[-empyre-] Saturday, 21st: The Disciplinarity of Sound Art

[Christoph Cox]

A quick addendum to my previous note: Surely the best sound 
festival/exhibition I've ever been to was the Kill Your Timid Notion 
Festival <http://arika.org.uk/kytn/2008/>, run by the Scottish 
organization Arika <http://arika.org.uk>. (The festival's no longer 
running; but Arika keeps producing great events.) The festival was 
largely centered on sound (featuring installations, performances, etc.); 
but it also included films, lectures, performances, etc. that richly 
resonated with the sonic work. It also mixed newer work with older work 
in all these media. This seems to me a good way forward for sonic art 
exhibition.

Along with the (relative lack) of critical discourse about sound, 
another thing that I think prevents innovation in the sonic arts is the 
fact that the sound art community is relatively unaware of the 
tremendously creative, diverse, and fast-moving developments in the 
so-called visual arts over the past 20 years (well, 40 years, really). 
(I know Seth shares this frustration.) In the "visual arts," artistic 
practice has largely moved away from traditional artistic media 
(painting, sculpture, etc.) toward what David Joselit 
<http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9868.html> calls "formats," 
situations, sites, and platforms in which all sorts of things connect 
and resonate. Today, an "art" project can look and sound more like a 
discussion group, a social service project, a scientific inquiry, etc. 
Though I don't love their work, the sound art collective Ultra-red 
<http://www.ultrared.org> is one of the few to have assimilated these 
developments. I think that, were sound artists more aware of broader 
developments in visual art (and architecture), we'd see greater 
innovation in sound art practice. It's not a matter of imitating the 
visual arts but of developing sonic strategies with similar 
sophistication, criticality, and energy.


