Product Description

Over the past century, an art form has emerged that draws from the worlds of visual art and music. Sound art’s roots can be found in the experimental work of Italian Futurism, Dada, and later the Fluxus group and the pioneering efforts of the American composer and artist John Cage. In the wake of this groundbreaking work, sound art began to mature into a movement, and artists explored the interactive possibilities of sound and in turn created entirely new modes of experiencing and engaging with art. In this volume, the complete story of sound art is told by one of the country’s leading critics and scholars. The author traces the history of this form of art–highlighting the convergence of the indie world bands such as Sonic Youth with the art world–looking at the critical cross-pollination that has led to some of the most important and challenging art being produced today, including work by Christian Marclay, LaMonte Young, Janet Cardiff, Rodney Graham, and Laurie Anderson, among many others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #243174 in Books
• Published on: 2007-11-06
• Released on: 2007-11-06
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

About the Author
Alan Licht is an American composer, guitarist, music writer, and a widely respected figure on the experimental music scene. He is not only responsible for important album reissues, but was a member of the cult classic NYC bands Love Child and Run On. He currently lives in New York City. Jim O’Rourke is an American musician and producer, and most widely known as a member of the rock band Sonic Youth. Considered an expert on experimental music, he has scored films for Werner Herzog and Olivier Assayas.

Excerpted from Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories (Book & CD) by Alan Licht, Jim O'Rourke. Copyright © 2007. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Everyone has a diferen t poin t at whic h they ari ve at the ques tion "is ar t sound , and is sound ar t?" First separating sound from music can lead someone down a path of falling under the spell of the sound of an empty coffee can, and quite possibly be suitably satisfied. Others may feel the need to return that coffee can back to the counter and set it into some kind of constellate that organizes sounds into space. If that can is suitably attractive, it may come to mind that the sound is married to that can, and what that can means in a larger social sense. It's quite possible the absence of the coffee, or more precisely the sound of the coffee, would lead to some reverie over whether sounds have lives of their own, and if they miss each other when they leave. This most usually leads to trying to find the sound which is not a sound, which in its lack of soundness implies all sounds and we're right where we started. So, in short, sound art may well be what you call it, and where you are coming from. If you're an artist, in the (relatively) traditional sense, and you find that neon tube is better heard and not seen, it could be sound art. If you're a musician and the sound of the piano lid closing on someone's fingers, who just can't seem to correctly play the rhythms derived from the gravitational pull of the sun, you may well have some sound art. Of course, that's up to you. This book examines a wide range of possibilities of redefining not only the context in which sound is presented and framed, but in how we choose to look at it. And when you look at sound, you may ask yourself, is it sound or is it art, and we're right back where we started. -- Jim O'Rourke

Customer Reviews

Very Poor Research
This is one of the worst books on sound art I have ever read. Its like reading an article in college newspaper. The research is incredibly week, it is as if Licht referred only to The Wire for his information. He makes many mistakes concerning John Cage (who made Sound Art in the early 60s and NOT just for "the stage") He takes cheap shots at Stockhausen of whom he seems to know NOTHING about (Cardew was wrong by the way). There is more to sound art than what can be found on Forcedexposure. This book is just awful, and I am afraid it will be used and referred to by teachers and curators in the future, which is a crying shame. And if you think I'm wrong, do some research on Sound Art and you will see that there are many many many books better than this one. After I bought it, I brought it right back and got a full refund I then used that money to order a Stockhausen CD. Please shop around before you buy this book.

Just don't call it music...
Years ago, a critic remarked that so-called Performance Art might have been called either Theater or Dance if those media were less uptight. That's how I feel about sound art - if Music were more open as a discipline, we wouldn't need to have a special category of stuff called sound art. We would simply recognize that for most of the 20th century, music and visual art blurred into each other, and the artistic use of so-called non-musical sounds became increasingly important. Today, in the age of the sample, where Foley artists and composers are often one and the same, and most undergrad art students have made at least one sound piece in their lives, it's useful to have Alan Licht's clearly written, well-illustrated, handsomely designed volume on how composers and artists have worked with sound in the 20th century. Licht hits all the significant movements (Futurism, Dada, Fluxus, etc.) that contributed to sound art, and does a good job of exploring the range of possibilities (from sound sculpture to sound installation to Christian Marclay's floor covered with vinyl records). While I might wish that some of the younger contemporary artists working with sound got more space, you can't have everything. A few years ago, the Pompidou Center in Paris did an exhibit called Son et Lumiére, and if you can find the catalog (and read French) it provides the history of the connection of music and visual art missing in Licht's book. But until that's available in an affordable English version, Licht's book is probably the best available on the topic. And the handy CD included means you can use your ears as well as your eyes to consider the topic, a welcome addition.