Brandon LaBelle

Having witnessed a general move towards what is called "sound art" on the part of art institutions and museums over the last 3 years or so, increasingly I have experienced a genuine enthusiasm coupled with subtle disappointment. For it seems that while sound art is sought as an important category and practice, the terms by which it is apprehended, displayed and thus defined seem lacking. Of course, this is to walk the tightrope of "definition" which, following John Cage, has a way of "taking the life out of things." And certainly, a key aspect to not only sound art but also other forms of sound practice in general is its ambiguity and immediacy — for sounds duck and dive under the representational grip, skirting across meaning, and slipping over the disciplinary divides. Yet, definitions do come into play, since art institutions are bound up not only with display but the processes of historicization.

The recent interest in sound art — as indicated by the Whitney Museum’s 2002 Biennial, and preceding "Bitstreams" exhibition (which presented a special "sound corridor") to the Pompidou’s "Sonic Process" (originally presented at MACBA, Barcelona in 2002), the Hayward Gallery’s "Sonic Boom" and "Bed of Sound" at P.S. 1 in New York, both presented in 2000 — brings with it the uncertainties inherent to the race to definition and categorization; curators and specialists on sound art, though currently few in number, are quickly finding themselves in demand, and increasingly, electronica and DJ culture are being purported to offer a model for understanding contemporary culture as predicated on digital technology, mobility and global networks (be it economic, fantastical, or anarchic). [1]

In response to the current situation, I would like to demarcate an area in order not so much to arrive at a definition of sound art, but to suggest where definition may arise. It is not my intention to historicize sound art; that is, I do not wish to point toward a lineage or trajectory as a way to propose a correct outline by which such questions as "what is a good piece of sound art?" or "who was the first sound artist?" may be answered. Rather, I offer a proposal for much needed specificity toward sound as a medium and sound art as a territory. For if we are to speak of sound art, there must be a distinguishing outline drawn: to separate it out and to give it character from other art forms, such as video art. Of course, any form of separation runs the risk of making exclusions, of setting boundaries that may offend, or of running the hegemonic risk of "pinning" something down. Yet, it is important to view such offense as contributing to the overall argument in defining forms of cultural practice. That is to say, the move toward definition should be seen as a form of discussion to which this article contributes.

*

To answer the question "what is sound art" I would propose that sound art is art about sound; it is art that both uses sound as its medium and addresses sound as its subject of concern. In this sense, sound is both the subject and object. This at first glance can appear quite limiting — that such a statement forms a kind of loop or self-enclosed container (sound is a sound is a sound…). Yet, as I am proposing, such a loop is far from being self-enclosed, contained or limiting, for it necessarily opens out onto what can be called "the acoustical."

Initially, this definition of sound art overlaps with both music and formalism. For if we follow that sound art is art about sound, we can easily find ourselves in the domain of formalism, which concerns itself with the very materiality of its production, as both subject and object. For example, formalist painting (such as the work of Ellsworth Kelly) defines itself as a painting whose very material properties are in turn its own subject matter. Therefore, formalist painting addresses and explores the properties of color, form and line, not to mention light, and by extension aspects of visuality. In proposing that sound art is art about sound runs the risk of strictly being a formalist activity, not that formalism is unappealing or should not feature in the vocabulary of sound art (for certainly formalism can offer an alternative to the burdens of "meaning" and the “expressivity” inherent to art practice). Yet, to limit it to such a vocabulary would be to overlook its ability to address what is outside its own internal properties. To unravel the formalist reading is simply to open up sound art to the domain of the acoustical, as both a perceptual and social operation, for to utilize sound as a medium is to confront an excess of input: sound necessarily exceeds itself, washing over spatial borders, disturbing attentive listening. It is overheard, agitating conversation and waking one up. It exists not only within but between and around objects. In contrast, formalist painting defines itself within a limited object (frame and canvas) and determines a contained field of attention, namely, the painting and its intrinsic properties: flatness, color-field, etc. Even while reacting to the given light of a room, or to the individual perceptual experience of the viewer, as a kind of input (as in the works of Kelly), the painting functions as a stable object. In contrast, a work of sound art may confront a wider field of possible interference or input (noise), varied perceptual and durational experience (hallucination), and architectural imposition (vibration), all of which contribute to an area of attention that may exceed a strictly formalist approach and the object of attention.

