Sound Art is a field situated in a nebulous place between music and art. As a source of inspiration to sound design, its role is analogous to that of the visual arts in relation to graphic design.

The issue of sound art’s definition is discussed by musician and writer Alan Licht in the seminal text Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories (2007; revised as Sound Art Revisited in 2019). Licht does not (can not) settle on a single definition for what is an incredibly diverse range of practices undertaken by creators from both fine arts and music backgrounds. However, he does give four basic criteria for what constitutes sound art, namely that sound art: uses sound as a medium of artistic expression; is exhibited in an art exhibition space (ie, not a music space); does not have a linear temporal (musical) structure; is not intended to be listened to from beginning to end in its entirety.

There are, as Licht acknowledges, sound art works that do not fit into all of these criteria, and some pieces of music – especially experimental music – which do. It is easy to image sound art works (such as sound walks or sound sculptures) being exhibited outdoors, or that have a linear narrative (though the artist might not consider it important that the listener follow the narrative from beginning to end), or musical works in which the composer encourages the audience to enter and leave the performance space freely. It is even possible to have sound art with virtually no sounds at all: for example, Tsunoda Toshiya’s Low Frequencies Observed at Maguchi Bay, a 2005 installation consisting of field recordings from which sounds over 20Hz (the lower limit of human hearing) have been filtered out. What is exhibited, then, is a speaker playing sounds inaudible to humans, and what we can observe is merely the mechanical movement of the speaker. Released in 2007 as a CD, this work definitely challenges generic boundaries: is it sound art, music, or neither?

Sound Art first arose as a term in the late 1970s in New York, but the artistic practice of exploring sound in spaces has a much longer history within experimental art and music. The separation of sound from the visual presence of the sound source, which is a prerequisite to the consideration of sound as an independent artistic medium, was definitively accomplished in the late 19th century when the telephone, phonograph, and then radio were invented. However, even in the 16th century, some composers were placing musicians in locations in churches, opera, and concert halls out of view of the audience, and thus treating space as a parameter in their musical thought.

The concept of a sonic art which made use of sounds exclusive of traditional musical tones was first advanced by Luigi Russolo, a Futurist artist, in his 1913 manifesto “The Art of Noises”. In that text he called for a music fit for the industrial, modern age, filled with the speed and energy of motors and electricity. Russolo himself built 27 noise-making devices which he called Intonarumori and produced several concerts with these instruments both before and after WWI.

The composer who has had the greatest influence on sound art is undoubtedly John Cage. His first steps away from conventional music composition began with works for non-pitched percussion and prepared piano in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as the 1937 essay “The Future of Music: Credo” which looked forward to a music of limitless possibility enabled by the use of electric instruments and ‘noise’. His most famous work, 1952’s 4’33” instructs the performer to produce no sound over the course of 4’33”, during which time the musical content is all the other sounds which occur in the performance space. This radical act of accepting all sound, regardless of provenance, as music opened up the stage for the happenings and performance art of the FLUXUS movement of the 1960s, which potentially encompassed all conceivable actions as artistic. From this period of radical inclusiveness, both artists and musicians began to cross into each others’ fields with increasing frequency, so that by the time William Hellerman curated the first exhibition of sound art in New York in 1983, there was already a rich tradition of artists working with sound and musicians creating art from which to draw on.

Sound art’s ultimate undefinability is perhaps its strength as a genre. With such a short history as an independent field, there is a huge sense of possibility and adventure there. And though there is undeniable overlap with experimental music, the non-linearity of sound art makes it fundamentally different from classical and popular music traditions. Likewise, in comparison with visual art, the immediacy and intimacy of sound – sound waves physically penetrate the listener’s body and, unlike our eyes, we humans are unable to close our ears, leaving us perpetually open and vulnerable to sound – affects the audience more directly than a plastic art object viewed at a distance. For both music and art, sound art opens up new fields of expression.

Sound design too has developed alongside sound art as a field beyond acoustics. The origins of sound design are identified by Licht as being in early radio plays and sound films, especially in the work of Orson Welles (for example, Citizen Kane), which drew on avant-garde artistic ideas in both visual and sound design. Especially after the 1970s, film became a place of experimentation and development in sound design, where sound designers often draw on innovations in sound art in the creation of cinematic soundscapes. In addition, sound designers concerned with both natural and built environments are influenced by the intimacy of sound which has taken on increasing importance in sound art. Sound art exploring room acoustics (eg, Alvin Lucier’s I am sitting in a room), soundscapes (eg, Toshiya Tsunoda’s installations, mentioned above), or the sounds of everyday urban life (eg, Martin Creed’s Work No. 409, in which a recording of a choir installed in an elevator signals its direction of movement) are in dialogue with, and opening up possibilities which can be realised in, various areas within sound design.

Sound art is a young and vibrant field of creation floating indefinably between music and art, developing and enhancing ideas from both its parent fields. In a world getting progressively louder, sensitive and creative attention to sound from a variety of perspectives is necessary. The future of sound design is undoubtedly being explored at present within the open expanse of sound art.

(Daryl Jamieson)

References

• Kelly, Caleb ed. (2011) Sound. London: Whitechapel Gallery.
• Licht, Alan (2019) Sound Art Revisited. London: Bloomsbury.