Silencing and musicalization, as defined by Douglas Kahn, are valuable means to call attention to the sonically liminal. They create a frame within which acoustic silence can be attended to, either as a conceptual phenomenon or as the dead silence of sounds and soundmakers subjected to ecological silencing.
This paper defines the object-based sound installation as a distinct category of sound art that emerges from the intersection of live musical performance and the sonic possibilities of the recording studio. In order to contextualize this emergent category, connections are drawn among the rationalization of the senses, automated musical instruments, the lineage of recorded sound and the notion of absolute music. This interwoven history provides the necessary backdrop for the interpretation of three major works by Steven Reich, Alvin Lucier and Zimoun.
The notion of discreet sound arises through the encounter of the sonic avant-garde with the post-studio methods of the field of sculpture: a distinctive, situational aesthetics that aspires to relocate, and sometimes to disperse, the listening experience within the varied spaces of everyday life. In sound art, however, there seems a predominant interest in the sounding object as an experience delivered to the audience through indoor modalities.
The article addresses two pieces of sound art that incorporate field recordings from the site of the Berlin Wall, during the deconstruction of its concrete presence in East Germany. The author examines two pieces as a case study for the consideration of the historical potential of soundscapes and proposes that the developing genre possesses the capability to preserve the sound of history, in ways that are not possible with written sources.
This article introduces examples of recent sound art in Belfast, a city that has undergone radical transformation over the past decade and is home to a burgeoning community of sound artists. The text investigates the ways in which sonic art can redraw boundaries in a city historically marked by myriad political, socioeconomic, religious and sectarian divisions. The article focuses on sound works that reimagine a “post-conflict” Belfast.
Sound art activity in Colombia has proliferated in the last decade, as evidenced by the considerable number of shows focusing on sound works by Colombian artists in recent years. The author presents three artists—Rodrigo Restrepo, Leonel Vásquez and Ícaro Zorbar—each of whom represents a distinct point in the continuum between music and sound art. The artists' individual and distinct approaches to the use of technology and their very personal conceptions of space and time are discussed.
The authors discuss Chronography: animal, a live electroacoustic work based on sound recordings Needham gathered in Antarctica in 2009, along with related works.
The author presents a creative and technical practice using flat flexible audio speaker surface arrays. These arrays can be formed to various environments, offer diverse design possibilities and allow for user interaction. This practice provides an alternative to traditional models of sound reproduction by considering how visual and physical material could be construed as sound itself. Taken as art material, these surface array systems open up unique possibilities for acoustic spaces, composition and sound interactivity.
The authors describe an artistic exploration of sound in space enabled by real-time computer vision algorithms that provide hand shape and 3D hand-tracking information.
The authors present their musical smartphone app that uses GPS data to trigger specific sound events relative to spots within an area predetermined by the artists. Moving through the area, users listen to these events via headphones, completing the soundscape composition. The article outlines the effects and the workings of the app, which combines elements of composition and installation, and which the artists have so far adapted to a number of different areas.
