Experimentalism by Sarah Lee

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The particular auditory effect produced by a given cause.

Experimental ism / Sound

There is geometry in the humming of the strings.

Tom Pfeiffer, Anak Krakatau Volcano, 2009

14 experimentalism with sound

THE THEART ART OF OF SOUND SOUND

People use sound all the time. We rely on sounds to communicate. The sounds we hear tell us a lot about our surroundings. Sound is a wave, similar to the ripples on a pond or the ocean waves you might see crashing on a beach.

The universal power of music over mental states gives rise to much fascinating speculation among musicians who are philosophically inclined concerning the rationale of sound, and its correspondence with other vibrational phenomena in nature. It is not enough for some minds to experience the elevating effects of certain combinations of sounds upon themselves and others; they must further inquire why sound affects, and seek to investigate the subtle connection between waves or vibrations of ether, the inner psychic nature of man. And such inquirers, though they often lose in art what they gain from scientific criticism directed toward it, do much to uphold the dignity of music as an actual factor in the evolution of the human soul. The science of vibrations, then, imperfectly though it is yet understood, appears to open to us at least one portal of the mystery of life. Penetrate far enough — “and all is said.” Since all vibration produces sound, and since all matter is in motion or vibration, it follows that whenever there is matter or substance there must also be sound, though inaudible. Hence every object and part of the universe will be continually producing a certain definite sound, though our ears may not be sufficiently sensitive to receive it. Truly and literally the world is a vast orchestra of pulsing vibration, and the “music of the spheres” exist equally for the scientist, as for the man of imagination.

In the version shown in stylus, clapclap intersected with the vertical spine of the weekly papers and the building’s column to form a nexus. On the rear wall, the outstretched arm of a torso in a blue and white striped coat-shirt swung a distorted hand forward in an exaggerated sweep toward the wall’s interior edge. Divided by a hallway opening, the same footage played mirrored and slightly out of sync on the perpendicular side wall. The hand, which the arm wore like an ill-fitting glove or puppet mask, was a roughly made paper maché shell. Although the video is silent, the two arms joined visually in the gesture of a clap completing itself. Photo credit: TOKY Branding + Design / Ann Hamilton

experimentalism / the art of sound

A musician’s pursuit leads him sometimes away from the practical side of his art, to the speculative. He has to become, for the time, a philosopher, seeking to know how sound is made, and its relation to the ultimates of things. And Science gives us such big hints — sets us so tall a ladder to climb, to find, when we have got high enough, that the Easterns have been before us, and have relegated Sound, primordial matter in vibration — to the very forefront of the divine program of the Universe. According to the Puranas, the world, with its countless forms, conditions, and aspects, is built out of a single Substance, to whose earliest manifestations belongs the only conceivable attribute of Sound. The Vedas set forth the cause of Sound, and the “Voice of Nature” under the allegory of the Gandharvas, the 6,333 heavenly Singers and Musicians of Indra’s Realm, who personify, even in numbers, the manifold sounds in nature, spiritual and physical. The Hindus interpret them to mean the forces of solar fire, and their association with both heat and sound is an interesting forestallment of the hypothesis of modern Science that heat is a specific form of vibratory motion, all vibration producing sound, audible and inaudible. Of course Science laughs at the Vedas, and their fairytale methods of dealing with hard facts. It knows nothing of a hypothetical Akasa-Ether as the origin of sound. “Sound is the result of the vibrations of the air,” say our wiser men. For all that, we will just glance at a little more archaic nonsense on the subject. The three most dissimilar religious philosophies of the ancient world agree in the idea of creation, or transmutation, by Word or Sound. The Hindu Brahma through Vach (divine Speech) created the Primordial Waters. Light, Sound, Number, the Ten Words, or Sephiroth, are the three factors in creation, according to the Chaldean-Hebrew Kabbalah. The Pythagoreans held that the Logos called forth the world out of Chaos by Sound or Harmony, and constructed it according to the principles of musical proportion. For this reason, Pythagoras made a knowledge of music and mathematics necessary to admission into his schools. Every atom of matter in the Universe, of every grade of density, has probably a fixed rate of vibration. One may produce, by sound, the key-note of the atoms composing a structure or organism, and may harmonise or disturb them according to the particular ratio of vibration employed. In cases where

