| A Sound Art Bookshelf
Since Edgard Varčse defined music as “organized sound” in the first half of the twentieth century--paving the way for musique concrčte and the experiments of John Cage--it has been possible to approach acoustic phenomena as one would any tangible material, that is, to arrange or distort sound without considerations of melody, harmony or the classical composition. The term “sound art” arose in the U.S. in the 1980s, to describe the work of a number of artists who had made purely sound-based art alongside other kinds of practices, and has since occupied an ambiguous interzone between the “cultures” of art and music. The artists/musicians below pursue a primarily sound-derived or sound-oriented art; some of them, such as Christian Marclay and Brandon LaBelle, are among the first generation of artists to work exclusively in this fertile ground.
Christian Marclay guest curated the ICA Philadelphia's 2007 exhibition Ensemble, a group show of works that make sound.
I've always used found objects, images and sounds, and collaged them together, and tried to create something new and different with what was available. To be totally original and start from scratch always seemed futile.
Christian Marclay |
| | Sound Art: Recommended Reading, Reference Books & Catalogs
Moderne Kunst NürnbergMatthew Ritchie: The Morning LineAranda Lasch, Arup Agu Situated at the interaction of art, architecture, music, mathematics, cosmology and science, Matthew Ritchie’s The Morning Line” is a 33-foot high sound pavilion, constructed in aluminum and conceived in part as a successor to Edgard Varčse and Le Corbusier’s pavilion for the 1958 World’s Fair, and Fritz Bornemann’s Expo 70 Pavilion. Designed in collaboration with New York-based architects Aranda Lasch, the Arup Advanced Geometry Unit and the Music Research Centre of York University, the structure was inspired by the cosmological theories of Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok, and offered a sonic environment in which newly commissioned works by well-known musicians were performed. This survey of the project includes a book containing Todd Eberle’s photographs of the structure, a poster, a newspaper and a red vinyl LP with music by contemporary electronica musicians such as Alexej Borisov, Tommi Grönlund, Petteri Nisunen, Christian Fennesz, Carsten Nicolai, Zsolt Olejnik, Finnbogi Petursson, Franz Pomassl, Terre . . . . [see book details] |  Edited Eva Ebersberger, Daniela Zyman. Preface by Francesca von Habsburg. Text by Benjamin Aranda, Brandon LaBelle, Helene Furján, Chris Lasch, Tony Myatt, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Matthew Ritchie, Roland Schöny, Mark Wasiuta. Boxed, Pbk, 12.5 x 12.5 / 140 pgs / 70 color / 2 posters / vinyl record. Publication Date: 4/30/2012 List Price: US $80.00
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ChartaRyoji Ikeda: Datamatics One of Japan’s leading electronic composers, Ryoji Ikeda (born 1966) manipulates sound in various raw” states, often using frequencies at the very limits of human hearing. Occupying a unique soundworld between ambient electronica, sinewave noise and glitch beats, Ikeda’s music has expanded into art contexts more extensively than any of his contemporaries. Datamatics is a long-term art project that explores our reception of miniscule audio and visual data. Developed between 2006–2012, it consists of an audiovisual concert, installations, publications, a radio program and a CD. This book documents most of the works from the series, emphasizing three major datamatics exhibitions presented in Yamaguchi (Japan 2008), Bogota (Columbia 2011) and Gijon (Spain 2012). Alongside graphic material relating to the production processes such as data sources, graphic scores and technical diagrams, the book also includes texts by curators Kazunao Abe, Maria Belen Sez de Ibarra and Benjamin Weil. . . . . [see book details] |  Text by Kazunao Abe, Maria Belen Saez de Ibarra, Benjamin Weil. Hbk, 7 x 10.25 in. / 144 pgs / 81 color / 25 b&w. Publication Date: 6/30/2012 List Price: US $47.50
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Errant Bodies PressAlmost Nothing with Luc Ferrari Perhaps the only postwar classical composer to invest avant-garde music with overt eroticism, Luc Ferrari (1929–2005) was one of France’s leading composers of the twentieth century, relentlessly experimental while always preserving his keen sense of humor. Ferrari was a first-generation exponent of musique concrčte, and made brilliant use of field recordings to develop sensual, proto-ambient narrative that he termed anecdotal music” or cinema for the ear.” Perhaps the most notorious instance of this approach was Danses Organiques (1973), for which Ferrari recorded the meeting and sexual encounter of two young women, cut with other ambient and music sound. In his final decades Ferrari was championed by David Grubbs (of Gastr del Sol), who brought his music to a postrock audience. Almost Nothing is the first publication on this composer. It alternates Jacqueline Caux’s interviews with 14 imaginary autobiographies” by the composer, offering a lively account of new music’s most revolutionary era. . . . . [see book details] |  Text by Jacqueline Caux, Luc Ferrari. Interview by Jacqueline Caux, François Delalande, Daniel Terrugi, Evelyne Gayou. Translated by Jérôme Hansen. Pbk, 6 x 9 in. / 164 pgs / 20 b&w. Publication Date: 6/30/2012 List Price: US $22.00