While operating and overlapping with music, sound art distinguishes itself by the simple fact that music is not necessarily about sound. It may draw upon acoustics, expand aurality, and produce sonic experience; but it does not necessarily set up a reflective relationship between itself and the subject of sound as an investigation. At the same time, it is also important to recognize and appreciate the intermingling and overlapping of music and sound art. Sound art and music both oscillate across their respective borders and offer a compelling cross-pollination in forms of music (e.g. electronica, pop, hip-hop) and sound practice (e.g. performance, video, and installation). With this, we can appreciate certain musical forms as operating increasingly in the domain of sound art, beginning with early Minimalism which exploded durational structure by introducing repetition, stasis, and spatiality, and moving later into contemporary practices of computer music that turns the digital machine on itself (as device of production) to reveal the intrinsic distortions. Such musical dimensions not only expand the acoustical as a specific field but also explode the musical envelope. Yet, these examples still form special moments in which music stretches itself into the peripheries of sound production.

To refer to our original proposition, that sound art is art about sound, it seems we can at least define a territory in which specificity (if not definition) may occur. As I’ve tried to point out by veering away from music and formalism, this thesis may lead to an expansive area of concern to which sound art can lend itself. Such an area, ultimately must be seen or heard as functioning under the larger field of the "acoustical." For in the move toward definition, what then is at stake is the emphasis upon the specificity inherent to sound art and the declaration of the acoustical as an alternative paradigm. Sound art is concerned with a subject and object that no other art form addresses. We can arrive at definition by understanding that sound art is definable from what it is not. Yet, this is not based so much upon the very use of sound as medium but upon the opening up, if not the enacting, of the acoustical as an area of attention.

The Acoustical: Space

We can witness a specific relationship between sound and space in the form of a dialogue. For as we know sound operates acoustically within space, gaining definition in relation to the space in which it is heard, and in turn, lending definition to spatial organization through sonic agitation. Thus, sound and space are wed in a complex marriage. Yet, this marriage is not without its difficulties or arguments, for sound can be seen to problematize spatiality by adding an extra ingredient. Sound disrupts spatial organization by introducing vibration and noise. It does so because sound by nature propagates and moves beyond itself in order to fill space and resonate objects and rooms. This propagation necessarily threatens to disrupt space through an acoustical irritant. The architectural attempts that aim for sympathetic fidelity (i.e. the concert hall, which brings sound from an instrument to the ear, without distortion), or antagonistic deterrence in softening noise (i.e. airplane construction, which aims to silence the noise of engine vibration), heighten appreciation of the sonic-spatial conversation.

Michael Brewster’s exhibition, "See Hear Now", held at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions in 2002 demonstrates his continual involvement with the inherent complexity of sound and space. Working with prepared audio works amplified in specially constructed rooms that he had acoustically specified in material and dimension (roughly 14’w x 20’l x 14’h), Brewster’s work draws upon acoustical dynamics to create sculptural experiences. Over the last 30 years, Brewster has presented installations characterized by the interplay of sound and space in such a way as to introduce the ear into the domain of sculpture. Amplifying and overlapping frequencies which he has tuned in sympathy to the intrinsic resonant properties of spaces, fabricated or found, Brewster’s sculptural works hinge on the location of the listener. Through the very interplay of sound, space, and aural perception, the work becomes apparent and takes on sculptural form, through the sensitivities of the ear canal. What we hear in Brewster’s work then is our own physical presence positioned within sound and space, as a triangular interplay. The listener effectively completes the work through a physically present perception of the fluctuations of soundwaves within space.