experimentalism / the art of sound

illness is due to a disturbance of the right balance of molecular motion — either of the physical or psychic man —the proper use of sound as a restorer of equability is scientifically conceivable. We have lately heard of the Guild of St. Cecilia whose object is to allay certain forms of suffering by music performed in the sick-room by competent musicians who have devoted themselves to this experiment. In Paris, too, the different colours of the spectrum have lately been made to play a part in the treatment of disease. Sound is the first link in a (possibly) infinite chain of phenomena resulting from vibratory motion of matter in different degrees of modification. From 32 to 32,000 vibrations per second lies the range of sound audible to the human ear, conveyed by the air. From 32,000, to a third of a billion vibrations is the region of the electric rays, the medium being ether. These rays Lord Armstrong has shown to be productive of form in geometrical proportion. From 35 to 1875 billions per second, we have the range of the heat and light rays — a narrow margin comprising red at 450, and violet at 750 billions. Some steps upward may be found the vibrations of the Rontgen rays, from a fourth of a trillion, to ten times that number per second. Then a vast, almost unexplored region in which the rays cease to be refracted, reflected, or polarized, and traverse dense bodies as though they were transparent. One clue only can be offered here, and that an insufficient one. Huxley, as we have seen, regards every atom in nature as pulsing with inaudible sound. If his statement be true, it follows that not only the physical body of man, but the ether interpenetrating it, and even the substance of man’s mind must each have its own dominant note, which can be altered and modified by the power of sound in different combinations. If this were not so, if sound did not exist within man in some form or another, by reason of the regularly toned molecules of his sensitive inner nature, there could be no connection between himself and the sounds reaching him from without. Hence it is easy to understand why every organism, with its own peculiar key-note, or rate of vibration, will be differently affected by different classes of music, certain combinations of sounds influencing some natures strongly in a particular direction, and leaving others untouched through lack of the appropriate key-note. From the Eastern custom of mantram chanting, or the deliberate employment of certain sound-vibrations for the production of certain states of consciousness, to the leit-motif of our modern orchestral writers, is probably a far cry; yet both have a common principle. In Wagner’s Dramas, for instance, the hearer associates in consciousness certain personages and dramatic points with an appropriate combination of notes. Every part of the work stands to each, and to the hearer, in a definite vibrational ratio. So that by constant repetition of the individual motifs, or logoi,

Perception typically centered on colors, as did the metaphysics of mind when discussing the mind-dependence of secondary qualities. Possibly, the philosophical privilege of the visible just reflects the cognitive privilege of the visible—as vision is considered to account for most of useful sensory information gathering.

experimentalism / the art of sound

the consciousness of the audience becomes attuned to a sympathetic relation with the characters and episodes as presented, of which the motifs are the attempted sound-equivalents. This mantramic power of music to arouse corresponding states of consciousness is within the experience of all. Of modern composers, possibly Wagner and Schumann had the deepest insight into the influence of sound upon the inner, psychic organism. To these men, the composer’s power lay in the expression and interpretation, in terms of sound, of certain stages of soul-experience. Without a perfect attunement of the inner vibrations that make up individuality, with their outer correspondences, without the true inspiration founded on nature and soul-life, music may pass into the realm of intellectual sound-gymnastics, but it can never become true art. According to what a man has done, suffered, thought, and experienced, will be the harmony or discord of the psychic note he utters. In each man this note is dominant, sounding through his entire individuality, jarring or harmonising according to the mind-pitch of those with whom he comes in contact. To this fact may, perhaps, be attributed the superior affecting power of the human voice over other forms of musical expression. This instrument may accurately disclose the interior state of a speaker or singer. If a man has had a wide experience of suffering, it is stored up within him, and his voice will carry with it the synthetic expression of his entire being. A superficial or unformed character is unmistakably revealed in this way. To a certain extent, the audience and the music-maker are one, in that what the latter conveys in terms of outer vibrations, the former answers in terms of emotion and thought. Some music, it is true, touches deeper places; awakens experiences that are not to be expressed by phenomena so shallow as feeling. It creates, or re-creates within a state all too high and fleeting for the scalpels of the musical psychologist, in which the hearers regain, for a flash, the Beatific Vision, and being led to the “edge of the Infinite, gaze for one moment into That.”

EXODUS: barcelona, 10:10 (tao)

Silence is better than unmeaning words.