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JRP|RingierA Brief History of New MusicBy Hans Ulrich Obrist Following the success of Hans Ulrich Obrist’s A Brief History of Curating, this publication gathers the influential curator’s interviews with some of the foremost musicians and composers of the 1950s–1990s. It brings together leading avant-garde composers of the early postwar period such as Elliot Carter, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen; pioneers of electroacoustic music such as François Bayle, Pauline Oliveros, Iannis Xenakis and Peter Zinovieff; minimalist and Fluxus-inspired artist-musicians such as Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt, Phil Niblock, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich and Terry Riley; and figures that have moved between classical/experimental realms and more pop terrain, such as Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Howie B., Arto Lindsay and Caetano Veloso. Obrist’s interviews map the evolution of the new music in Europe and America across all of its genres, from musique concrčte to the recent hybridizations between pop and avant-garde, as techniques from both realms cross-pollinate. A Brief History of New Music is an . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Lionel Bovier. Pbk, 6 x 8.25 in. / 320 pgs. Publication Date: 2/28/2013 List Price: US $29.95
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Errant Bodies PressRoom Tone Room Tone was initiated by artist Brandon LaBelle to examine the relationship between sound and architecture. LaBelle sent field recordings of his apartment to 20 architects, designers and artists, each of whom was invited to construct a physical model of the apartment based solely on these recordings. This publication includes documentation of the architectural renderings, essays, an interview with LaBelle and a CD of the recordings. . . . . [see book details] |  Text by Robin Wilson, Brandon LaBelle. Interview by Elena Biserna. Pbk, 6 x 8 in. / 84 pgs / 45 color / 12 b&w / Audio CD. Publication Date: 6/30/2012 List Price: US $20.00
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Dis VoirSoundwalk Collective: MedeaZag Zig Series Soundwalk is an international sound collective founded in the early 2000s by Stephan Crasneanscki and based in New York City. In the summer of 2011, the collective retraced Medea’s mythical journey along the coast of the Black Sea, collecting fragments of voices, music, Morse code and ambient sound, collaging them into a work of sound art. The book follows the sound composition of the CD (included here) and also gathers photographs by Stephan Crasneanscki and texts by Arthur Larrue. . . . . [see book details] |  Photographs by Stephan Crasneanscki. Text by Arthur Larrue. Pbk, 6.5 x 8.5 in. / 64 pgs / 92 color / Audio CD. Publication Date: 5/31/2012 List Price: US $40.00
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Dis VoirChloe: Chasser CroiserThe Surreal and Its Echo Already well known in the international electronic music scene, French DJ and sound artist Chloe brings her surrealist approach to sound to a new artist's book and audio recording. Featuring photographs, manuscript excerpts and other ephemera, the publication serves as an echo"" to an original sound piece derived from reportage and documentary tracks."" . . . . [see book details] |  Pbk, 6 x 8 in. / 64 pgs / 60 color / Audio CD. Publication Date: 10/31/2011 List Price: US $40.00
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Walther König, KölnSee This SoundPromises in Sound and Vision As the status of sound in art and music evolves and redefines itself, so too does sound art find new ways of describing its history. See This Sound compiles a huge number of artists, filmmakers, composers and performers, reaching back into the early twentieth century and into the present to survey overlaps between not only sound and art, sound and film, and the metaphor of cinema as rhythm or symphony. Proceeding chronologically, the book takes the early cinematic eye music” of Hans Richter as a starting point, noting parallel works by Walter Ruttmann and Oskar Fischinger; moving into the postwar period, the art/cinema/ music experiments of Peter Kubelka, Valie Export and Michael Snow are discussed, establishing precedents to similar work by Rodney Graham, Carsten Nicolai, Jeremy Deller and many others. In its scope and intelligence, See This Sound is a unique survey of this realm. . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Cosima Rainer, Stella Rollig, Dieter Daniels, Manuela Ammer. Pbk, 9 x 11.5 in. / 320 pgs / 179 color / 147 b&w. Publication Date: 2/28/2010 List Price: US $49.95
