A History of Sound Art Arranged and Composed by J Milo Taylor Mixed by Joel Cahen A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 1 24/1/11 14.35.28 » Sleep Research Facility d-deck » A Hackney Balcony » Cathy Lane » Ros Bandt 00:00 01:00 02:00 03:00 Introduction » Charlie Fox » Janet Cardiff » John Cage A History of Sound Art I listen, I hear, I obey. Does the exquisitely dissonant institution of Sound Art, and its subsequent ordering of desire, ensure that we subscribe to a genealogy I hear silence, an absent sense of through which it is governed? knowing, of the heard, that I project into In this composition I hear a rhizomic a future. As a listener at the end of this collective, which obeys, albeit work I feel like a wobbly toddler looking contradictorily, a government in the mirror and happily hallucinating in of past and future time. my own disunity. I am left with the idea ‘Tomtoumtomtoumtomtoum’; the ‘Cage’ of an uncomfortable wholeness. The of Sound Art’s past. I hear hindsight. reconciliation of sonic arts past with its ‘Bwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’; the future seems like an empirical illusion. sound of sonic arts future. Ennioa Neoptolomus A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 2 24/1/11 14.35.29 » Brandon LaBelle » Marcel Duchamp Interview 02:00 03:00 04:00 05:00 06:00 Early Practices Dada » Enrico Caruso o sole mio » Janet Cardiff » Hugo Ball Karawane (1916) » Thomas Alva Edison Dickson Sound Film (1897) CATHY LANE Composer and sound designer. Works include compositions and sound design for avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of the large scale outdoor theatre productions, film and most influential American composers of the 20th video soundtracks, live performance and installa- century. tion work. BRANDON LABELLE is an artist and writer. His CHARLIE FOX has been involved in the growth of work explores the space between sound and the media arts in Canada, having produced a large sociality, using performance and on-site construc- body of video, sound, film and visual art. Fox cur- tions as creative supplements to existing condi- rently resides in Regina where he is an Assistant tions. Professor of Film and Video at the University of JANET CARDIFF is perhaps best known for her Regina. signature audio walks, which she has made in Lon- JOHN CAGE American composerphilosopher, don, Florence, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St. Louis, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker,and and elsewhere. Her gallery installations - often amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. A made with George Bures Miller, Cardiff’s husband pioneer of chance music, electronic music and and artistic collaborator--use the narrative and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage technical language of film noir to create lush, was one of the leading figures of the post-war suspenseful sound and video works. A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 3 24/1/11 14.35.30 » Duke Ellington It don’t Mean a Thing (If it A’int Got that Swing) (1931) » Leon Theremin Grechaninov Step » Kurt Schwitters Ursonate 07:00 08:00 09:00 10:00 11:00 Futurist Noise Instruments (Italy) » Vess L. Ossman Dixie Medly » Walter Ruttmann Weekend » Greek Rembetiko » Marinetti la battaglia di Adrianopoli-1926 (recorded 1935) THOMAS EDISON was more responsible than any one else for creating the modern world… No one Leon Theremin was a Russian inventor and in- did more to shape the physical/cultural makeup of novator of electrical devices. His 1919 invention of present day civilization. he invented the phono- the Theremin, the world’s first electronic musical graph and recording. instrument gained him worldwide notoriety. MARCEL DUCHAMP French artist whose work is Filippo MARINETTI The poet and guiding light of most often associated with the Dadaist and Sur- Futurism. Marinetti issued the first “Futurist mani- realist movements. He famously presented ready- festo”. He pronounced himself in favour of the made found objects as art objects in galleries. destruction of the traditional syntax, the abolition HUGO BALL was a German author, poet and one of adjectives and adverbs. of the leading Dada artists. He was an inventor Kurt SchWitters worked in several genres and of dadaist phonetic poetry and maintained that media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surreal- we must withdraw into the deepest alchemy ism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic of words, reserving to poetry its most sacred design, typography and what came to be known ground. as installation art. A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 4 24/1/11 14.35.33 » Nellie Lutcher Fine Brown Frame (1948) » Harry Partch Harmonic Cannon & Bass Marimba 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 Post WWII John Cage 4’33” (USA) » Antonin Artaud Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de dieu (1947) » John Cage Imaginary Landscapes No. 1 (1939) » Pierre Schaeffer & Pierre Henry Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul (1950) Antonin Artaud French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director. He believed that