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A HistoryofSound ArtArranged and Composed by J Milo TaylorA History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 1Mixed by Joel Cahen24/1/11 14.35.28

» Sleep Research Facility d-deck» A Hackney Balcony» Cathy Lane00:00» Ros Bandt01:0002:00Introduction» Charlie Fox»» John CageA History of Sound ArtI listen, I hear, I obey. Does the exquisitelydissonant institution of Sound Art,and its subsequent ordering of desire,ensure that we subscribe to a genealogythrough which it is governed?In this composition I hear a rhizomiccollective, which obeys, albeitcontradictorily, a governmentof past and future time.‘Tomtoumtomtoumtomtoum’; the ‘Cage’of Sound Art’s past. I hear hindsight.‘Bwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’; thesound of sonic arts future.A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 2I hear silence, an absent sense ofknowing, of the heard, that I project intoa future. As a listener at the end of thiswork I feel like a wobbly toddler lookingin the mirror and happily hallucinating inmy own disunity. I am left with the ideaof an uncomfortable wholeness. Thereconciliation of sonic arts past with itsfuture seems like an empirical illusion.Ennioa Neoptolomus24/1/11 14.35.29

» Brandon LaBelle» Marcel Duchamp Interview03:0004:0005:00Early Practices06:00Dada» Enrico Caruso o sole mio» Janet Cardiff» Hugo Ball Karawane (1916)» Thomas Alva Edison Dickson Sound Film (1897)CATHY LANE Composer and sound designer.Works include compositions and sound design forlarge scale outdoor theatre productions, film andvideo soundtracks, live performance and installation work.CHARLIE FOX has been involved in the growth ofthe media arts in Canada, having produced a largebody of video, sound, film and visual art. Fox currently resides in Regina where he is an AssistantProfessor of Film and Video at the University ofRegina.JOHN CAGE American composerphilosopher,poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker,andamateur mycologist and mushroom collector. Apioneer of chance music, electronic music andnon-standard use of musical instruments, Cagewas one of the leading figures of the post-warA History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 3avant-garde. Critics have lauded him as one of themost influential American composers of the 20thcentury.BRANDON LABELLE is an artist and writer. Hiswork explores the space between sound andsociality, using performance and on-site constructions as creative supplements to existing conditions.JANET CARDIFF is perhaps best known for hersignature audio walks, which she has made in London, Florence, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, St. Louis,and elsewhere. Her gallery installations - oftenmade with George Bures Miller, Cardiff’s husbandand artistic collaborator--use the narrative andtechnical language of film noir to create lush,suspenseful sound and video works.24/1/11 14.35.30

» Duke Ellington It don’t Mean a Thing(If it A’int Got that Swing) (1931)» Leon Theremin Grechaninov Step07:0008:00» Kurt Schwitters Ursonate09:0010:00Futurist Noise Instruments (Italy)» Vess L. Ossman Dixie Medly» Walter Ruttmann Weekend» Greek Rembetiko» Marinetti la battaglia di Adrianopoli-1926 (recorded 1935)THOMAS EDISON was more responsible than anyone else for creating the modern world No onedid more to shape the physical/cultural makeup ofpresent day civilization. he invented the phonograph and recording.MARCEL DUCHAMP French artist whose work ismost often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. He famously presented readymade found objects as art objects in galleries.HUGO BALL was a German author, poet and oneof the leading Dada artists. He was an inventorof dadaist phonetic poetry and maintained thatwe must withdraw into the deepest alchemyof words, reserving to poetry its most sacredground.A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 4Leon Theremin was a Russian inventor and innovator of electrical devices. His 1919 invention ofthe Theremin, the world’s first electronic musicalinstrument gained him worldwide notoriety.Filippo MARINETTI The poet and guiding light ofFuturism. Marinetti issued the first “Futurist manifesto”. He pronounced himself in favour of thedestruction of the traditional syntax, the abolitionof adjectives and adverbs.Kurt Schwitters worked in several genres andmedia, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphicdesign, typography and what came to be knownas installation art.24/1/11 14.35.33

» Nellie Lutcher Fine Brown Frame (1948)» Harry Partch Harmonic Cannon & Bass Marimba11:0012:0013:00Post WWII14:00John Cage 4’33” (USA)» Antonin Artaud Pour en Finir avec le Jugement de dieu (1947)» John Cage Imaginary Landscapes No. 1 (1939)Walter Ruttmann had a background as apainter, filmmaker, a cellist and violinist he madeWeekend in 1928. The work was commissioned byHans Flesch, director of the Berlin Radio Hour. hewas concerned with exploiting the aesthetic andtechnical opportunities of time baced media.Harry Partch American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentiethcentury composers to work extensively andsystematically with microtonal scales, writingmuch of his music for custom-made instrumentsthat he built himself.A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 5» Pierre Schaeffer & Pierre Henry Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul (1950)Antonin Artaud French playwright, poet, actorand theatre director. He believed that theatreshould affect the audience as much as possible, therefore he used a mixture of strange anddisturbing forms of lighting, sound, and otherperformance elements. “Words are suggestivesounds and should be delivered for the sake oftheir sonority, explosiveness, sensuous and associative properties.”Pierre Schaeffer French composer, writer,broadcaster, engineer, musicologist and acoustician. His definition of the sound object was that,through the process of reduced listening, oneshould hear sound material purely as sound,divorced from any associations with its physicalorigins. He coined the term musique concrète andby innovating recording and sampling techniques.24/1/11 14.35.34

