Refine your artist statement based on the in-class interview task.
Sound, media and art are different fields that I always enjoyed really much. Since I’ve been able to experiment with sound equipment and computer programs I felt like these were great mediums to express my creativity.
I think that sound and music have reached a really interesting point with its interaction with technology, since we’ve had sound recorders and speakers, sound artists have been able to work at a different level, and that’s the starting point for my practice.
My work has been always in constant evolution and I think that’s what I find more interesting about my workflow, because without the curiosity for finding new fields your creativity might become static and that wouldn’t be artistically interesting from my point of view.
Write what each of those words mean to you and how they function in either your everyday life or when you are at a gig/listening to a work of sound art.
As Pauline Oliveros said: “The ear hears, the brain listens” it won’t surprise us that there is a big difference between hearing and listening. Hearing is a constantly active sense with which the human being and animals have been gifted, is the ability we have to decode sound waves through our ears and tympanum to the brain, and transform it into sound. This feature never stops, you can’t stop hearing unless you cover your ears and still really difficult not to receive some sound if this sound is loud enough. Listening is much different, now that we are hearing something, if we keep attention into it and get some information or benefit from this sound, then we are listening to it. Like when we listen to a voice or a piece of music, we’re not just letting the sound go through our eardrum, we are focusing on it and often enjoying it.
If I’m listening to my favourite song at gig I might be listening to the music but maybe someone comes to me with a good conversation so I could switch and listen to that person in first instance, so I’d leave the music is the background and I would start to just hear to my favourite song, as I’m not keeping the attention on it anymore. At the end of the day both actions complement each other, they might come together sometimes but we as sound enthusiasts should be able to difference and analyse them on every occasion.
Sound art is a relatively new form of art which involves sound or related topics of sound with the creation of art, for me, this type of art could have started when the technology allowed us to record and store sound physically or digitally as before of that there was no way of work with sound in any other way apart of music, which has been always the most orthodox creative way of producing sound. Being able to record and play sound gives us the ability to manipulate it and create different forms of art with it.
In my own experience, and coming from an electronic music background, sound has always fascinated me, and the possibility to research and experiment with the different tools and techniques that we have access to these days, opens a wide range of possibilities in order to create interesting reactions on the public.”It is a liberating term, free of constraints of classical music traditions as well as of visual art traditions” (Westerkamp, 06.07.11) And that’s another important factor in sound arts, the visual aspect, as it can mix the best of visual art and sound and music components.
Identify three everyday sounds that contain qualities such as: rhythm, texture or pitch. Write about these sounds in a blog post.
Washing machine: This is a very common sound that we might find at home, the sound has different stages, being quite in the beginning and ending with louder with high-pitched continuous noise. We can find rhythm in it specially at the beginning the the object which are inside the washing machine hit the drum, and this creates some very recognisable sounds.
Car engines: A sound we always can find outdoors is the sound of cars.This is a sound that contains normally plenty of low frequencies and a wobbly texture. Its pitch also increases as the speed of the vehicle is higher, the balance and location in the space is an important aspect of this sound as it travels quickly through the environment lowering and increasing in amplitude.
The wind: The sound of the wind is one of the most common sounds in nature, this sound is created by air pressure, which is also a classic excitement power used for the creation of sound since ancient times. The wind sounds are high on pitch, the air travelling fast and reacting to other objects produces whistles, and they have a smooth, but sharp texture.
In this Week 6 lesson we have analysed the different types and practices within the field of field recording, environmental sounds and sound ecology. In this exercise we’ve been told to walk through the campus and listen to the environmental sounds that we might find around it.
We’ll difference these sounds within three categories:
Sound Signal: Sounds specially designed to be listened to with a particular attention and meaning.
Keynote: A keynote is a sound which is heard continuously enough on an specific environment so it forms a recognisable background.
Soundmark: A sound which is genuinely perceived by a specific culture or community.
And this is the list of sounds which I found at the campus and how I’ve categorised them:
Sound Signals
Till beep, door pass beep.
Keynotes
Chatting, stairs stepping, electrical saw, hand drier.
Last Monday morning we enjoyed a gallery visit, this time we visited Tate Modern in Bankside, just in front of the river Thames and close to St Paul’s Cathedral. The gallery is one of the most popular in terms of fine art and contemporary art in London, the building where the museum is hosted is the former Bankside Power Station, a huge warehouse with a massive turbine tower, welcoming us in the main entrance with a spacious hall where we can see seasonal installations.