What marks Brewster's work beyond the science of acoustics is his pursuit of sculpture "in the round" as he says. [2] "In the round" is quite literally sculptural, yet it is sculpture that for Brewster hovers in an ever-shifting spatiality, oscillating between architecture and perception, space and sound, musicality and acoustic phenomenon. It is a nomadic sculpture in that one has to literally move in order to locate it. The listener has to resituate him- or herself not only to find the sculpture, but also and more importantly to realize it. In this way, sound and space shift as self-contained and fixed phenomena, enlivened by the dialogue of acoustical experience.

Sound by nature is never isolated, but rather it refracts and deflects across a multiplicity, within and against space. In this way, sound is more a public event than a private affair. The German artist Achim Wollscheid amplifies this relationship between the public outside and the private inside by positioning the two in conversation as an interface between the art object of sound and audience. His recent project for a specially constructed home in Gelnhausen by the architects Gabi Seifert and Goetz Stoeckmann exemplifies Wollscheid's ability to transform architecture and sound as terms in a complex relationship. Installed along the front wall and two sides of the house, the work consists of multiple pairs of speakers and microphones directed both into the house and outside into the neighborhood. Connecting the exterior microphone to the interior speaker, and the interior microphone to the exterior speaker, the work amplifies outside sounds in the inside, and inside sounds outside. Through this process, the sounds are also digitally treated through a computer program that transforms the sounds as information into tones. This phenomenological feed into an electronic equivalent creates a relay between "street" and "living room," frustrating the architectural imperative of an exterior-interior divide and insisting on a permeable structure. For here even the subtle intermingling of nature and architecture that someone like Frank Lloyd Wright pursued in his "organic architecture" is disrupted. [3] In contrast to the sought after harmony of phenomenological occurrence (nature) and a cultural work (architecture/music), Wollscheid's project is an invitation to noise and its potential disruption. Here, the walls of a house welcome the interference of an exterior; and in turn, the private interior is amplified to an unexpected public.

In addition to such a dialectical intermixing, the work introduces the “audience” as an influential and determinant input: the sounds can be manipulated by individuals in the house. Structured like a hi-fi stereo system, residents can turn up the volume, adjust equalization, or turn it off, as they wish. Wollscheid’s recent performative installation works have extended his interest in audience participation. Presented in August 2002 at the Beyond Music festival in Los Angeles, Sound Grid is structured around the live amplification and processing of sound, which is recorded from the immediate environment, transformed and played back in real time. Additionally, this aural information is translated into light signals, as small bulbs flicker on and off according to the intensity and dynamic of sound and its progression. Here, audiences are presented with an "instrument" which responds to their voices, noises, and interactions. The publicness of space, and those present, are thus made the material of art. Furthermore, art returns the audience to themselves, and the environmental occurrences are made apparent in the space of art’s very presentation.

In this way, sound and space form an unstable relation that may lend itself to a rethinking of architecture and of musical form. Can sound contribute to the design of space as a specific vocabulary, beyond strictly acoustics? Can architecture aid in the development of noise as a potential cultural form? Sound art utilizes the sound-space relation in a number of ways by creating acoustical experiences, through positioning sound and listener in complex dynamics, and by designing specific listening environments to create harmonious and/or disruptive noise. In short, sound art can be understood to manipulate the specificity of sound and architecture as a means to draw out the special acoustical dynamics in such a way as to articulate space as unfixed.

The Acoustical: Language

Music does not operate according to “meaning” per se; as a cultural form, it slips past representation, skirting language, and touching the more emotive areas of experience and understanding. In this sense, music cannot be captured, harnessed by referents, and held in as a definable object or stable lexicon. For any such musical lexicon can be said to contain its own unraveling. This can be seen not only in the increasing move away from traditional notation as an integral aspect of contemporary composition, but also in the acceptance of improvisation, the “extra-musical”, and noise in contemporary experimental and new music. As music moves closer to sound, as can be seen in the developments of “experimental music” of the last 40 years, and into sound art, we can witness this further — that sound is adopted to challenge the denotative operations of language, and the lexicon of musical production, inserting instead an extra input or musicality, an additional connotative and perceptual layer by insisting, for example, on the found. Such a move pushes music away from its systemization of codes (tradition) and into an investigation of musicality, audition, and sound — in short, as research into the acoustical. The acoustical thus repositions us in relation to language. By shifting one’s perceptual and cognitive lens away from the literate (reading, notation), or alphabetical (looking, staged presentation), the acoustical demands an alternative view of language, and by extension “meaning.” One possible angle is that meaning is based upon emotions or physicality, in short, as a poetics of experience. Another can be stated that sound does not so much make meaning (this sound means this), but rather opens a space in which meaning may occur.

