What Is Sound Art?
Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus.
Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus.
Types Of Creative Practices Based On Sound
EDUCATION
* Audio-Engineering * Radio / Podcast * Remixing - Mashups |
GAME AUDIO
* Composing * Effects - cartoons, films * Audiobooks |
PERFORMANCE
* Using sounds from the environment |
ACCESSIBILITY
* For blind people |
* Sound as communication
* Sound as spiritual practice (e.g. church bells, praying)
* Sound as memory and community (e.g. voice of parents)
* Sound as tool - medicine, warfare (e.g. ultrasound)
FORTY PART MOTET PROJECT (2001)
More conventional skills are emphasized throughout the project, including writing, reading, interpreting, presenting, but more importantly, these are learned within a framework of arts, culture, and interactive media.
— Charity Marsh
"Hip Hop as Methodology: Ways of Knowing"
Project "Forty Part Motet" by Janet Cardiff interested me the most in this lecture. Forty separately recorded voices are played back through forty speakers strategically placed throughout the space. The effect of the work on visitors is deeply moving, earning it a popularity rarely encountered by contemporary art. If something you hear catches your attention, walk toward it. When you want to hear something else – move. Try to always move slowly and carefully to catch every sound around you.
"While listening to a concert you are normally seated in front of the choir, in traditional audience position. With this piece I want the audience to be able to experience a piece of music from the viewpoint of the singers. Every performer hears a unique mix of the piece of music. Enabling the audience to move throughout the space allows them to be intimately connected with the voices. It also reveals the piece of music as a changing construct. As well I am interested in how sound may physically construct a space in a sculptural way and how a viewer may choose a path through this physical yet virtual space.
I placed the speakers around the room in an oval so that the listener would be able to really feel the sculptural construction of the piece by Tallis. You can hear the sound move from one choir to another, jumping back and forth, echoing each other and then experience the overwhelming feeling as the sound waves hit you when all of the singers are singing.”
— Janet Cardiff
"The Toronto Consort"
Rebecca used this example because it describes and fits topic very well. Many people go to galleries to look at famous paintings and sculptures. People often call this "art". This example shows that art is not only about painting or something that you can look at. This project is a "sound gallery" where people go to listen to art.
Most of the time you will hear Thomas Talis' motet Spem in alium. It is considered a masterpiece of Renaissance polyphonic vocal music (The Toronto Consort). Music is a form of art. It is one of those things that is incapable of sustaining life, but things like music, art, poetry are things that we stay alive for. Music affects society by the type of music people listen to. This tells them which emotion they will be feeling.
Most of the time you will hear Thomas Talis' motet Spem in alium. It is considered a masterpiece of Renaissance polyphonic vocal music (The Toronto Consort). Music is a form of art. It is one of those things that is incapable of sustaining life, but things like music, art, poetry are things that we stay alive for. Music affects society by the type of music people listen to. This tells them which emotion they will be feeling.
If you want to measure the spiritual depth of society, make sure to mark its music
— Plato
Music has been an expression of people from different cultures around the world. No matter how much music may have differed in different parts of the world, it seems that it served a general common purpose: to bring people together. It bring people to communication. Music is created by cultures and it creates culture itself.
More about music/sound and society/culture you can find on my project/research paper "MusicBook" from the topic My Work.
Sound provides the most forceful stimulus that human begins experience, and the most evanescent.
-- Bruce R. Smith
"Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life"
This topic has strong connection with other topics such as Performance.
Most of the time sound is a big part of performance or VJ projects. Many people find visualization boring and useless without sound. Performance at theatre almost always includes sound / music to pass corresponding mood to audience.
Also this example is linked to Social Media topic. Spem in alium has a community group on Facebook where people can learn new or share existing experience.
Creative idea could be if there existed such social media website where people could upload their own sounds (breathe, glass sound, clap, anything they could record and post online). All these sounds would be mixed up in creative way to make a "music". This music could be performed somewhere as a concert, for example.
Fifty Shades of Grey sends sales of Thomas Tallis's
Spem in Alium soaring
"It may not quite be what Thomas Tallis, the 16th-century court composer, had in mind when he composed his extraordinary devotional choral work, Spem in Alium. After all, it is a sacred motet expressing man's hope and trust in the Lord."
- Charlotte Higgins
"The Guardian"
Spem in Alium soaring
"It may not quite be what Thomas Tallis, the 16th-century court composer, had in mind when he composed his extraordinary devotional choral work, Spem in Alium. After all, it is a sacred motet expressing man's hope and trust in the Lord."
- Charlotte Higgins
"The Guardian"
Get an insight into the unique sound installation currently in the Howard Assembly Room at Opera North, 46 New Briggate.
Materials: 40 loud speakers mounted on stands, placed in an oval, amplifiers, playback computer
Duration: 14 min. loop with 11 min. of music and 3 min. of intermission
You can find more information about this project on the website.
Duration: 14 min. loop with 11 min. of music and 3 min. of intermission
You can find more information about this project on the website.