On 6/21/14, 11:26 PM, Kevin deForest wrote:
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>
>
>
> To Christoph: I think sound art would have a chance at greater 
> visibility in a museum setting, but with the current state of the 
> economy and the general dumbing down of museums in North America at 
> least, it feels like it would be a harder sell. It doesn't in general 
> offer shiny pop culture references to promote or advertise with for 
> starters. As Jim noted, there was a period at the turn of the 
> millennium when a number of sound art focused shows seemed to provide 
> critical mass in bringing the sound art category to a greater public 
> which I still think is very necessary. Its ephemeral and experiential 
> nature still has a radical quality that I think can still make 
> potentially accessible and innovative statements. Perhaps more curated 
> projects that involve sound artists collaborating with more visually 
> based artists could also result in interesting shows that dialogue 
> across media. Not the best example but I heard Christian Marclay 
> invited Christof Migone to DJ at one of his Christmas performances, 
> which I would have enjoyed taking in.
>
>
> On 14-06-21 9:21 AM, Jim Drobnick wrote:
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>>
>> Seth's trenchant post about the "messy pain" the status of the work 
>> provides an interesting segue to today's topic on the disciplinarity 
>> of sound art. Is it likewise messy? Questions by David Cecchetto, 
>> Darren Copeland, Christoph Cox and Andra McCartney revolve around the 
>> definition, distinctiveness, and gendering of sound art/studies:
>>
>> *1) Darren Copeland*: Is Sound Art a discipline separate from the 
>> other disciplines of the arts (music, visual art, media art, etc.) or 
>> is it simply a sub-genre with parallel histories in a number of arts 
>> disciplines?
>>
>> *2) Christoph Cox*: Should (and/or how can) sound art break out of 
>> the relative isolation it has enjoyed as a practice pursued by a 
>> small group of artists but largely ignored by art historians, 
>> cultural theorists, musicologists, and others?
>>
>> *3) Kevin deForest*: is there a need to define the term "sound art" 
>> and "sound artist" in more specific terms? Although they are used in 
>> a general way to acknowledge those working with audio in the 
>> production of "art", I think the term should also be identified as a 
>> specific discipline evolving out of a specific contemporary 
>> conceptual art context.
>>
>> *4) Andra McCartney*: A few questions: to what extent are gendered 
>> differences being maintained or challenged by the new emphasis on 
>> sound studies? To what extent do disciplines of sound studies rely on 
>> the words and ideas of a small number of 'big men' to anchor and 
>> distinguish their emerging field of study? How do disciplinary 
>> perspectives become entrenched in sound studies?
>>
>> This will be the last series of questions posted for my hosting of 
>> this week. Tomorrow (Sunday) will be a day to reassess and comment on 
>> any question from the previous 6 days.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Jim
>>
>> On 2014-06-21, at 7:33 AM, Seth Kim-Cohen wrote:
>>
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>>> Hello again
>>>
>>> Moving on...
>>>
>>> I want to take up David's question, specifically this: (quoting 
>>> Hansen) "'for the first time in our history, media [...] has become 
>>> distinct from its own technical infrastructure' (p. 172). What novel 
>>> affordances are offered by aural practices---in the broadest 
>>> sense---in the context of this second, singular, newness?"
>>>
>>> Having been significantly persuaded by Craig Dworkin's arguments in 
>>> his book No Medium (MIT 2013), I'm not sure what media might mean as 
>>> or "distinct from its own technical infrastructure." Dworkin shows 
>>> that every time we try to form the thought, "a medium is x" we 
>>> create rules which the "medium" in question cannot obey. Ultimately, 
>>> medium cannot be merely technical infrastructure, it cannot be the 
>>> material support, it cannot be the genre or the form... At least, 
>>> it's fair to say, it cannot be any of these things alone. Dworkin 
>>> gives the example of Broodthaers' Pense Bete 
>>> (http://armathrop.wikidot.com/mise-en-page). Copies of Broodthaers' 
>>> own book of poems are encased in plaster. In the process, the books 
>>> relinquish their claim on the medium of literature, at the same 
>>> time, the plaster surrenders its status as a sculptural medium, 
>>> because it now functions as an - admittedly poor - binding material 
>>> for the book(s). Ultimately, the problem isn't that each medium 
>>> swaps itself out for the status of another, but that each material 
>>> and each medium slips into an ambiguous position between mediums, 
>>> and I would argue, beyond mediality itself.
>>>
>>> To connect this argument to my question, the same basic logic 
>>> applies to the status of the work. To say "the work is x" is 
>>> inevitably to leave some feature or function of the work out of the 
>>> equation (not to mention the fact that what the work is or does will 
>>> change based on its time, place, and situation of audition). I would 
>>> agree, then, with Dworkin who says that medium is a relational 
>>> construct, a nexus of temporary and contingent forces brought 
>>> together as a matter of convenience and convention to help corral 
>>> the meaning and effect of a work or set of works. This is equally 
>>> true of how we use the word "work." What the work is, where it 
>>> begins and ends, what other entities it rightly interacts with, are 
>>> all open questions to be contingently located at the crossroads of 
>>> various concerns, audiences, interactions, histories, psychologies, 
>>> intentions, politics, and desires. This is a messy pain in the ass 
>>> for the artist, audience, and critic alike. And I wouldn't have it 
>>> any other way.
>>>
>>> Have a nice weekend!
>>> Seth
>>> ________________
>>> www.kim-cohen.com <http://www.kim-cohen.com>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jun 20, 2014, at 4:36 AM, Jim Drobnick wrote:
>>>
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>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks for the discussion yesterday -- it feels like we've just 
>>> scratched the surface!
>>>
>>> For today, the topic is The Sonic "Work," New Media, and Theory, and 
>>> will involve questions by David Cecchetto, Christoph Cox and Seth 
>>> Kim-Cohen. This series of inquiries address the ontological and/or 
>>> socially-constructed aspects of sound art, how its works are 
>>> circumscribed by or reconfigure the genre of media art, and how it 
>>> may generate new theoretical paradigms:
>>>
>>> 1) David Cecchetto: Mark Hansen notes that the term "new media" has 
>>> both a plural and singular sense: plural in that the novelty of 
>>> every medium waxes as an incipient innovation before waning into the 
>>> sedimented form of the medium itself; and at the same time singular 
>>> in that "for the first time in our history, media [...] has become 
>>> distinct from its own technical infrastructure" (p. 172). What novel 
>>> affordances are offered by aural practices---in the broadest 
>>> sense---in the context of this second, singular, newness? Might 
>>> aurality, for example, conjure alternative sensitivities to these 
>>> ubiquitous data flows and rhythms of change? Or does such a claim 
>>> slide too easily into an essentialized understanding of sound? (Mark 
>>> Hansen, "New Media," in Critical Terms for Media Studies, ed. by 
>>> Mark Hansen and W.J.T. Mitchell, University of Chicago Press, 2010).
>>>
>>> 2) Christoph Cox: How can we move beyond the phenomenological and 
>>> poststructuralist approaches that have thus far dominated thinking 
>>> about sound?
>>>
>>> 3) Seth Kim-Cohen: In "What Is An Author?" Foucault writes, "A 
>>> theory of the work does not exist, and the empirical task of those 
>>> who naively undertake the editing of works often suffers in the 
>>> absence of such a theory... The word work and the unity that it 
>>> designates are probably as problematic as the status of the author's 
>>> individuality."
>>>
>>>      Let's take this problem seriously.
>>>
>>>      Thinking the work as always otherwise suggests a certain wisdom 
>>> in regard to the other: to be wise regarding the other is to be 
>>> "otherwise." The other, in this case, is, of course, not necessarily 
>>> another subject, or even another sonic object, but a host of forces 
>>> beyond the material or formal aspects of the sonic work: politics, 
>>> economics, history, intention, power, gender, race, etc. In this 
>>> sense, the sonic work is constituted similarly to Foucault's notion 
>>> of the author function. It cannot be ascribed as, or to, a specific 
>>> entity. Rather, it designates a sort of spatial conceit, a location 
>>> in which disparate components might coalesce, implying a necessarily 
>>> temporary and contingent substance, founded and formed in 
>>> accordance, not with its own self-contained aspects or demands, but 
>>> according to the exigencies of something we might call an event, 
>>> rather than an entity.
>>>
>>>      My questions, then, are: What is gained (or lost) in abandoning 
>>> the fictional unity of the sonic "work"? If we abandon material and 
>>> formal aspects as the determinants of the boundaries of the 
>>> phenomena under consideration, how do we adjudicate the jurisdiction 
>>> of the work, not to mention, that of criticism, evaluation, or even, 
>>> production?
>>>
>>> There's quite a bit to delve into here, but if David, Christoph or 
>>> Seth would like to further elaborate, please jump in.
>>>
>>> Jim
>>>
>>>
>>>
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