Ear | Wave | Event, 2: Listening? (2015)

“Christoph Cox [stated at a recent conference on ‘The Politics of Listening’] that artists’ projects must not simply be taken as illustrative of or addenda to theory, but that they propose other ways for us to listen. Coming from vastly different positions, the authors in [this] issue offer precisely such generative perspectives on listening and listening subjects from the privileged viewpoint of the practitioner. It is NOT that musicians should be the only ones to talk about sound, but that there is nevertheless a value in that specialist knowledge of music nerds who spend their days dealing with audio minutiae and the history thereof. A value which is also not to be confused with the positivist musicological valorization of such detail, but instead, a value that might still open out into an authentic interdisciplinarity.

The contributors to Issue 2 face the immense material complexity of listening head on – physically, technically, formally, politically, socially. Their contributions continually orbit the question, ‘What is Listening?,’ all the while deftly dodging all manner of all too common platitudes.” (from the Introduction)

With contributions by Lawrence English, Bill Dietz & Lawrence English, Brenda Hutchinson, Eric Laska, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Paolo Javier, Christian von Borries, Anna Bromley & Michael Fesca, J Zevin & Jim Ellis, Geoff Mullen, Matana Roberts, and Marc Sabat.

Edited by Bill Dietz and Woody Sullender, April 2015

HTML/PDF articles

Klangkunst (1996) [German]

Catalogue for the landmark sound art festival, Sonambiente – Festival für Hören und Sehen, held in August-September 1996 in Berlin.

The festival, “was part of the Academy of Arts’ tricentennial celebration and presented the most comprehensive survey to date of contemporary international sound art. During the four weeks of that festival, some 50,000 visitors experienced works by more than 100 participating artists at more than 20 venues in Berlin’s Mitte district.” (source)

Edited by Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and Helga de la Motte-Haber
Publisher Prestel, Munich, 1996
ISBN 3791316990, 9783791316994
303 pages
via VP

Festival website

WorldCat

PDF (69 MB, no OCR)
Video documentary (50 min, MOV, 115 MB), English transcript (PDF, both links updated on 2019-1-3)

For more on sound art see Monoskop wiki

Seth Kim-Cohen: Against Ambience (2013)

“Against Ambience diagnoses – in order to cure – the art world’s recent turn toward ambience. Over the course of three short months – June to September, 2013 – the four most prestigious museums in New York indulged the ambience of sound and light: James Turrell at the Guggenheim, Soundings at MoMA, Robert Irwin at the Whitney, and Janet Cardiff at the Met. In addition, two notable shows at smaller galleries indicate that this is not simply a major-donor movement. Collectively, these shows constitute a proposal about what we want from art in 2013.

It’s impossible to play possum. While we’re in the soft embrace of light, the NSA and Facebook are still collecting our data, the money in our bank accounts is still being used to fund who-knows-what without our knowledge or consent, the government we elected is still imprisoning and targeting people with whom we have no beef. We deserve an art that is the equal of our information age. Not one that parrots the age’s self-assertions or modes of dissemination, but an art that is hyper-aware, vigilant, active, engaged, and informed.

We are now one hundred years clear of Duchamp’s first readymades. So why should we find ourselves so thoroughly in thrall to ambience? Against Ambience argues for an art that acknowledges its own methods and intentions; its own position in the structures of cultural power and persuasion. Rather than the warm glow of light or the soothing wash of sound, Against Ambience proposes an art that cracks the surface of our prevailing patterns of encounter, initiating productive disruptions and deconstructions.”

Publisher Bloomsbury, 2013
ISBN 9781628921366

Interview about the book (EarRoom, 2013)
Review: Joseph Nechvatal (On Verge, 2014).

Author’s blog

EPUB (updated on 2018-7-6)
PDF (added on 2018-7-6)

See also sound art page on Monoskop