My favourite piece inside the gallery was Something Going on Above my Head by Oswaldo Macia, this sound art installation features a number of loudspeakers hanging from the ceiling from which we can hear a wild soundscape mainly focused into birds sounds. This sound sculpture is divided between two rooms, the walls are handwritten with differents diagrams which explain the location and the name of the species of birds which are recorded and played in the audio installation.
Oswaldo spent five years recording bird cries and presents them in this installation in the form of an orchestra formed by these different birds. The artist’s inspiration was reading an article about nuclear waste being dropped in the Baltic Sea, the installation is trying to show us that sometimes we could miss important information hidden among other events. The sounds of the birds are representing that huge amount of information and the difficulty to distinguish between them.
I my opinion this was a very pleasant installation that I enjoyed by its format and the sound recordings were beautiful too, maybe the diagrams drawn in the walls doesn’t fit much with the sounds displayed and I personally would have enjoyed more some birds pictures or videos. The artwork overall was really nice and greatly performed as it is Sound Art focused and creates an experience which fills every corner of the rooms where it’s displayed.
“Signalsare foreground sounds and they are listened to consciously. In terms of the psychologist, they are figure rather than ground. Any sound can be listened to consciously, and so any sound can become a figure or signal, but for the purposes of our community-oriented study we will confine ourselves to mentioning some of those signals which must be listened to because they constitute acoustic warning devices: bells, whistles, horns and sirens.” Sterne, J 2012, The Sound Studies Reader, Routledge
We call signals to the more meaningful sounds which happen in our near environment and are subject to a predeterminate cultural context. In psychology, these kind of sounds are more rapidly understood by ourselves. Any sound could really be understood as a signal, so any sound could become meaningful depending on our own different code, however, in terms of academical study we will just mention those sound which are culturally understood as acoustic alerts, like bells, horns, sirens or whistles.
References:
Sterne, J (2012) The Sound Studies Reader, Routledge
Select one sound art work from the many presented to you, research the work and describe its historical or contemporary context.
Luigi Russolo – Intonarumori
The Intonarumori, or as translated from Italian could mean “Noise Tuner” is an amazing sound art work and probably one of the earliest in history. Its innovative design surprised many during its creation and it still keeping resemblance with different audio setups and sound systems that we could find even in modern times.
The creation of these instruments was followed by the book “The Art of Noises”, written by the same Luigi and published in 1916. These wooden boxes had different acoustic elements inside of them that as someone was pulling from a handle were creating some kinds of noises, the devices also featured a horn attached to them to increase the volume. The result was a series of sounds which could be similar to modern noise or experimental music, although is worth to mention that this instrument was purely acoustic, not electronic.
During the Second World War and for other unknown reasons, the Intonarumori was destroyed and there was nothing left of it apart from some original sketches. Many artists and institutions have since then reproduced copies of what could the Intonarumori be, and have been shown in exhibitions and events around the world.
This sound art work has always kept my attention for its early development and timeless aesthetic. It definitely inspires me in terms of sounds installations, and I think its important to value the utility of acoustic and mechanic system in terms of creating sound sculptures and other sound art works.
During this second class in the Introduction to Sound Arts unit, we’ve gone through different types of practices and definitions with the field of Sound Arts. We also accessed to the library to understand its mechanism in order to loan books, and explored the audio section selecting a choice of them.
Keywords:
Sonic Environment – Understanding what happens sonically in the environment is really important, how physically the sound moves into space through waves is for me the fascinating side of sound.
Sound design – Creating sound for different media like cinema or video games is an art itself and a growing professional field. I’m greatly interested in digital and analog sound and the tools that we can make use for to create great sounding experiences.
Synthesis – The use of synthesisers is an important milestone within the world of audio and music, how musicians all over the world have researched the combination of electricity and audio to create our desired synthesised electronic sounds.
Mandy-Suzanne Wong Sound Art Definition
I found this text really interesting, it brings us back again to the idea that Sound Art involves many different practices and as she explains we don’t need to find an explanation of it, or it will be always a complicated question like ‘What is Art?’ for example. Simply, I’d leave the term Sound Art as an area of study which focuses in the use of sound for art, design or entertainment purposes.