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Walther König, KölnSound in Z: Experiments in Sound and Electronic Music in Early 20th-century Russia Sound in Z supplies the astounding and long-lost chapter in the early story of electronic music: the Soviet experiment, a chapter that runs from 1917 to the late 1930s. Its heroes are Arseny Avraamov, inventor of Graphic Sound (drawing directly onto magnetic tape) and a 48-note scale; Alexei Gastev, who coined the term bio-mechanics”; Leon Theremin, inventor of the world's first electronic instrument, the Theremin; and others whose dreams for electronic sound were cut short by Stalin's regime. Drawing on materials from numerous Moscow archives, this book reconstructs Avraamov's Symphony of Sirens,” an open-air performance for factory whistles, foghorns and artillery fire first staged in 1922, explores Graphic Sound and recounts Theremin's extraordinary career—compiling the first full account of Russian electronic music. . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by David Rogerson, Matt Price. Foreword by Jeremy Deller. Text by Andrei Smirnov. Pbk, 7.25 x 9 in. / 96 pgs / 60 b&w. Publication Date: 7/31/2012 List Price: US $38.00
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Dis VoirRyoji Ikeda: Dataphonics A star of minimalist electronica and sound art, Ryoji Ikeda (born 1966) focuses on the building blocks of sound and aural minutiae, often deploying frequencies at the very edges of human hearing—sound that, as he puts it, the listener becomes aware of only upon its disappearance.” His albums +/- (1997) and Matrix (2001) spread this soundworld of sine waves and ambient glitchery to a wider audience; since then, he has exhibited and collaborated (notably with Carsten Nicolai) across the world. A homage to Musique Concrčte pioneer Pierre Schaeffer's Solfege de l'objet sonore, Dataphonics began as a monthly broadcast on France culture's Atelier de Création Radiophonique, in which Ikeda created a highly physical auditory experience based on the idea of binary-logic data made audible, to materialize the invisible domain of totally pure digital data.'” This book and CD includes spreads of graphic scores, codes, symbols and the composition itself, recomposed from the . . . . [see book details] |  Pbk, 6.5 x 8.5 in. / 64 pgs / 64 color / Audio CD. Publication Date: 5/31/2010 List Price: US $40.00
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The Contemporary Arts Museum HoustonBlack Light/White Noise: Light and Sound in Contemporary Art This 64-page paperback, housed with a DVD in a hardback case, accompanies The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston's Summer 2007 exhibition, Black Light/White Noise, which focuses on black artists who have worked with sound and light--such as Ben Patterson, Tom Lloyd and George Lewis. The continuation and expansion of work in sound and light among a younger generation of African American artists and artists of African descent is also considered here in real depth, with work by Nadine Robinson, Kori Newkirk, Arthur Jafa, Jennie C. Jones, Sanford Biggers, Kira Lynn Harris and Louis Cameron. The innovative design of this hybrid print/digital publication gives readers the opportunity to experience all the works featured in the show alongside a checklist of the exhibition, artist's biographies, a bibliography and essays by curator Valerie Cassel Oliver, Romi Crawford of the Studio Museum of Harlem and writer, composer, musician and playwright Greg Tate. . . . . [see book details] |  Foreword by Marti Mayo. Text by Greg Tate, Romi Crawford, Valerie Cassel Oliver. DVD (NTSC) Hardback case and insert, 5.5 x 7.5 in. / 64 pgs / 25 b&w Publication Date: 8/1/2007 List Price: US $19.95
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Exact ChangeComposition in Retrospect Written in his characteristic mesostics” (lines of prose poetry linked by a central vertical acrostic), Composition in Retrospect is a statement of methodology in which composer John Cage examines the central issues of his work: indeterminacy, imitation, variable structure and contingency. Finished only shortly before his death in 1992, Composition in Retrospect completes the documentation of Cage’s thought that began with his classic book Silence (1961), but it is an introduction and invitation to his work as much as a summary or conclusion. Also included in this volume (at Cage’s request) is Themes and Variations,” a piece written in 1982 about friends and heroes such as Jasper Johns, Buckminster Fuller, Marcel Duchamp and Erik Satie. Together these pieces form a book that is both a testament to the artists Cage admired and a clear statement of his own ars poetica. . . . . [see book details] |  By John Cage. Pbk, 8 x 6 in. / 184 pgs. Publication Date: 10/1/2008 List Price: US $15.95
