LABS 2017 estAblishing A criticAl frAmework for the ApprAisAl of “noise” in contemporAry sound Art with specific reference to the prActices of YasunAo tone, Carsten nicolAi And ryoji ikedA Adam Collis Yasunao Tone, Carsten Nicolai and Ryoji produced by and about these practitioners, Ikeda are three practitioners representative of including commercial releases, works, writ- electronic music and sound-art practices that ings and interviews. What emerges from this emerged in the 1990s where sound materi- is that Heidegger’s notion of truth as “reveal- als not normally considered musical, such ing” and Derrida’s critique of phonocentrism as digital clicks, glitches and bursts of white can provide a clearer philosophical framework noise, are prevalent. The origins of this body for a consideration of this body of work. of work lie outside of the established music of This thesis argues that these practices reflect academia and the mainstream popular music a wider cultural shift away from the notion industry, and practitioners are often associated of “value” as something quantified, abstract with particular record labels, including Mille and intrinsic, toward one concerned with the Plateaux or Raster-Noton. While attempts qualitative, contextual and extrinsic, and that have been made to coalesce these practices these practices are forms of conceptual sound into a single unified genre, these assessments art that challenge both the notion of “absolute” tend to critique work mainly in technological music and the prevailing political-economic terms. structures. In contrast, this thesis draws out deeper Adam Collis: <[email protected]>. philosophical concerns relevant to these prac- PhD thesis, University of Surrey, U.K., 2016. tices through a critical analysis of materials trAnsductive prAxis in bioArt Tyler Fox In this dissertation, the author uses the philosophy of Gilbert Simondon to form a theoretical framework for making BioArt. BioArt, for this research, means artwork that incorporates living, nonhuman organ- isms. Simondon adopts a relational ontology to argue that individuation, or how things come to be, is ongoing and processual. His philosophy provides an understanding of the relations between entities, between individuals Tyler Fox, Biolesce 0.5, interactive installation: P. fusiformis, and their sustaining environments. Simondon seawater, button motors, heartbeat sensor, Arduino Uno, argues that his philosophy is generalizable 2015. (© Tyler Fox) across all regimes of existence (physical, liv- ing, technological, psychosocial) but specific to the context of a given set of relations. humans, technology and living, nonhuman Simondon offers critical concepts for the con- organisms to the fore. This research seeks sideration and creation of BioArt, especially to understand how BioArt can foster shared techno-aesthetics. The author uses Simondon’s experiences between humans and nonhumans. techno-aesthetics to build a method and This dissertation discusses the development approach to creating BioArt. This disserta- of two different projects, one in the final stage tion eschews an understanding of BioArt that and one in the nascent stage. Each offers both emphasizes only the practices, tools and pro- physical instantiations of the theories and cesses from the biotechnology industry as the arguments of the research, as well as objects underlying requirement of the genre. Rather of analysis through which the author explores than limiting people’s understanding of what and expands upon Simondon’s philosophy. BioArt is, the author argues for an opening up Tyler Fox: <[email protected]>. PhD thesis, Simon of the understanding of what BioArt can be: Fraser University, Canada, 2015. a research path that brings relations between 526 Top-Rated LABS Abstracts 2017 Downloaded from http://direct.mit.edu/leon/article-pdf/51/5/526/1578640/leon_a_01661.pdf by guest on 29 September 2021.