History of Sonic Art
SND 4052 01 - Spring 2005
SMFA - Tara Rodgers

How do we define sound, noise, silence, and music? How can we hear these elements critically and use them in our own work with an awareness of their social and political functions? This course will explore developments in sound art from the early-20th century to the present, to cultivate a critical ear for listening and creating. We will examine work by artists who have blurred traditional boundaries of music, science, design, fine arts, and philosophy, and read critical writings in music history, cultural studies, sound and media theory. Artists and movements to be discussed include: the Italian Futurists, Oliveros, Cage, musique concrete, Lucier, Fluxus, Ono, Fontana, Kubisch, and Amacher. Themes we will explore in detail include: the invention of new instruments; sound in relation to voice, language, and the body; acoustic ecology and field recordings; sound and architecture (real and virtual spaces); sampling, remixing, and DJ culture; digital interfaces, web-based instruments, and net art.

Listenings will be done in class. If you want to purchase recordings, most of those listed below can be found at Forced Exposure or CDemusic.

See bibliography for full citations of readings.


Class sessions and assignments:

#1 - Jan 26 - thoughts on listening & hearing - defining sound / noise / silence / music

#2 - Feb 2 - developments in music technology through the 20th century - cultural history of noise & noise abatement

Read:
Schwartz, "The Indefensible Ear: A History."
Shimizu, "Concerning the Relationships Between Space, Objects, & the Production of Sound" (excerpt).
Attali, "Listening" (excerpt).
Oliveros, "Sonic Images."

Check out:
Oliveros's Deep Listening website

Listen (in class):
Pauline Oliveros (Crone Music); Maggi Payne (Breaks and Motors); Raymond Scott (Soothing Sounds for Baby; Manhattan Research Project); Louis & Bebe Barron (Forbidden Planet); Les Paul; Muddy Waters; Morton Subotnick (Silver Apples of the Moon); Sun Ra (Space Is the Place); Jimi Hendrix (Star Spangled Banner).

Recommended:
Chanan, "Record Culture." In Repeated Takes, 1-22.
Sterne, The Audible Past.
Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity.
Waksman, "Racial Distortions." In Instruments of Desire.

#3 - Feb 9 - Italian Futurism / musique concrete / early electronic music

Read:
Russolo, "The Art of Noises (extracts)."
Holmes, "Enter Electronic Music."
Varese, "The Liberation of Sound."
Ussachevsky, "Random Thoughts on Creative Collaboration With Machines."
Minard, "Musique Concrete and Its Importance to the Visual Arts."

Listen:
Luigi Russolo (Awakening of a City); Dada video (Greta Deses); Pierre Shaeffer (Etude aux Chemins de Fer) & Pierre Henry (Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul); Iannis Xenakis (Diamorphoses, concret pH); Karlheinz Stockhausen (Etude, Studie I, Gesang der Junglinge); Vladimir Ussachevshky (Wireless Fantasy); Otto Leuning (Low Speed); Edgard Varese (Poeme Electronique).

Recommended:
Bijsterveld, "A Servile Imitation. Disputes About Machines in Music, 1910-1930." In Music and Technology in the Twentieth Century, edited by Braun.
Chadabe, "The Great Opening Up of Music to All Sounds." In Electric Sound, 21-62.

#4 - Feb 16 - Duchamp / Cage / AACM / AMM / Lucier / Fluxus

Read:
Cage, "Indeterminacy."
Lewis, "Improvised Music After 1950: Afrological and Eurological Perspectives."
Lucier, "I Am Sitting In A Room" (score & interview).
Kaprow, "Untitled Guidelines to Happenings."

Listen:
Marcel Duchamp (The Bride Stripped Bare of Her Bachelors, Even); John Cage (Imaginary Landscape, Williams Mix, Bird Cage); Art Ensemble of Chicago; AMM (AMMMusic); MEV (Spacecraft); Alvin Lucier (I Am Sitting In a Room, Music for Solo Performer).

Recommended:
Kahn, ch. on Cage in Noise Water Meat.
Katz, "John Cage's Queer Silence." In Writings Through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art. Bernstein and Hatch, eds., 42-61.
Nyman, Experimental Music.

#5 - Feb 23 - instrument-building - sound sculptures - graphic scores

** Written/sonic response #1 due in class

Read:
"Synaptic Island" and "Instrument as Architecture." In Architecture as a Translation of Music.

Listen:
Alvin Lucier (Music on a Long Thin Wire); Ellen Fullman (Body Music; Staggered Stasis); Judy Dunaway (Emergency Music); Fred Frith (Stone Brick Glass Wood Wire); [The User] (Symphony No. 2 for Dot Matrix Printers); Walter Kitundu (music from handmade turntable instruments); selections from CD accompanying Site of Sound: Of Architecture and the Ear.