An example is Yasunao Tone’s Parasite/Noise project presented at the Yokohama Triennial in 2001, which stages language as noise. Functioning as an altered audio guide to the Triennial exhibition itself, Parasite/Noise consists of headsets which "play a text [passages from Walter Benjamin] read aloud which has nothing to do with the exhibited works themselves," [4] thereby creating a disjunction between what is seen and what is heard, between the meaning of the work witnessed and the meaning of the words heard. As Tone posits, the work is a "pseudo audio guide" reasserting these guides as interfaces between audience and art. Yet for Tone this interface offers the chance to redirect meaning by sabotaging the one to one equation—of what the Museum says and what the artwork does. Here, the authorial language of art institutions is short-circuited through what Tone calls "paramedia" — a kind of parasitic alteration that leads to an altogether different signification. For the work functions as excess, a secret static inside the exhibition experience and amplified through the visitor's engagement.

The parasitic-noise dynamic is further explored in his Man'yo audio works. [5] This project, following from his previous Musica Iconologos (1993) is a form of translation. Beginning by inputting 8th century Japanese poems (from the Man'yoshu anthology) into the computer, a library of 2,400 sounds are created whose combinations and permutations would correspond to the 4,516 poems of the anthology itself. Using C-programming, this sonic translation of the Chinese characters rewrites the visuality of language into a sonic equivalent. For recent performances, Tone has used this sound-library by recording them onto CDs that are then treated, abused or "wounded" by Tone: puncturing holes, scratching the surfaces, covering the CD-laser with scotch tape, etc. In this way, the CDs are manipulated like a primary matter, performed as brut technology which is further defined by his use of the CD player itself as an instrument: speeding up, slowing down, skipping across CD tracks, spitting out fragmented and frenetic noise that does not destroy but rather adds another layer to the original poems. What is left is another form of articulation, highly physical orchestration of linguistic matter, technologized into a unit of data fed across the flickering electronics of the CD-eye that grabs hold of cut-up information and sends it back, into the ephemerality of sound.

Tone's audio work is an assaultive performance onto the body of language, revealing the inherent confusions and fusions of language’s mechanics. His work in a sense feeds off text in order to reveal, to pull back another layer of meaning as a sonic rewriting which, following Cage's notes on indeterminacy, gives meaning to "imperfectness."

Such parasitic or static interference of language in turn can be heard in Christof Migone’s interest and involvement with "stuttering." For Migone, stuttering functions both as metaphor and material for the making of performance and audio works. Pushing the body into language, the stutter operates as an unexpected and disruptive glitch: all that lurks behind language and is housed in the body as a somatic secret, surfaces in the stutter "… as remainder remaining entirely beyond control." [6] Stuttering functions as a model for how to use language as a performative enactment, and more significantly the space of the oral cavity as medium. Staging subtle and poignant performances, Migone positions sound, the body, and language into a performative matrix, which evokes an extra layer by extending each into each other’s peripheries. The body is made sonic in the stutter, sound a jagged surface of operative speech, and language an oral exuberance. Working under the name "undo" his collaborative CD with Alexandre St-Onge titled un sperme qui meurt, de froid, en agitant faiblement sa petite queue, dans les draps d’un gamin amplifies the oral cavity in minute and microscopic detail, "…exploring the mouth in all its viscosity; mouth amplifications and breath saturations, barely perceptible language, ventriloquism of the other…" The mouth loses its way on the path to speech, diverging across the grain of the voice, scraping its surface to find the hidden textures, amplifying phlegm and spittle, tongue and teeth. Orality minus meaning has become a pure embodied speech in whose performance language skips, heard as a broken lexicon.