Philosophy of perception typically centered on colors, as did the metaphysics of mind when discussing the mind-dependence of secondary qualities. Possibly, the philosophical privilege of the visible just reflects the cognitive privilege of the visible—as vision is considered to account for most of useful sensory information gathering. This neglect of sounds is at times a regrettable state of affairs, as sounds are not only an important element of the perceptual scene but are also philosophically idiosyncratic in many intriguing ways; in particular, their temporal and spatial unfolding, as presented in perSound is produced by a rapid variation in the ception, has interesting metaphysical and epistemological aspects. average density or presThere is, however, an advantage of the neglect. Many philosophical sure of air molecules aspects of sound and sound perception are not idiosyncratic and above and below the current atmospheric indeed make for general issues in philosophy of perception. Hence pressure. We perceive in this article we will take advantage of the many discussions that sound as these pressure have used other sensory features such as colors as a paradigm of fluctuations cause our eardrums to vibrate. a sensory feature. For instance, we shall not rehearse the discussion about the subjectivity of secondary qualities, as the example of sounds does not seem to introduce new philosophically interesting elements that could challenge generalizations obtained, say, from the example of colors. The main issues which are on the table concern the nature of sounds. Sounds enter the content of auditory perception. But what are they? Are sounds individuals? Are they events? Are they properties of sounding objects? If they are events, what type of event are they? What is the relation between sounds and sounding objects? Temporal and causal features of sounds will be important in deciding these and related questions. However, it turns out that a fruitful way to organize these issues deals with the spatial properties of sounds. Indeed, the various philosophical pronouncements about the nature of sounds can be rather neatly classified according to the spatial status each of them assigns to sounds. Where are sounds? Are they anywhere? The main relevant families of answers include proximal, medial, distal, and aspatial theories. Proximal theories would claim that sounds are where the hearer is. Medial theories – exemplified by mainstream acoustics – locate sounds in the medium between the resonating object and the hearer. Distal theories consider sounds to be located at the resonating object. Finally, aspatial theories deny spatial relevance to sounds. There are significant variants of each of these. Sound theories can also be classified according to other dimensions, such as the metaphysical status they accord to sounds (for instance, as occurring events as opposed to properties or dispositions).

Holographic Melt Series by Dom Sebastian (2012)

Zoriah, Haiti earthquake disaster

Ryuji Miyamoto from series â&#x20AC;&#x153;Kobeâ&#x20AC;?

42 1906 San Francisco Earthquake

What is Sound Art? ‘Sound art’ is a term for a diverse set of art practices which utilize sound and listening as the subject matter and material. Among the wide variety of forms that might be grouped within the category of sound art (depending on whom you ask) are: kinetic sounding sculpture, automatons, experimental radio, sound installations, guided sound-walks, instrument making, graphic scores, sound poetry, video art, acoustic ecology / phonography, and even works in which sound is implied rather than explicit. Many sound art works could be described by using more than one of those descriptors. It is hard to define the borders of what is and isn’t sound art. There are two reasons for this: because of the variety of the forms it can take, and because of the fact that sound art exists somewhere between music and the visual arts, predominantly outside of both, but with some overlap over porous borders. As author Seth Kim-Cohen wrote: “sound art ... must be distinguished from music on the one side and gallery arts on the other. The borders are blurry, which means that IT is blurry.” The fuzzy nature of the term and the plurality of the field has led to such circumstances as some musical groups adopting it as a marketing buzzword, further confusing matters. When one looks back at the work that is now discussed within the context of the category of sound art, it would include many important works from the early 1960s and through the 1970s, although most histories of sound art cite Patrick Tosani produces images while the 1980s as the origin of sound art as a discrete practice. letting show the process used, and adapt it to the nature of things. The The earliest known usage of the term ‘sound art’ was in resulting image is only a means to 1983 with an exhibition at the Sculpture Center in New York question, analyse and understand the entitled “sound/Art”. nature and complexity of the world around us. If man ever invented tools to Sound art’s history is shared with that of experimental music better communicate, share, it also grows and with contemporary visual arts, linking Futurism, Dada, Fluxproportionally filters through which it us, Bauhaus, Post-Modern and Relational art. Among the many represents the world, failing to perceive it as it is. Thus photographing what can key figures in this history are the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo, be seen, giving touch that cannot be; who envisioned the use of industrial and military noises to comthe artist captures the image in its most prise a new kind of music at the turn of the century, and comsimple expression, but also the most suggestive. poser John Cage who, in his works and lectures (partially under the influence of the teachings of Zen Buddhism as well as of the Patrick Tosani Portrait painter Robert Rauschenberg) conceived of no difference ben.19, 1985