Check out:
Walter Kitundu website
Ellen Fullman website
Fred Frith's graphic scores

Recommended:
Chadabe, "The Expansion of the Tape Music Idea." In Electric Sound.

#6 - Mar 2 - sound & language - sound poetry - voice

Read:
Barthes, "The Grain of the Voice."
Gilbert and Pearson, "The Metaphysics of Music."
Yoko Ono interview. In The Guests Go In to Supper.

Listen:
Luciano Berio (Sequenza, Visage); Steve Reich (Come Out, It's Gonna Rain); Yoko Ono (Plastic Ono Band); Laetitia Sonami (What Happened); Pamela Z (Bone Music, Geekspeak); Meredith Monk (Dolmen Music); Ella Fitzgerald (When Your Lover Has Gone/Ella & Oscar); AGF (head slash bauch); Bjork (Medulla); selections from Sound States: Innovative Poetics and Acoustical Technologies. Adelaide Morris, ed. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

Recommended:
Morris, ed. Sound States.

#7 - Mar 9 - sound & the body - electronic body art - Stelarc, Amacher

Read:
Henriques, "Sonic Dominance and the Reggae Sound System Session."
Gilbert and Pearson, "Music, Meaning and Pleasure."
"The Whole Corporeality of Hearing: An Interview with Bernhard Leitner."

Listen:
Maryanne Amacher (Sound Characters); Aube (Sigh in Depressive Blue, Vas in Euthymic Violet); Merzbow; Matmos (A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure).

Recommended:
Elsenaar and Scha, "Electric Body Manipulation and Performance Art: A Historical Perspective." Leonardo Music Journal 12 (2002): 17-28.

#8 - Mar 16 - sound & landscape/geology - acoustic ecology - field recordings

** Written/sonic response #2 due in class

Read:
Csepregi, "On Sound Atmospheres."
Westerkamp, "The Local and Global Language of Environmental Sound."
Dunn, Music, Language and Environment
Oliveros, "The Poetics of Environmental Sound."

Check out:
Readings on the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology website

Listen:
Hildegard Westerkamp (Talking Rain); Andra McCartney (Soundwalking Queen Elizabeth Park); Annea Lockwood (A Sound Map of the Hudson River); David Dunn (Music, Language & Environment; Chaos & the Emergent Life of the Pond); Olivia Block (Mobius Fuse; Pure Gaze); Kaffe Mathews (Weather Made); Andrea Polli.

#9 - Mar 30 - sampling, mixing & remixing

** Beth Coleman & Howard Goldkranz: guest lecture/demonstration of their Vernacular software.

Read:
Moholo-Nagy, "Production-Reproduction: Potentialities of the Phonograph."
Cutler, "Plunderphonia."
Taylor, "A Riddle Wrapped in a Mystery."
Miller (aka DJ Spooky), Rhythm Science, 20-36.

Check out:
Interviews with Beth Coleman and Marina Rosenfeld on Pinknoises.com

Listen:
Christian Marclay; Marina Rosenfeld (Fragment Opera); DJ Spooky (Rhythm Science); Lootpack/Yesterday's New Quintet; John Oswald (Plunderphonics 69/96); Akufen (My Way).

Recommended:
Rodgers, "On the Process and Aesthetics of Sampling in Electronic Music Production." Organised Sound 8:3 (Dec 2003).
Rose, "Soul Sonic Forces," ch. in Black Noise.
Schloss, Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip Hop.

#10 - April 6 - sound & architecture: acoustics, real & virtual spaces

Read:
Gercke and Kubisch, "About the Work of Christina Kubisch" and Interview...
Wollscheid, "Does the Song Remain the Same?"
Fontana, "The Relocation of Ambient Sound: Urban Sound Sculpture" and "Sound as Virtual Image" (Online at his website under Essays by Bill Fontana; also take a look at his projects)

Check out:
[the user] - Silophone project

Listen:
Selections from Bill Fontana's website; from CD accompanying book on Christina Kubisch; from CD accompanying Resonances. Video interview with Ann Hamilton on her Corpus piece at Mass MoCA.

#11 - April 13 - digital interfaces - networked music - web-based instruments

Read:
Morse, "The Poetics of Interactivity."
Manovich, "The Database" (excerpt).

Check out:
The Hub (network music)
JSyn & Wire: Java Audio Synthesis
TransJam: server for web-based interaction
Processing & Sonia: Java audio/visual production
The Audio Playground Keyboard Museum (Flash animations)
Catchy Name (with DJ Spooky's Errata/Erratum in Flash)
Amit Pitaru (Processing pieces, including Sonic Wire Sculptor & Hammond Flower)
Vernacular: software by Beth Coleman & Howard Goldkrand
Mendi + Keith Obadike

Listen:
The Hub; [The User] (Abandon).

#12 - April 20 - final class / project presentations