Sound Art Beyond the Turner Prize
By John Kieffer, Sound and Music Creative Director
Congratulations to Susan Phillipsz on her Turner Prize win. The win has particular significance to all of us at Sound and Music as she is the first artist to win the prize for work with sound.
With her Turner Prize win, it appears that we may, in sound art, have a new kid on the cultural block. But while acknowledging the clout of Britain’s perennially controversial art prize and of course welcoming the increased attention for sound art, the truth is that the kid’s already a proper grown up.
If we ignore the hanging of a decorated bird flute in a tree several millennia ago we might well start the story of sound art with western art movements in the early 20th Century. Something was clearly in the air as the Futurists and in particular Luigi Russolo introduced noise intoners into concert performances – boxes containing mechanical devices and sound generators, adorned with levers and speakers with the aim of producing crashes, snorts, gurgles, scrapes and the like. Elsewhere Marcel Duchamp – arguably the original installation artist – took the notion of sound as raw material to a further level of abstraction by creating imaginary sound sculptures. Roll forward 35 years or so and John Cage, whilst fully immersed in the multidisciplinary world of the Black Mountain College in North Carolina, dispensed with melody, harmony and recognisable musical structure itself and explicitly beckoned in the whole world of sound to music making. Music was now everywhere and anything.
Moving on to the 1960s and 1970s, the notion of sound art as a distinct art form begins to take shape with the emergence of American artists such as Alvin Lucier, Gordon Mumma and Robert Ashley. Lucier in particular with his almost forensic investigation of the nature of sound itself and his acute sense of spatial awareness remains a major influence on the current generation of sound artists. The extraordinary Maryanne Amacher trod a parallel path to Lucier covering a wide range of work including a number of sound installations linked by telephone networks (in 1967!).
An overview of the current sound art scene is full of interest and diversity but profoundly unhelpful in defining what is a particularly slippery art form, including as it does pieces involving sine wave generators, lectures, wildlife recordings, public space, bell ringing, electromagnetic fields and even the odd folk song.
This year has been notable for Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s guitar playing finches at the Barbican; Florian Hecker’s solo exhibition at the Chisenhale Gallery; Bill Fontana’s installation River Sounding in the light wells under our home at Somerset House; Chris Watson’s installation Whispering in the Leaves, immersing visitors to Kew Gardens’ Palm House in rainforest sounds; John Wynne’s Installation for 300 speakers, Pianola and vacuum cleaner at the Saatchi Gallery, the first piece of sound art in the collection; and Paul Rooney’s sound work McKenzie in Liverpool.
Other recent landmarks include the UK’s first exhibition of sound art, Sonic Boom at the Hayward in 2000 curated by David Toop, and former Pogue Jem Finer winning the PRSF New Music Award for Score For A Hole in the Ground in deepest Kent.
So perhaps unsurprisingly sound art like so much of contemporary culture will prove hard to pin down. Maybe that is part of the fun?
One thing that we do know however is that sound art can be as much to do with the act of listening and perceiving the world in a new way as it is with making the work. Sound is hard to ignore. As those of us who live in cities know too well - it can get right inside you and do all kinds of things to your mind and your body without first asking for your permission. Whilst not providing an antidote to this everyday aural assault, an engaging piece of sound art whether in a gallery or elsewhere can certainly sharpen up your senses.
Despite what I hope are some helpful tips on further listening elsewhere on this page there is no canon that you need to learn to experience sound art. Some sound works will reach out and grab you, whilst others will invite quiet contemplation. Amongst the public, the responses to Fontana’s show, a thoroughly immersive installation made of sounds and images culled from the Thames and its environs have ranged from delighted to disinterested (with the former thankfully very much in the majority). Boursier-Mougenot’s and Hecker’s exhibition could not be have more different to each other: one also offering a visual feast, the other a fairly minimalist affair; one creating a situation where random events can happen, the other a carefully designed sound environment. Crucially though, both sounded wonderful.
Chris Watson’s installation in Kew reflecting the sounds of dawn and dusk in the rainforest was diffused at a volume level close to the reality of the natural environment. Needless to say, the sound of a howler monkey in close proximity or a thunderstorm was bracing even at these levels.
Susan Philipsz’ Turner Prize win is cause for celebration. Those of us who have long been immersed in the world of sound, and are investing in its future, are grateful to the Turner Prize judges for bringing the genre into the limelight.
Now an art prize for listening - that’s an idea …..
John Kieffer
Creative Director, Sound and Music
This article is adapted from an article first published in The Independent: Sound art: Artists of the new wave
Surround Me was an Artangel commission
Further Listening
While sound art is new to the world of major prizes (in the UK at least), it is already a burgeoning area of the arts with an extraordinary range of practitioners. If you are interested in finding out more about sound art, you could try these artists for starters:
Christinna Kubisch
Bill Fontana
Max Neuhaus
Yasunao Tone
Biography www.lovely.com
WIRE Article www.thewire.co.uk
Last FM www.last.fm/music/Yasunao+Tone
Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasunao_Tone
Bruce Nauman
Louise K Wilson
proboscis.org.uk/prps/docs/wilson.html