The Acoustical : The Body

In following the shift from the alphabetical, or literate model, to the acoustical, we are lead away from the eye and to the ear. That the eye has instigated an entire body of critical thought is testament to its predominance in the arts and culture in general. By nature, the visual arts are wrapped up in the actions of producing and receiving images, functioning according to representation, and featuring a continual replay of images and their analysis. That such theoretical literatures interrogate vision and contribute to a significant archive of writings (which can be placed alongside the ubiquitous “film studies”) points toward the secretive fact that writing itself is based on the gaze. In this sense, the very object of study (vision) and the writing that aims for critical perspective are housed within the same operating mechanism of the alphabetical paradigm. A move toward the acoustical resituates the perceiving and thinking body, away from the eye (and by extension the alphabetical) and toward the ear (and listening), and therefore must invade the sedimentation of knowledge.

Janet Cardiff’s The Missing Voice (Case Study B) (1999) situates the body in space while displacing the stability of time. Indicative of her sound walks, The Missing Voice consists of a prepared audio recording that participants listen to while walking. The recordings operate by directing participants on a walk, in this case, around the East End of London. Listening to a woman’s voice telling you which way to turn, what to look for, and referring to sights and sounds of the city, unsettles one’s sense of awareness: you hear information about the city in the recording but sounds do not link up to the reality of what you are actually experiencing. Staging such a jag in time and space, the sense of self in turn skips. The instability of references leads one to a shift in perception, and the location of the body literally falls out of time. In leading you somewhere, the work necessarily take you nowhere (or maybe it is the reverse?), as the participant has no sense of destination and no sense of ultimate aim. One surrenders to the voice, encountering the psychological uncertainties of cognition. Cardiff amplifies these uncertainties by spinning the narrative into a fictional murder mystery in which fragments of clues are given but never completely add up. She compounds this through a multiplication of voices, all of which contribute to a schizophrenic rupture, since each voice breaks apart the singularity of perspective and understanding. "One speaks a clipped voice and guides you through the city, another narrates in a confessional mode. Still another speaks in the detached third person and yet another sounds highly mediated as she talks into a portable recorder." [7] In this way, the walk is both an auditory experience and a language game in which a listener becomes a "co-conspirator" in an uncertain reality.

In contrast, the work of Maryanne Amacher displaces the body through the utilization of frequency and spatiality instead of through voice and narrative. Working with sound installation for the last 20 years, she specializes in speaker constructions positioned within given spaces. Yet it is important to emphasize that such amplifications do not operate as airborne sound waves. Rather, she positions sound against architecture instead of housing it within architectural conventions. Broadcasting sound in adjoining rooms or outside the area of presentation, her work actively travels through walls, floors, corridors, etc. As Amacher describes: "An entire building or series of rooms provides a stage for the sonic and visual sets of my installations. Architecture especially articulates sonic imaging in ‘structure-borne’ sound, magnifying color and spatial presence as the sound shapes interact with structural characteristics of the rooms before reaching the listener." [8]

Installation works such as Synaptic Island (1992) and Maastunnel Sound Characters (1995) position architecture as an instrumental body. As in Cardiff’s sound walks, Amacher’s "sound characters" operate to immerse the listener/ viewer in a specific narrative, of sound and space as a "sonic theater" in which the material function of architectures shifts to that of vibration. Amplifying varying tones and frequencies, Amacher’s installations aim to activate what she calls "the third ear," which essentially hears sounds not so much amplified from outside but created inside the ear as it resonates with given frequencies. The neuro-physiology of the body produces its own internal sonics through the acoustical excitation of sound waves that are specific to each individual. Amacher’s installations heighten the unique identifying and experiential features of the body through a psycho-acoustic lens where noise vibrates both the architecture of rooms as well as the ear canal. Her works underscore the built environment itself as a sonic theatre.