theatre should affect the audience as much as possi- ble, therefore he used a mixture of strange and disturbing forms of lighting, sound, and other Walter Ruttmann had a background as a performance elements. “Words are suggestive painter, filmmaker, a cellist and violinist he made sounds and should be delivered for the sake of Weekend in 1928. The work was commissioned by their sonority, explosiveness, sensuous and as- Hans Flesch, director of the Berlin Radio Hour. he sociative properties.” was concerned with exploiting the aesthetic and Pierre Schaeffer French composer, writer, technical opportunities of time baced media. broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acousti- Harry Partch American composer and instru- cian. His definition of the sound object was that, ment creator. He was one of the first twentieth- through the process of reduced listening, one century composers to work extensively and should hear sound material purely as sound, systematically with microtonal scales, writing divorced from any associations with its physical much of his music for custom-made instruments origins. He coined the term musique concrète and that he built himself. by innovating recording and sampling techniques. A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 5 24/1/11 14.35.34 » Bobby Darin Dream Lover » Iannis Xenakis Metastasis » Charles Mingus Self Portrait in Three Colors (1959) 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 19:00 1949-55 Musique concrète (France) » Louis & Bebe Barron Forbidden Planet (interview and sounds) (1956) Iannis Xenakis Composer, music theorist and Louis & Bebe Barron Two American pioneers architect-engineer, Xenakis pioneered the use in the field of electronic music. They are credited of mathematical models in music, and was also with writing the first electronic music for magnetic an important influence on the development of tape, and the first entirely electronic film score for electronic music. the MGM movie Forbidden Planet. A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 6 24/1/11 14.35.36 » Morton Feldman Voice, Violin and Piano » Iannis Xenakis Concrete PH » Morton Feldman Interview 18:00 19:00 20:00 21:00 22:00 1949-55 Musique concrète (France) » Pauline Oliveros Time Perspectives (1959) » George Brecht Interview Morton Feldman American composer whose works are characterized by notational innovations which he developed to create his characteristic sound: a generally quiet and slowly evolving music. Pauline OliVeros American accordionist and composer who is a central figure in the develop- ment of post-war electronic art music. She has George MACIUNAS established strangely radical written books, formulated new music theories and modes of presentation in the name of Fluxus. investigated new ways to focus attention on music Traditional works of art were to be replaced by including her concepts of “Deep Listening” and Fluxus. Art was to be so uncomplicated that it “sonic awareness”. could be realized by anyone, anywhere. A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 7 24/1/11 14.35.37 » Marilyn Monroe Happy Birthday (1962) » Nina Simone Mr Bojangles » Link Wray Rumble » Group Ongaku Automatism » Richard Maxfield Pastoral Symphony 23:00 24:00 25:00 26:00 27:00 Fluxus » Dick Higgins Danger Music No. 17 (1961) » Spike Jones Yes! We have No Bananas » Brion Gysin Permutations Richard Maxfield A composer of instrumental, electro-acoustic, and electronic music and active SPIKE JONES A popular musician and bandleader member of the Fluxus group. Among his innova- specializing in performing satirical arrangements tions with tape music were the simultaneous per- of popular songs. Ballads and classical works re- formance of improvised instrumental solos with ceiving the Jones treatment would be punctuated tapes based upon samples of the same soloist, re- with gunshots, whistles, cowbells, and ridiculous editing of tapes before each public performance vocals. so that the pieces were not fixed in a single form, Group Ongaku Japanese collective exploring and the use of the erase head of the tape machine musical improvisation inthe late fifties and early as a sound source. sisties using found objects, random instruments, Dick Higgins Composer, poet, printer, and tape machines, and radios. early Fluxus artist. He was an early and ardent Brion Gysin Performance artist best known for proponent and user of computers as a tool for his redevelopment of the cut-up technique used art making, dating back to the mid-sixties, when by William Burroughs and the invention of the Alison Knowles and he created the first computer Dreamachine, a flicker device designed as an art generated literary textes. object to be viewed with the eyes closed. A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 8 24/1/11 14.35.37 » BBC Radiophonic Workshop Dr. Who Theme (1963) » Brandon LaBelle interviewing Max Neuhaus » Brion Gysin Poets don’t own Words 26:00 27:00 28:00 29:00 30:00 Elektronische Musik (Germany) 1960s Conceptual Art (International) » Karlheinz Stockhausen Kontakte » John Cage Interview » La Monte Young 89 VIv » Tod Dockstader Water music BBC Radiophonic WORKSHOP One of the sound effects units of the BBC.