tween noise and music, proposing that everyday sounds are as worthy of attentive listening as any composed piece of music. For Cage, given that there is music, this does not necessarily mean there is a ‘not-music’. A theoretical discourse about sound art has only barely begun, and presents a number of internal conflicts, especially about its role in relation to music. Sound art must be distinct from music, or its usefulness as a term is probably nil, but drawing the border between music and sound art is difficult. As York University Associate Professor of Arts & Cultural History Leslie Korrick states, “sound art may concern itself with music, but music itself is not necessarily sound art”. Countering this, musician, sound-artist and listener Jeph Jerman suggests that “I ... think that any audio art made by people cannot [not] be called music”. The need to declare sound art distinct from music appears to contradict Cage’s ideas about music and ‘not-music’. Sound art often raises beguiling questions through its conceptual explorations of dynamic relations and barriers between the listener / spectator and sound in temporal flux within space. This exhibition, entitled “Sound Through Barriers” notes the overlap of the category of sound art over the borders between visual arts and music, and the physical border-crossing ability of sound such as through a wall. Also explored are spatial and temporal border crossings, and the ability of sound to pass through more conceptual walls such as those between the exhibition’s visitors and the artwork, between each piece of art and the other works collected within this space. Artworks were selected which did not require being sealed off in isolation, separated from the outside world, acknowledging and benefiting from the fact that there are other sounding works within the space, and a listening public that is itself contributing to the sound environment by the mere fact of being present. The ultimate purpose of this focus on sound’s barrier-crossing abilities points to an intent to raise awareness of the listener’s experience with the sounds of the world outside of the art gallery walls of this exhibition, in every day life circumstances.

WHAT WHAT SHOULD SHOULD A A MUSEUM MUSEUM SOUND SOUND LIKE? LIKE?

48 experimentalism / the art of sound / sound artists

Antoni’s primary tool for making sculpture has always been her own body. And used the brainwave signals recorded while she dreamed at night as a pattern for weaving a blanket the following morning. Janine Antoni, Loving Care, 1992

Sound artists use sound as a medium, like a painter would use oil-paint. Sound artworks range from layering unusual sounds together to create aural landscapes to installations in which sound is a main component. Some sound artworks explore how sound interacts with architecture and public space. Because of sound’s intangible nature these works are usually interdisciplinary, combined with sculpture, video, and installation. The pioneers of the form include German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters, who in the ’20s made Ursonate, a 40-minute recording of vocal nonsensical utterances that hang somewhere between song and speech. With the progression of recorded sound technology, the genre has grown more complex. Here are ﬁve contemporary artists taking sound art to the next level.

Carel Balth, Madrid IV, IV 2001â&#x20AC;&#x201C;6 Video, watercolor, digitally printed canvas, wood

sound is the result of the vibrations of the air Roman Signer, Table with rockets, 1993

John Cage: Music, Sound, and Silence To Cage, there is no such thing as silence. Music is a succession of sounds and the composer the “organizer of sounds.” Historically, music has been a communication of feelings, but Cage argues that all sounds have this potential for conveying feeling in the mechanical and electronic sense. As Cage puts it in the essay “History of Experimental Music in the United States”: “Debussy said quite some time ago, ‘Any sounds in any combination and in any succession are henceforth free to be used in a musical continuity.’” Silence was perhaps the pivotal aspect of Cage’s theories. If silence could be shown not to exist, then feelings, too, could be pushed into the category of nonexistence. Cage appears to want to draw inspiration from nature and human emotion. Hearing sounds which are just sound immediately sets the theorizing mind to theorizing, and the emotions of human beings are continually aroused by encounters with nature. Does not a mountain unintentionally evoke in us a sense of wonder? otters along a stream a sense of mirth? night in the woods a sense of fear? Do not rain falling and mists rising up suggest the love binding heaven and earth? Is not decaying flesh loathsome? Does not the death of someone we love bring sorrow? And is there a greater hero than the least plant that grows? These responses to nature are mine and will not necessarily correspond with another’s. Emotion takes place in the person who has it. And sounds, when allowed to be themselves, do not require that those who hear them do so unfeelingly. The opposite is what is meant by response ability. For Cage, silence is that space, although absolute silence does not exist. Cage’s affinity with contemporary architecture, specifically glass-walled buildings as in Mies van der Rohe and with modern art, as in the deconstructed images of Marcel Duchamp, emphasize the analogy between looking through rather than looking at. Cage’s music intended to look through sounds and not at them, the latter being traditional music. Cage insisted that his music differed from any previous music because it carried the insights of Eastern philosophy and opened the mind in a way that no historical music did. In this Cage anticipates the claims of modern electronic music, of minimalist, ambient and New Age music. But these styles of music are still radically opposed to his contrived and random sounds, being deliberate in evoking a specific feeling that “opens the mind” and represents music that lets the “sounds be themselves.”

