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Description
Listening to Noise and Silence engages with the emerging practice of sound art and the concurrent development of a discourse and theory of sound. In this original and challenging work, Salomé Voegelin immerses the reader in concepts of listening to sound artwork and the everyday acoustic environment, establishing an aesthetics and philosophy of sound and promoting the notion of a sonic sensibility.
A multitude of sound works are discussed, by lesser known contemporary artists and composers (for example Curgenven, Gasson and Federer), historical figures in the field (Artaud, Feldman and Cage), and that of contemporary canonic artists such as Janet Cardiff, Bill Fontana, Bernard Parmegiani, and Merzbow.
Informed by the ideas of Adorno, Merleau-Ponty and others, the book aims to come to a critique of sound art from its soundings rather than in relation to abstracted themes and pre-existing categories. Listening to Noise and Silence broadens the discussion surrounding sound art and opens up the field for others to follow.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Part one Listening
Being Honeyed
To Listen
Dynamic Things and Places
Critique of a Remote Critic
Listening to the Soundscape Recorded
Listening to the Radio
Conclusion: Sonic Solitude
Part two Noise
Bad Taste
Noisy Non-Sense
How can you hear it when you do not know what you are listening for? - Noise and Modernism
Noise and Postmodernism
Sonic Noise
Conclusion: Noisy Voices
Part three Silence
Conceptual Silence
When there is nothing to hear you start hearing things
The silent "I"/ Sonic Subjectivity
Crickets
Silent Duration
Symbolic, Semiotic and Social Sound
Moments of Coincidence
Radiophonic Silence
Conclusion: Silence as Context of Auditory Aesthetics
Part four Time and Space
Sitting in Rooms
Resonating Places; Sounding Time
Geography of Timespace
Inhabiting a Playfull Agonism
Building Sonic Bridges and Towns
A Sonic Sensibility for New Media Art
Narrating temporal places/ migration
The Timespace of Radio
Conclusion: Into the Now of Listening
Part five Now
Sonic Pasts: an Afterthought
Perception and Sensation
Sound as 'Pathetic Trigger'
The Duration of Perception
The Refrain of Now
Bibliography
List of Works
Notes
Index
Product details
Published | 31 Mar 2010 |
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Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 256 |
ISBN | 9781441143389 |
Imprint | Continuum |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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The examples under discussion range from by-now canonical soundworks...to recent works by a clutch of lesser known artists...Voegelin's critical style is so singular that she avoids cliche in the treatment of all these artists, prising them out of a conversation about music and into a challenging treatise on the art of listening.
The Wire
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The book's arguments are complex and developed with rigour, making a perceptive contribution to an emerging debate. In its favour, the work consistently forces the listener off-track to think critically about just what it is that makes listening so powerful and so elusive.
Will Montgomery, The Wire, August 2010
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Reviewed in the London Review of Books 23 September (UK)
London Review of Books
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Listening to Noise and Silence will be of interest to a great many people following breakthrough trends within art and philosophy.
Art Monthly
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Salome Voegelin has written an excellent book about sound art, escaping cliché and easy categorizations. She establishes a proper aesthetics and philosophy of sound, with a compelling phenomenological account of noise and silence.
Neural
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In Voegelin's evocative image, noise holds the listener hostage to his or her own listening... Listening to Noise and Silence contains many moments that sound artists and others will find insightful.
Avant Music News