Such physical intensity of sonic experience is furthered by the work of Infrasound (Randy H. Y. Yau and Scott Arford). Working only in the context of live performances with a battery of low frequencies, Infrasound does not so much deliver up acoustical renderings but rather physical experiences. During Infrasound’s performances, the listener is forced to reposition the act of listening upon the entire body instead of solely through the ear. Here, the body itself functions as an extended membrane, activated by a sonics generally absent from everyday experience. In this sense, Amacher’s "third ear" is spread out across the body. Immersed in such an experience, the physical place of the body shifts to that of architecture. As in Brewster’s work with standing waves and acoustic sculpture, Infrasound washes over the divide of sound and space by making them inseparable. It is hard to distinguish between what is heard and what is felt, and what is produced by amplification and what is produced by vibration, as an acoustical effect. The body is thus displaced against the ghostly layers of frequency and volume and gives way to psycho-acoustical occurrences, where body and ear short circuit their seeming division. Subjectivity is thus made "radiophonic." Cut up, thrown apart, transmitted and received, dispersed and doubled-up, sound agitates the very borders of body and mind, vibrating its limits and introducing a "difference"—that of bodily listening.

Can the museum handle sound?

Sound art can thus be seen (or heard) as an extension of the acoustical, operating as a specific practice that expands the field of sound, as both object of experience and subject of concern. In turn, sound art is poised to reposition architecture, language, and subjectivity by complicating and displacing their fixity, adding extra inputs, and unpacking the representational devices of meaning. Against such expanded terrain, can the museum be said to "handle" sound? It would seem the museum necessarily has to reposition itself — as architecture, as language, and as attending caretaker — in accommodating and supporting sound art.

As sound art gains momentum as an object for display, and practice for historicization, it strikes me as paradoxical that the museum itself may function as the site for such attention and ultimate writing. For I would argue that the museum operates according to the alphabetical, rather than the acoustical. Isn’t the function of the museum to display works, write about them, and create history? All of which are housed within the alphabetical, which as Marshall McLuhan has pointed out aims to "specialize, fragment, and distance." [9] The space of the average art museum itself reflects a privileging of visuality in the formation of the white cube, which casts audiences as "viewers." [10] The museum informs us of a work’s "fixed" meaning by positioning us in front of the ubiquitous didactic panel and the historical tracings to which the museum is bound. It demarcates the gallery as "art space" from everything outside. Art becomes that which the museum contains, rather than something that the museum amplifies; it directs our attention to meaning rather than problematizing its very formation. This situation can be glimpsed in the museum’s move toward "darkening" rooms whenever sound is presented (as in the Whitney’s Biennial and the Pompidou’s "Sonic Process"). Such a practice makes me wonder if it is a strategy not so much to lead a visitor into sound as to lead away from the museum’s own uncertainty as to what to do with sound.

In proposing that sound art is art about sound, I intend to specify sound art as a cultural practice and to draw borders that may in the end allow for a deeper and more thorough definition of sound as opening out to the acoustical. In addition, I hope to add a level of urgency to the writing of history (language), the positioning of audiences (body), and the creation of architectures for the presentation of sound works (space). For the critical determinations of the museum should be seen as further impetus for an increased criticality on the part of practitioners (and theorists) to specifically address the contexts in which sound works are positioned; in other words, the function of sound art, as a performative arena of the acoustical, may lend itself to problematizing the museum with the aim of antagonizing its dependence on the alphabetical. This is not so much a call for "institutional critique" on the part of sound art (though that would be interesting!), but to answer what Christine van Assche identifies as a museological problem, that of exhibition architecture built to accommodate sound art. [11] That Van Assche has found a solution in the "sound studio" as the optimum spatial configuration to which the museum should turn in presenting sound art (as realized in "Sonic Process" which van Assche curated for the Pompidou), not so much resolves the issue as skirting its persistence. Though the sound studio may overcome certain problems around lessening interference and sound bleed between respective sound works, it falls short in fostering the full dimensionality of sound art as a complex, rich and dynamic practice to which interference itself bespeaks.

*Ideas for this article were initially developed while participating in a day-long symposium on sound art in November 2002, organized by the Museet for Samtidskunst, Roskilde Denmark, and owe much of their impetus to the conversational intensity of all those who participated. Special thanks to Mette Marcus, curator at the Museum.