1. An Introduction To a Blurry Art Form C. Reider, 2012
What is Sound Art?
An Introduction
To a Blurry Art Form
C. Reider, 2012

2. Wikipedia definition:
Sound art is a diverse group of art practices that considers wide notions of sound, listening and hearing as its predominant focus. There are often distinct relationships forged between the visual and aural domains of art and perception by sound artists.
Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art is interdisciplinary in nature, or takes on hybrid forms. Sound art often engages with the subjects of acoustics, psychoacoustics, electronics, noise music, audio media and technology (both analog and digital), found or environmental sound, explorations of the human body, sculpture, film or video and an ever-expanding set of subjects that are part of the current discourse of contemporary art.

3. My Definition
A diverse set of interdisciplinary art practices which use sound as a conveyor of meaning.

4. Different Forms of Sound Art
Sound sculpture / kinetic sculpture
Automatons
Video art
Radio art
Installations (often site-specific)
Sound-walks
Instrument Making
Graphic Scores
Acoustic Ecology / Phonography
etc.

6. Seth Kim-Cohen's Expanded Sonic Field
From “In the Blink of an Ear” 2009 Continuum Books

7. Luigi Russolo Dynamism of a Train, 1912 1883-1947 Italian Futurist
Painter / Composer

8. “L'arte dei Rumori” (The Art of Noises), 1913
Six “families of noise”:
Roars, Thunderings, Explosions, Hissing roars, Bangs, Booms
Whistling, Hissing, Puffing
Whispers, Murmurs, Mumbling, Muttering, Gurgling
Screeching, Creaking, Rustling, Buzzing, Crackling, Scraping
Noises obtained by beating on metals, woods, skins, stones, pottery, etc.
Voices of animals and people, Shouts, Screams, Shrieks, Wails, Hoots, Howls, Death rattles, Sobs

9. Luigi Russolo's Intonarumori. Photo: 1919

10. Progenitors of Sound Art
Marcel Duchamp –
Pierre Schaeffer
Antonin Artaud
Kurt Schwitters
John Cage

11. Box With the Sound of Its Own Making – 1961
Sound Sculpture
Robert Morris
Box With the Sound of Its Own Making – 1961
(The box plays back a 3-hour long tape recording of the construction process of this simple wooden box)

12. Sound Sculpture Harry Bertoia
Harry Bertoia was a jeweler and metalworker who designed a series of highly modernist chairs that ended up selling so well that he was able to devote himself to sculpture exclusively in the 1950s, predominantly exploring visually striking metal forms that give off a chorus of pings and metallic whooshes when activated by a human 'player' or by the wind. He self-published a number of recordings of himself playing his own sound sculptures, all titled “sonambient”.

13. Untitled Sound Sculptures – 1950-1978
Harry Bertoia
Untitled Sound Sculptures –

14. Sound Sculpture Laurie Anderson Handphone Table - 1978
Artist statement:
“I got the idea for the handphone table when I was typing something on an electric typewriter. It wasn't going very well and I got so depressed I stopped and just put my head in my hands. That's when I heard it: a loud hum coming from the typewriter, amplified by the wooden table and running up my arms, totally clear and very loud. So I built a table and rigged it for sound. Inside the table were cassette decks and powerful drivers which compressed the pre-recorded sounds and drove them up steel rods. The tip of these rods touched four plugs resembling pine knots embedded in the surface of the table. When you put your elbows on these plugs the sound rose through your arms via bone conduction. When you put your hands over your ears, it was like putting on a pair of powerful stereo headphones.
(...)
“Because the handphone table had a rather high "science fair" quotient anyway, I didn't want to put a technical explanation on the wall ("put your elbows on the table and you will hear via bone conduction... etc etc) So I just put a big photograph on the wall a man holding his head in his hands and some text and hoped that people would get the idea.
I wrote three songs for the handphone table. The (…) songs used the lowest ranges of the instruments, since bass frequencies, being wide and slow, travel well. Treble is more skittish and tends to evaporate. Since much of language is shaped by treble sounds, for example (it's the t's and the s's and other fragile pointy sounds that define words) it was difficult to make the table speak clearly. Finally I was able to make language work by slowing it down and using elaborate equalization.”
--Excerpt from “Stories from the Nerve Bible” by Laurie Anderson
Handphone Table

15. Sound Sculpture (Art about sound)
Christian Marclay
Footsteps
The Beatles
Christian Marclay's 1980 installation “Footsteps” featured hundreds of vinyl records on which had been pressed the sound of Marclay walking. Visitors walked directly upon the records during the exhibition, and afterwards the records, each uniquely scuffed / damaged were distributed as a product.
His '89 piece “The Beatles” is a pillow woven of cassette tape, the entire recorded output of the band the Beatles.
His “Recycled Records” of the early 80s, and use of turntablism for abstract sonic possibilities rather than beat making inspired many experimental musicians, incl. AMK, PBK and Otomo Yoshihide.
Recycled Records
Lip Lock
Virtuoso