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Eastern State Penitentiary Historic SiteJanet Cardiff & George Bures Miller: Pandemonium Using existing elements in prison cells at the massive Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, sound artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller produced a percussive site-specific work that was rhythmic and musical at some points and at other times pure sound, as if made by the multitude of ghosts inhabiting the cells. Eastern State Penitentiary was the world's first true "penitentiary," designed to inspire profound regret--or penitence--in the hearts of criminals. Its influential design featured cell blocks extending like the spokes of a wheel so that each inmate lived in solitary confinement in a vaulted skylit cell. The artists chose Cell Block Seven, an enormous, cathedral-like, two-story wing completed in 1836 for their piece. It had never before been open to the public. Pandemonium documents this haunting and ephemeral work with color and black-and-white photographs and an audio CD, enclosed. . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Julie Courtney. Essay by Richard Torchia. Foreword by Sara Jane Elk. Afterword by Sean Kelley. Hardcover, 5.75 x 8.75 in. / 47 pgs / 31 color, 2 b&w and 1 duotones. Publication Date: 8/15/2006 List Price: US $25.00
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Errant Bodies PressJohn Duncan This first monograph on the influential underground conceptual and sound artist features essays by Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Cosey Fanni Tutti and others. It spans from Duncan's early days making performance-based work in Los Angeles in the late 1970s to his years in Japan and Amsterdam, where he focused on experimental sound, film and radio work, and continues to the mature multimedia installations and performances he is currently making in Italy. Investigative and probing, Duncan's work has always been at the forefront of experimental culture, encompassing noise music and extreme physical experience, often rendered in surprisingly beautiful ways. Duncan's art has the ability to enthrall and terrify, and this book documents all of his most important projects, creating a critical and intimate portrait of the artist and his uncompromising work. . . . . [see book details] |  Essays by Daniela Cascella, Mike Kelley, Paul McCarthy, Takuya Sakaguchi, Cosey Fanni Tutti, Giuliani Stefani, Tom Recchion, Carl Michael von Hausswolff and Brandon LaBelle. Paperback, 9 x 10 in. / 110 pgs / 35 color and 10 b&w. Publication Date: 8/15/2006 List Price: US $20.00
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Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, PhiladelphiaEnsemble New York-based Christian Marclay has been a pioneering DJ since the 1970s, when he began to rock turntables and even old gramophones--bending, breaking and mixing records in the creation of a brand new instrument. Since then, in addition to DJing, he has exhibited his sound-based artwork internationally. Ensemble is a group exhibition of sound art at the ICA, which Marclay organized. Likening his approach to that of a composer rather than a curator, Marclay chose sculpture and installations based on their sound quality and sonic compatibility. An ambient sound environment resulted, with iconic works by such artists as Harry Bertoia, Yoko Ono and Michelangelo Pistoletto, mixed in with newer pieces. This publication includes a CD featuring a once-in-a-lifetime gathering of artist/musicians, including Shelly Hirsch, Alison Knowles, Alan Licht, Marina Rosenfeld and Mika Tajima playing” the show. . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Christian Marclay. Introduction by Claudia Gould. Sound mix by Aaron Igler. Paperback, 5 x 5 in. / 16 pgs / 16 color / CD Audio Publication Date: 4/1/2008 List Price: US $20.00
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Museum of Contemporary Art, DenmarkFluxus Scores and InstructionsThe Transformative Years, Make a Salad In 1962, George Maciunas declared Fluxus "anti art, concept art, automatism, Bruitism, brutalism, Dadaism, concretism, Lettrism, nihilism, indeterminacy--theatre, happenings, prose, poetry, philosophy, plastic arts, music, cinema, dance." This thorough, well-designed volume culled from the renowned Gilbert and Lila Silverman Fluxus Collection, Detroit, and published to accompany an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denmark, looks at the armature of the movement to think about the function of scores--what they are, how they work, what they lead to... Some are scores in the traditional musical sense, some are instructions for events or performances, some describe setups for situations or installations and some are the work itself--that is, the concept. Artists include George Brecht, John Cage, Dick Higgins, Alison Knowles, George Maciunas, Jackson Mac Low, Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik among others. . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Jon Hendricks, Marianne Bech, Media Farzin. Pbk, 8.25 x 11.75 in. / 232 pgs / 113 b&w. Publication Date: 6/30/2009 List Price: US $75.00