» Bobby Darin Dream Lover» Charles Mingus Self Portrait in ThreeColors (1959)» Iannis Xenakis Metastasis15:0016:0017:0018:001949-55 Musique concrète (France)» Louis & Bebe Barron Forbidden Planet (interviewand sounds) (1956)Iannis Xenakis Composer, music theorist andarchitect-engineer, Xenakis pioneered the useof mathematical models in music, and was alsoan important influence on the development ofelectronic music.A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 6Louis & Bebe Barron Two American pioneersin the field of electronic music. They are creditedwith writing the first electronic music for magnetictape, and the first entirely electronic film score forthe MGM movie Forbidden Planet.24/1/11 14.35.36

» Morton Feldman Voice, Violin and Piano» Iannis Xenakis Concrete PH» Morton Feldman Interview19:0020:0021:0022:00ce)» Pauline Oliveros Time Perspectives (1959)» George Brecht InterviewMorton Feldman American composer whoseworks are characterized by notational innovationswhich he developed to create his characteristicsound: a generally quiet and slowly evolvingmusic.Pauline Oliveros American accordionist andcomposer who is a central figure in the development of post-war electronic art music. She haswritten books, formulated new music theories andinvestigated new ways to focus attention on musicincluding her concepts of “Deep Listening” and“sonic awareness”.A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 7George MACIUNAS established strangely radicalmodes of presentation in the name of Fluxus.Traditional works of art were to be replaced byFluxus. Art was to be so uncomplicated that itcould be realized by anyone, anywhere.24/1/11 14.35.37

» Marilyn Monroe Happy Birthday (1962)» Nina Simone Mr Bojangles» Link Wray Rumble» Group Ongaku Automatism» Richard Maxfield Pastoral Symphony23:0024:0025:0026:00Fluxus» Dick Higgins Danger Music No. 17 (1961)» Spike Jones Yes! We have No Bananas» Brion Gysin PermutationsRichard Maxfield A composer of instrumental,electro-acoustic, and electronic music and activemember of the Fluxus group. Among his innovations with tape music were the simultaneous performance of improvised instrumental solos withtapes based upon samples of the same soloist, reediting of tapes before each public performanceso that the pieces were not fixed in a single form,and the use of the erase head of the tape machineas a sound source.Dick Higgins Composer, poet, printer, andearly Fluxus artist. He was an early and ardentproponent and user of computers as a tool forart making, dating back to the mid-sixties, whenAlison Knowles and he created the first computergenerated literary textes.A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 8SPIKE JONES A popular musician and bandleaderspecializing in performing satirical arrangementsof popular songs. Ballads and classical works receiving the Jones treatment would be punctuatedwith gunshots, whistles, cowbells, and ridiculousvocals.Group Ongaku Japanese collective exploringmusical improvisation inthe late fifties and earlysisties using found objects, random instruments,tape machines, and radios.Brion Gysin Performance artist best known forhis redevelopment of the cut-up technique usedby William Burroughs and the invention of theDreamachine, a flicker device designed as an artobject to be viewed with the eyes closed.24/1/11 14.35.37

» BBC Radiophonic Workshop Dr. Who Theme (1963)» Brandon LaBelle interviewing Max Neuhaus» Brion Gysin Poets don’t own Words27:0028:00Elektronische Musik (Germany)29:001960s30:00Conceptual Art (International)» Karlheinz Stockhausen Kontakte» John Cage Interview» La Monte Young 89 VIv» Tod Dockstader Water musicBBC Radiophonic WORKSHOP One of the soundeffects units of the BBC. Created to produceeffects and new music for radio. The innovativemusic and techniques used by the Workshopmade it one of the most significant influences onelectronic music today.Karlheinz Stockhausen German composer,widely acknowledged by critics as one of the mostimportant and controversial composers of thetwentieth century. He is known for his groundbreaking work in electronic music, aleatory (controlled chance) in serial composition, and musicalspatialization. He called for new kinds of concerthalls to be built, “suited to the requirements ofspatial music”.A History of Sound Art - A5 24pp symbols.indd 9La Monte Young pioneered the concept of extended time durations in contemporary music, hiswork has played a central role in the developmentof the use of Just Intonation in twentieth-centurymusic and the growth of the Minimalist style.Tod Dockstader A self-taught American audiovisual specialist and early practitioner of musiqueconcrète. His early tape splicing music is multifariously rich and highly spatialised using bothelectronic sounds and concrete sounds.24/1/11 14.35.39