16. Sound Sculpture / Kinetic Sculpture
Jean Tinguely

17. Sound Sculpture / Kinetic Sculpture
Jean Tinguely
Tinguely's mechanized apparatus' clearly inspired many sound artists today, especially those working in the field of musical automatons, such as Pierre Bastien and Maxime de la Rochefoucauld.
Méta-Harmonie II

18. Maxime de la Rochefoucauld a.k.a. Maxime Rioux
Kinetic Sculpture / Musical Automatons
Maxime de la Rochefoucauld a.k.a. Maxime Rioux
Maxime de la Rochefoucauld's work could be described as kinetic sculpture, or automatons, or even as musical instruments. Most of the many automatons he creates are 'controlled' by synthesizer playing sub-audible frequencies which drive speaker cones activating levers & springs which strike and skitter across various resonant surfaces.

19. Maxime de la Rochefoucauld
Kinetic Sculpture / Musical Automatons
Maxime de la Rochefoucauld
Trois Courtes Pieces

20. Sound Sculpture / Instrument Making
Trimpin
Trimpin is pictured here during a gallery installation of his work titled “Conloninpurple”, a collection of woodblocks actuated by solenoid striker. The blocks are tuned to a microtonal scale favored by the composer Conlon Nancarrow.

21. Sound Sculpture / Instrument Making
Trimpin
Fire Organ

22. Sound Sculpture / Instrument Making
David Byrne
Playing the Building

23. Sound Sculpture / Instrument Making / Installation
David Byrne
David Byrne was the lead singer of the pop group the Talking Heads.
Playing the Building

24. Harry Partch Instrument Making Gourd Tree & Cone Gongs - 1964
Cloud Chamber Bowls
Quadrangularis Reversum
- 1965

25. Installation
Ryoji Ikeda

26. Installation
Ryoji Ikeda
The Transfinite

27. Installation
Zimoun

28. 186 Prepared DC-Motors, Cardboard Boxes 60x60x60cm - 2010
Installation
Zimoun
186 Prepared DC-Motors, Cardboard Boxes 60x60x60cm

29. Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Installation
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Untitled (Golden)

30. Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Installation
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Untitled (Golden)

31. Alvin Lucier Installation I am Sitting In a Room - 1969
I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now.
I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed.
What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech.
I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.
I am Sitting In a Room

32. Site-specific Installation
Susan Phillipsz

33. Site-specific Installation
Susan Phillipsz
Lowlands

34. Site-specific Installation
Doug Hollis
Sound Garden – Seattle, 1983

35. Site-specific Installation
Doug Hollis
Sound Garden – Seattle, 1983

36. Video Art
Steina Vasulka

37. Voice Windows – 1986 (with Joan La Barbara)
Video Art
Steina Vasulka
Voice Windows – 1986 (with Joan La Barbara)

38. Video Art / Interactive Instrument Hybrid
Andy Huntington
Sound Fountain

39. Video Art / Interactive Instrument Hybrid
Andy Huntington
Sound Fountain

40. April 20-29, ArtLab Fort Collins Student project deadline: February 13
SoundThroughBarriers.com
Twitter User: LiminalListener
Mail to:

41. Student Project Proposal

42. April 20-29, ArtLab Fort Collins Student project deadline: February 13
SoundThroughBarriers.com
Twitter User: LiminalListener
Mail to:

43. Selected Videos of Sound Art
Christine Sun Kim - deaf sound artist
Gun Holmstrom - Omphalomin - Helsinki 2006
A visit to Harry Partch's studio (part 1 of 2)
Jean Tinguely - Narva
Jean tinguely - Meta harmonie II
Jean Tinguely - Meta Harmonie IV
Zimoun DC motors, filler wire
Zimoun DC Motors, cardboard boxes
Zimoun DC Motors, filler wire
Zimoun DC Motors, cardboard boxes
Ujino Muneteru - Plywood City 2010
Ryoji Ikeda - The Transfinite 2011
Susan Phillipsz - Lowlands 2010
Doug Hollis - A Sound Garden - Seattle 1983
Harry Bertoia sound sculptures played by Val Bertoia
Andy Huntington - Sound Fountain
Trimpin - Fire Organ
Trimpin - Sheng High
David Byrne - Playing the Building
Gustavo Mutamoros - sound frequency room test
Michael Brewster - Room Audition (3 of 3)
Maxime de la Rochefoucauld - Marionettes
Maxime de la Rochefoucauld - Trois Courtes Pieces