One example is Music Walk, a piece composed for a range of different instruments and noise making devices. The score is an exceptional work of minimalist art. A similar aesthetic can be found in Cageâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Atlas Eclipticalis, which was composed by tracing star maps onto musical paper. Cage moveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s into a more geometric abstractions with in his score for Williamâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Mix, a piece that integrates country sounds and city sounds. His geometric mood is even more pronounced in his score for the Fontana Mix, which was performed by using overlapping transparencies containing random shapes and points.

Just Don’t Call It Minimalism

Most composers commonly called Minimalists have disavowed the label at one point or another, suggesting that it mischaracterizes their music, which can be mind-bogglingly intricate — and huge. And they certainly don’t consider themselves part of a school. The designation arose mainly from the friendships of composers with Minimalist artists: Steve Reich and Philip Glass, for example, with the sculptor Richard Serra. But there certainly was something new and big (however minimal the means) stirring in the second half of the 20th century. With roots in the styles of Lou Harrison, La Monte Young, Morton Feldman, John Cage and others, music characterized by great rhythmic drive, simplified harmonies and hypnotic repetition blossomed in signal works by Terry Riley, John Adams, Mr. Glass and Mr. Reich. The 70th-birthday year of Philip Glass, which is being widely observed, seems as good a time as any to take stock of the Minimalist achievement by way of recordings. So the classical music critics of The New York Times have singled out favorite recordings of music by various forerunners (including the jazz great Count Basie), the early giants and those who later fell under the influence. The concept for this ingeniously complex 1988 work came from Mr. Reich’s memories of childhood travels on transcontinental trains in the late 1930s and early ’40s to visit his divorced parents: his mother in Los Angeles, his father in New York. The constant clacking of the train on the tracks imprinted itself on his musical imagination. While contemplating this piece, Mr. Reich realized that, as a Jew, had he been in Europe during his youth he would probably have been traveling on quite different trains. Minimalism is a musical art that says very few things over long periods of time. This is in opposition to music that takes a long time to say many things (Mahler), music that says very little in normal amounts of time (Saint-Saëns) or music that says a great deal in practically no time at all. Minimalism can be employed by several percussionists (“Drumming” by Steve Reich with So Percussion) or an entire opera company (John Adams’s “Nixon in China”). It is also comfortable on two pianos (“Two2” by John Cage, played by Edmund Niemann and Nurit Tilles). Minimalism, in other words, is user-friendly. It is hard to leave the subject of Minimalism without mention of Count Basie, master of the art of leaving out. Basie’s piano solos framed unspoken musical phrases with dabs of music: chords doing the work of a jazz-music continuo and fragments of melody that point at things present but unsaid. The richness of the silences — the tantalizing promises therein — were at odds with the art of Basie’s colleague Art Tatum, who seemed determined to fill musical space with as many notes as possible. Minimalism, here as elsewhere, fills time with a minimum of means.

Philip Glass, NYC, 2008

Philip Glass, at the keyboard. Einstein on the Beach Knee Play 1

WHAT

Rinko Kawauchi, Illuminance, 2012

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SEE?

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Minor White, Ice in Light and Shadow, 1950

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TOUCH?

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Andreas Gursky, Union Rave, 1995 C-print

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HEAR?

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Rinko Kawauchi, Illuminance, 2012

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SMELL?

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Laura Letinsky, Still Life , 1997-2012

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TASTE?

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Unknown, Blind Reading

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FEEL?

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Mount Everest Earthquake, 2015

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PERCEIVE?

LISTEN