael Jackson to Bing Crosby. The goal of the CD was not merely to make brilliantly mutated music, but to question the copyrighting of audio—when does one person's composition become someone else's? Oswald was sued and forced to recall all the CDs. Now the entire illegal CD is available online for free in mp3 format. Download and jam at your own risk.” -- Curt Cloninger at rhizome.org.

Ken Overton

http://eamusic.dartmouth.edu/~kov/soundArt/

For further reading you may like to explore this site. You will find links to theoretical discourses on the subject of sound art along with endless extra-topical rants.

5/ Alternative, digital audio “music” 

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The following sites promote audio art in the sense that “it is music, Jim, but not as we know it”:

Australia Adlib

http://www.abc.net.au/arts/adlib/about.htm

Digital Music Archives

http://www.digital-music-archives.com

epitonic

http://www.epitonic.com/