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ApertureChristian Marclay: Shuffle Christian Marclay is known for using a range of media--video, sculpture, installation and performance--in his artwork to address the ways that music and sound impact our experience of the world. While he frequently uses photograms and found images in his work, most people don't realize the extent to which photography has become a tool of choice for this subtle but influential artist. For this project, a limited-edition boxed card set, Shuffle, Marclay photographed the appearance of musical notation in his everyday wanderings--finding examples on shop awnings, chocolate tins, T-shirts, underwear and other unexpected places. This body of work reveals Marclay to be an obsessive photographic note-taker with a flair for uncovering musical "clues" hidden in the landscape and adorning our world--musical notes just waiting to be called into action. Each of the 75 images collected here is presented on an oversized playing card, and the entire deck is enclosed in a . . . . [see book details] |  Text by Christian Marclay. Boxed Set of Cards, 7 x 4.75 in. / 75 pgs / 75 color. Publication Date: 6/1/2007 List Price: US $29.95
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Errant Bodies PressChristof Migone: Sound Voice Perform This first monograph on sound artist Christof Migone tracks his work since the mid-80s: a weaving together of multiple media, from radio to telephone to digital objects, that has formed a stunning and highly dynamic practice, one that combines an acute sonic sensibility with performative usages of the body, video and voice. . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Brandon LaBelle. Essay by Allen Weiss. Paperback, 7 x 10 in. / 100 pgs / 25 b&w. Publication Date: 1/2/2005 List Price: US $18.00
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ChartaMax Neuhaus: The Collection This jack-of-all-trades percussionist/painter/writer is one of America's most innovative artists, working primarily in the field of contemporary art and music experimentation. His installations often incorporate the use of monumental public buildings and spaces: his installation New Work (Underground) 1978, for example, consisted of a looped throbbing growl rising from a loudspeaker beneath a grate in the Museum of Modern Art's sculpture garden, which Neuhaus himself described thus: The sound creates a space for itself with definite boundaries. You can only hear it within a few feet. But the main audible effect is not so much hearing it as hearing what it does to everything around it. It kind of slices up the sounds of that fountain splashing over there, for instance.” Filled with drawings and commentary that examines the artist's theoretical approach, this is a fascinating portrait of a truly original and important voice. . . . . [see book details] |  Artwork by Max Neuhaus. Text by Pier Luigi Tazzi. Paperback, 6.5 x 11 in. / 40 pgs / 8 color / 3 b&w. Publication Date: 7/2/1997 List Price: US $16.95
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JRP|RingierCarsten Nicolai: Static Fades Berlin-based artist and musician Carsten Nicolai, born in 1965, is one of very few contemporary artists who convincingly work in the conflict zone between art, science and sound. Equally respected in the art world and the electronic music community, his works lay open the functional principles of codification, self-organization and perception so that the hand of the artist recedes and the classical notion of an oeuvre is put into question. Drawing on sounds available in our everyday environment, Nicolai creates soundscapes and installations redolent with clicks and blips from telephones, faxes and other technological detritus: he creates an elementary, universal language that eludes rationality, requesting instead to simply be perceived by the individual. This survey spans from Nicolai’s well-known 1997 Documenta X project, Infinity”--in which 72 short audio works were discretely embedded throughout Kassel’s public spaces--to new pieces produced for a recent solo exhibition at Zurich’s Haus Konstruktiv. . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Dorothea Strauss. Text by Christoph Doswald, Klaus Ottmann, Britta Schröder, Dorothea Strauss. Paperback, 10.75 x 11.25 in. / 160 pgs / 120 color. Publication Date: 3/1/2008 List Price: US $49.00
