Miguel Molina Alarcón: Baku: Symphony of Sirens: Sound Experiments in The Russian Avant-Garde. Original Documents and Reconstructions of 72 Key Works of Music, Poetry and Agitprop from the Russian Avantgardes (1908-1942) (2008) [EN, MP3]
Filed under book, sound recording | Tags: · art history, avant-garde, constructivism, futurism, history, music, music history, politics, proletkult, radio art, russia, sound, sound art

“A comprehensive overview of the complexity and breadth of the many early 20th-century Russian avantgarde movements, followed by detailed notes and contexts for the individual recordings – including summary biographies of the main actors; additional work notes about the process of the extraordinary Baku reconstruction; a bibliography, rare photographs, web research links, artwork, facsimiles of contemporary documents, a comparative timeline of European and Russian Avantgardes and the first English translation of an article by Avraamov about the symphony. This is a definitive library collection, some seven years in the making and possibly our most important release of recent years.”
Publisher: ReR Megacorp, London, 2008
ISBN 9780956018403
72 pages
PDF and MP3s (removed on 2018-8-21 upon request from publisher)
Comment (0)John Grayson (ed.): Sound Sculpture: A Collection of Essays by Artists Surveying the Techniques, Applications, and Future Directions of Sound Sculpture (1975)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, kinetic art, music, music history, sculpture, sound, sound art, sound recording

Sound Sculpture is the first publication to deal completely with this new art form. It’s a collection of over 30 articles and essays by an international cross section of Sound Sculptors who define and outline the field. It’s also a definitive introduction to the history of Sound Sculpturing. Included are over 150 photographs and drawings illustrating the construction of such unusual projects as: how to build a Western Gamelan (Balanese ‘orchestra’), examples of giant environmental Sound Sculptures, Sound Sculpture designed for a new ‘people’s music,’ and so on.
Contributing artists include Harry Partch, Bernard Baschet, François Baschet, Stephan Von Huene, David Jacobs, John Chowning, Walter Wright, David Rothenberg, Lou Harrison, David Rosenboom, Bill Colvig, Corey Fischer, R. Murray Schafer, and others.
Publisher A.R.C. Publications, Aesthetic Research Centre of Canada, Vancouver, 1975
ISBN 0889850003
196 pages
Alan Licht: Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · music, music history, sound, sound art, sound recording

“Over the past century, an art form has emerged that draws from the worlds of visual art and music. Sound art’s roots can be found in the experimental work of Italian Futurism, Dada, and later the Fluxus group and the pioneering efforts of the American composer and artist John Cage. In the wake of this groundbreaking work, sound art began to mature into a movement, and artists explored the interactive possibilities of sound and in turn created entirely new modes of experiencing and engaging with art. In this volume, the complete story of sound art is told by one of the country’s leading critics and scholars. The author traces the history of this form of art–highlighting the convergence of the indie world bands such as Sonic Youth with the art world–looking at the critical cross-pollination that has led to some of the most important and challenging art being produced today, including work by Christian Marclay, LaMonte Young, Janet Cardiff, Rodney Graham, and Laurie Anderson, among many others.”
Foreword by Jim O’Rourke
Publisher Rizzoli, New York, 2007
ISBN 0847829693, 9780847829699
304 pages
Review: Kenneth Goldsmith (Postmodern Culture, 2008).
PDF (removed on 2012-9-29 upon request of the author)
Comments (4)