Sound Art #catalysts

I really enjoyed the video interview on the Soundings: A Contemporary Score exhibition by Barbara London at MoMA that I’ve seeing at Catalysts Course MoMA. The exhibition shows the connection between the artists and the sound that they create as social, connecting visitors in space.

My vision on the sound design is not the same anymore: after I’ve seeing the Soundings: A Contemporary Score video, reading the Sonic Manifestations lessons of Randall Packer on the visual artists that have played a leading role in the evolution of sound as art, like Luigi Russolo, John Cage, Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman. etc..
I had never experienced, at first hand, with the sounds, considering the musical and sound research purely a territory of the musician’s competence. I’ve changed now my mind about it and I’ve found that the sound design in the art is a wonderful and exciting area!

I love these quotes:

“Musicians will not admit that we are making music; they will say that we are interested in superficial effects, or, at most, are imitating Oriental or primitive music. New and original sounds will be labeled as ‘noise’. But our common answer to every criticism must be to continue working and listening, making music with its materials, sound and rhythm, disregarding the cumbersome, top-heavy structure of musical prohibitions” John Cage

“We don’t see much difference between time and space, we don’t know where one begins and the other stops. (…) People expect listening to be more than listening. And sometimes they speak of inner listening, or the meaning of sound. When I talk about music, it finally comes to peoples minds that I’m talking about sound that doesn’t mean anything. That is not inner, but is just outer. And they say, these people who finally understand that say, you mean it’s just sounds? To mean that for something to just be a sound is to be useless. Whereas I love sounds, just as they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more. I don’t want sound to be psychological. I don’t want a sound to pretend that it’s a bucket, or that it’s a president, or that it’s in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound. And I’m not so stupid either. There was a german philosopher who is very well known, his name was Emmanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure. The sound experience which i prefer to all others, is the experience of silence. And this silence, almost anywhere in the world today, is traffic. If you listen to Beethoven, it’s always the same, but if you listen to traffic, it’s always different.” John Cage

I’ve found this amazing sound art project on the web:

This experiment has not only awoken the curiosity of the scientists at CERN, but it has also created a shower of ideas for a bigger piece by Collide@CERN artist Bill Fontana with Subodh Patil and scientists from the CERN community. The experiment with a loudspeaker in the LHC is just the beginning of what Bill Fontana calls “Acoustic Time Travel” which is his ongoing project at CERN.

Link: http://www.aec.at/aeblog/en/2013/10/25/woche-4-collidecern-bill-fontana/