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MIT List Visual Arts Center9 Evenings ReconsideredArt, Theater, and Engineering, 1966 In 1966, a Bell Laboratories physicist brought a group of avant-garde artists together with 10 open-minded members of the science and technology fields for 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering, a series of investigatory Happenings which took place at the 69th Regiment Armory and were duly noted by critics Lucy Lippard and Brian O'Doherty. The resulting seminal performances included John Cage's Variations VII, in which 30 photocells were mounted around the performance space, activating a variety of sound sources--including a blender, 20 radio channels and two Geiger counters--as the performers moved around. Other contributors included Lucinda Childs, Alex Hay, Deborah Hay, Oyvind Fahlstrom, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Robert Rauschenberg, David Tudor and Robert Whitman. The events were photographed by Peter Moore, whose pictures, many never before been published, are featured here. Also included are Lippard and O'Doherty's original reviews; new scholarship by Clarisse Bardiot, Michelle Kuo and Catherine Morris; and an interview . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Catherine Morris. Essays by Clarisse Bardiot and Michelle Kuo. Texts by Lucy Lippard and Brian O'Doherty. Introduction by Jane Farver. Paperback, 8.25 x 13 in. / 88 pgs / 4 color and 60 duotones. Publication Date: 8/15/2006 List Price: US $25.00
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Witte de With PublishersSaâdane Afif: Technical Specifications Taking off from Saâdane Afif's 2008 Witte de With exhibition Technical Specifications, this volume examines the artist's practice in relation to music. In addition to tracing the evolution and reconfigurations of the works in the show, it includes documentation of Afif's radio show, 53:56--which broadcast related words and songs. . . . . [see book details] |  Text by Ina Blom, Daniel Baumann. Hbk, 7.75 x 11.25 in. / 148 pages / illustrated throughout / cd-rom. Publication Date: 10/31/2009 List Price: US $25.00
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Errant Bodies PressRadio Memory For the project documented in this volume, Brandon LaBelle invited people from around the world to send in radio memories--of songs overheard at special moments in their lives. Radio Memory contains contributions by Bastien Gallet, Carmen Cebreros Urzaiz and others, as well as a CD of audio works by LaBelle. . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Brandon LaBelle. Text by Carmen Cebreros Urzaiz, Bastien Gallet. Paperback, 6.25 x 8.25 in. / 126 pgs / 8 color / Audio CD. Publication Date: 10/1/2008 List Price: US $22.00
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Errant Bodies PressRadio Territories The legacy of radio and the arts has spawned many forms of radical culture over the years, from early Modernist notions of the "Wireless Imagination" and its subsequent vernacular tongues to Acoustic Ecology's call for "Radical Radio." This contemporary history of radical radio addresses the transformation of this broadcast medium by recent breakthroughs in digital technology--from digital streaming to web radio and podcasting--paying special attention to the "transmission arts" in culture and politics. It includes creative and critical essays by historians, media theorists, radio producers and activists, coupled with artistic and audio projects by current avant-gardists Kabir Carter, Brandon LaBelle, James Sey and others. While "Modern" radio stitched together an electronic network by expanding outward, today's radio may fulfill Marshall McLuhan's idea of the global "extended nervous system" by networking individual lives on more of a cellular level. According to the authors, radio is no longer out there, in the ether, . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Brandon LaBelle, Erik Granly Jensen. Essays by Kabir Carter, Lene Asp Frederiksen, Anna Friz, Steve Goodman, Sophea Lerner, Heidi Grundmann, Henriette Steiner, Douglas Kahn, Tianna Kennedy, Alejandra P»rez and Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen, et al. Paperback, 7 x 9 in. / 280 pgs / 30 b&w. Publication Date: 11/15/2006 List Price: US $25.00
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Errant Bodies PressSocial Music A collaborative sound-art project by artists from Europe, North America and Japan, Social Music documents a 2001 series of broadcasts on Kunstradio in Vienna. Brandon LaBelle, Minoru Sato and others were commissioned to question, rethink and reinvent radiophonic space as an aural, social and architectural infrastructure. "I wanted very much to create a conceptual framework for organizing the works not so much around making music within the confines of the studio, but by inviting outside influence or social input in determining sound production," LaBelle comments. "Social Music functioned as an overarching umbrella for generating musical and sonic activities that sought out public space, social interaction, spatial discoveries--found sounds, phenomenological tests, conversations between friends..." A beautifully designed object, the book contains a CD and text that come wrapped in cardboard covers. . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Brandon LaBelle. Essays by Achim Wollscheid, Minoru Sato, Giuseppe Ielasi and Michel Henritzi. Foreword by Barbara Schroeder. Slipcased, 6 x 8.5 in. / 48 pgs / CD with booklet / 12 b&w. Publication Date: 10/2/2002 List Price: US $15.00
