Some babblings about Sound Art.

I have been planning to write a post about sound art and it is a perfect time to write it. Thanks to Ozge, she put the nice events of Galata Perform.
So let's see.


I have been digging the late electronic music pieces since last year and lately i have found myself trying to learn how it evolved from the very first beginning to today. I felt very surprised when i noticed that every electronic musician that I love to listen are also sound artists when i clicked their personal sites. They say their music has the inspirations of the avant-garde backgrounds of music and they have been doing installations.


So what is sound art?

Over the past century, an artform has emerged between the realms of visual art and music. Created by both composers and sculptors, 'sound art' challenges fundamental divisions between these two sister arts and may be found in museums, festivals, or public sites. Works of sound art play on the fringes of our often-unconscious aural experience of a world dominated by the visual. This work addresses our ears in surprising ways: it is not strictly music, or noise, or speech, or any sound found in nature, but often includes, combines, and transforms elements of all of these. Sound art sculpts sound in space and time, reacts to environments and reshapes them, and frames ambient "found" sound, altering our concepts of space, time, music, and noise.Sound art’s redefinition of artistic space and time -- focusing our attention and changing our perception of particular moments through sound -- is often accomplished through the incorporation of new technologies. Technological advances at the turn of the 20th century provided both the fundamental tools of sound art (such as the radio and phonograph) and the modern concept of noise, which arose in tandem with the machine age. Indeed, the roots of sound art can be traced to that time, when new sounds and mechanical devices radically expanded possibilities in the visual arts and music.(Mass MoCA)


I have downloaded some composers that may be tagged as early electronic musicians, experimentalists, avantgardeners, minimalists, and concrete music is another tag for their genre.




Karlheinz Stockhausen (b.1928)

http://www.furious.com/PERFECT/stockhauseninterview.html

I won't write musical background of Karlheinz Stockhausen since it can be found anywhere, I want to share music of him.

http://rapidshare.com/files/5501164/01.etude__1952_.mp3



Iannis Xenakis,
who said
"with the aid of electronic computers, the composer becomes a sort of pilot: pressing buttons, introducing coordinates, and supervising the controls of a cosmic vessel sailing in the space of sound, across sonic constellations and galaxies that could formerly be glimpsed only in a distant dream"
http://rapidshare.com/files/5507192/iannis_xenakis_-_chamber_music__1955-1990__disc1_-_01_tetras.mp3



There are more than the above two for sure but I have seen their names many times when i searched so decided to introduce them. For the interested people,

http://www.ubu.com/sound/ has a great source of sound artists(not only sound but all intermedia disciplines.)

And lastly, last year I had a chance to watch a film called MODULATIONS (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0139468/), which tries to introduce the root of electronic music. Full of interviews, impressive visual support and music for sure, if you ever have a chance to see it, you will be more satisfied.

So have a good weekend.