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Dis VoirSound And The Visual ArtsIntersections between Music and Plastic Arts Today Musician and musicologist Jean-Yves Bosseur explores the growing relationship between the plastic arts and music in the world of contemporary art. This trend is shown in its aesthetic and historical context through interviews with Iannis Xenakis, Francis Miroglio, Takis, John Cage, Milan Knizak, Wolf Vostell, Max Neuhas, Nam June Paik and Stan Douglas. . . . . [see book details] |  By Jean-Yves Bosseur. Text by Luca Beatrice. Paperback, 6.5 x 8.5 / 160 pgs / 14 color / 14 b&w. Publication Date: 2/2/1993 List Price: US $29.95
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Errant Bodies PressVarieties of Audio Mimesis This investigation of the metaphoric relationship between music and landscape is also a study of the poetics of onomatopoeia and a theory of sound in the arts. The history of European musicology is perennially revised around the debate about whether music is a representational or an abstract art. This discussion may be extended to all of the sound arts, and to language itself. Thus the phenomenon of onomatopoeia is emblematic of what might be seen as the ontological aporia of sound art: mimesis is simultaneously a loss and a gain, placing representation on uneven ground where the signified loses structural integrity and existential verifiability, while the signifier gains in complexity and ambiguity. Through literary, performative and sonic analysis, this book investigates audiophonic representation, proposes a unified field theory of the sound arts; offers descriptive possibilities for audio productions; and looks at audio mimesis in relation to gardens and landscape. . . . . [see book details] |  By Allen S. Weiss. Paperback, 5.5 x 7.75 in. / 109 pgs. Publication Date: 11/1/2007 List Price: US $18.00
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The Aldrich MuseumVoice & VoidHall Curatorial Fellow Exhibition Voice & Void examines the topic of the human voice in avant-garde and contemporary art over the past 40 years, reconsidering the interrelationship of hearing and seeing against the backdrop of the visual arts. The selected artworks prove that not only visual phenomena can be expressed by the visual arts, but also audible ones, in particular when both are contrasted with their opposites, the void and silence. In this substantial study, Thomas Trummer has assembled an array of international contemporary artworks in all media that illustrate the problems of the voice confronted with the void. Artists include Rachel Berwick, Joseph Beuys and Ute Klophaus, John Cage, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Valie Export, Anna Gaskell, Asta Groting, Christian Marclay, Melik Ohanian, Hans Schabus, Nedko Solakov, Julianne Swartz and Cerith Wyn Evans. . . . . [see book details] |  Edited by Thomas Trummer. Foreword by Harry Philbrick. Hardback, 9.25 x 6.5 in. / 183 pgs / 76 color. Publication Date: 2/1/2008 List Price: US $35.00
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Independent Curators International, New YorkWhat Sound Does A Color Make? Synesthesia is the condition where stimulation of one sense (aural, for instance) triggers another (visual), so hearing a G minor chord might literally make you see red. This rare natural phenomenon seems less anomalous in our digital age, where all electronic media, whether sounds or moving images, are coded into the zeros and ones of computer bits. What Sound Does a Color Make? explores the fusion of vision and sound in electronic media, and connects the recent boom of digital, audiovisual art to its predigital roots by presenting 10 contemporary works along with a selection of single-channel videos from the 1970s by a diverse group of international artists. The earlier works, by such pioneers of video art as Nam June Paik, Steina Vasulka and Gary Hill, place the current interest in synesthetic media art in a broader historical context, offering a unique perspective on this bending of human perception and cognition. . . . . [see book details] |  Essay by Kathleen Forde. Foreword by Judith Richards. Interviews with Naut Humon and Steina Vasulka. Paperback, 6.25 x 8 in. / 64 pgs / 30 color / 7 b&w. Publication Date: 7/15/2005 List Price: US $17.95
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