The Listening Eye - Sound Objects and Instalation I - International literature presents activities between sound and graphic art under a broad term. German terminology uses Klangkunst - Klangskulptur, Klangplastik, Klangobjekte, Klanginstallation, while the common English term is sound art - sound sculpture, sound object, sound installation, in short various kinds of “the art of sound” that are being further specified. Sound object, sculpture, or installation are a set of terms that have been in use since the early 1960s in the domains of graphic art, music, and intermedia art; they relate to three-dimensional objects that are more or less homogenous in terms of material (sculptures, constructions, mechanisms, any objects) and whose constituent parts include the production of organized noise (of any intensity; or tones, or music). The term sound installation is used for objects immediately bound on an environment. Sound objects and installations work with found acoustic objects, “home-made instruments”, and acoustic constructions from which sounds are elicited by the interprets or the audience either mechanically, electronically, or interactively via a connected computer. Sound objects do not necessarily need to be intended for use during concerts; they may be presented as objects of graphic art synthesizing acoustic and visual aspects of artistic work. The prehistory of sound objects goes back to ancient times; well-known are acoustic mechanisms activated by wind (such as the singing sculpture by Amenhotep II from the 14th century BC at Thebes, Old Greek aeolian harps and aeolian acoustic pipes, or old Chinese wind-bells). Another form is represented by ancient water organs propelled by the flow and pressure of water, medieval singing fountains, and musical water-mills. In a broader sense one might also mention the interest in the construction of musical mechanisms evinced throughout many centuries, such as striking or musical clocks, calendar or astrological clocks, musical pictures, paintings, or effigies, and automata functioning as musical boxes (these might even emulate orchestral sounds); all of these have entered the history of music as much as the history of graphic art. Unconventional wind and percussion instruments were an area of attention for Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519; The Madrid Sketchbook), or Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) whose work Musurgia universalis (1650) presented musical acoustic mechanisms. In the 20th century the interest in the integration of sound in the work of graphic artists is related to the need for coming to terms with the impulses of the industrial revolution; the development of sound objects may be traced in two main tendencies. On the one hand it is the tendency copying the development of technologies, above all the hi-tech of each succeeding era – from hydraulics, electroacoustics, and electronics to lasers and Internet networks. On the other hand there is the effort to utilize the resources of nature and those of the civilization, the wasted potential of non-European cultures along with the recycling of the materials or wastage produced by the present age.
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In 1911, Ballila Pratella publishes The Manifesto of the Futuristic Musician; the futuristic painter and musician Luigi Russolo constructs (1913) his manually controlled mechanical intonarumori (box instruments with resonators emitting tunable sounds), and later a keyboard rumorarmonium (1928) and the enharmonic piano (1931), with the aim of broadening the instrument cabinet of the traditional orchestra (in Bratislava no sooner than 1996 at the BEE96CAMP festival). For his Prométhée. Le po?me du feu, Alexander Skryabin constructs the “colour piano” (1910), to be followed by Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné’s colour organ (1920). Sirens are used by Edgard Var?se (Amériques, 1921) and, in a monumental performance at Baku to celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution (1921), by the composer and musicologist Arzeniy Avraamov. The human voice as an active sound element enters dadaistic performances mainly in the context of various forms of experimental poetry (Tzara’s simultaneous poems, Hausmann’s optophonic poems). In Bauhaus productions, mainly in theatrical and ballet performances, one of the leading personalities was the composer Paul Hindemith who for the concluding part of Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadic Ballet utilized prototypes of electronic instruments, and mechanical music instruments (the dancer’s movement as a living acoustic sculpture). In 1920, Erik Satie introduces the concept of musique d´ameublement (music as furniture), thus anticipating ambient music. Kinetic sculptures by László Moholy-Nagy (Licht-Raum-Modulator, 1922–30), Marcel Duchamp, and Alexander Calder are at the same time acoustic sculptures. Edgard Var?se after 1921, and John Cage (1912–92) in the 1930s present a percussion orchestra enriched by sirens and brake percussion instruments, which increases the general interest in concrete sounds that had not been utilized before.
In the 1940s, three years after his manifesto The Future of Music: A Creed, John Cage presents a prepared piano – a grand piano in whose strings various objects (bolts, rubber and cork dampers, spoons) had been inserted to modify the piano’s sound beyond recognition. Cage’s followers in this line were Nam June Paik (1932), Wolf Vostell (1932–1998), Jon Jones (1934–1993), Joseph Beuys (1921–1986), and other members of the Fluxus movement who use the prepared piano in audio-kinetic as well as action-based productions. After 1948, the noise of motors and moving constructions became the intention and accent of Jean Tinguely’s poetics (1925–1991). In the spirit of Cage’s composition 4’33’’ (4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence, 1952), artists in the 1960s force music instruments to be silent, or deliberately destroy them (Arman shot his violin to pieces, while Paik smashed it up, and Weh buried it; Vostell burned a piano; Beuys sewed up a piano in felt; Bruce Nauman filled the insides of a piano with honey, and fixed a tape recorder with concrete). Analogously, one might perceive as sound objects various applied, decomposed, or destroyed gramophone records and recording tapes (Arman, Milan Knížák, Anastasi, Nam June Paik). Further found acoustic objects appeared in the composer Mauricio Kagel’s (1931) work; home-made instruments characterize a broad spectrum of creative artists from I. A. MacKenzi (1930s) and Harry Partch (1940s) to Skip La Plant and Jimmy Pomeroy (1970s).
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Sound objects are presented either as ?sthetic visual objects that feature an indisputable acoustic dimension, or as results of sonic research whose presentation form fulfills visual attributes. Performers of “New Music”, experimental rock, and industrial alternative music understand their own instruments as objects that had been enriched by past installations and performances. Members of the Fluxus movement (Ben Patterson [1934], Thomas Schmitt [1943], Dick Higgins [1938], La Monte Young [1935]) acoustically utilize various materials (water, paper, wood, glass) in events that first appeared in the 1960s. A special class of sound objects are oversized constructions and instruments whose ancestors were the huge exterior wind harps of the 17th and 18th centuries. Long-stringed instruments that utilize the floor, or walls, as resonators, were crafted by Johan Goedhart and Paul Panhuysen (1934; 1992 in Bratislava, and 1998 in Nové Zámky). Conversely, sounds of minute objects of everyday use were employed by Hugh Davies (1943; 1991 and 1994 in Bratislava), and vegetable materials by John Cage.
Under the influence of the development of technology, artists may implant sensors and computers in sound objects, thus enriching them with an interactive dimension. In some installations, sounds are constructed as components of virtual (mathematically defined only in a computer) interactive architectures and objects (Knowbotic Research, Ars Electronica, Linz 1993). In the late 1990s, the most recent technologies in acoustic objects and installations were presented mainly at the international festival Ars Electronica in Linz, Austria (Matt Heckert, *1958); in 1987, the festival’s main focus were sound objects, installations, and sound environments. A separate chapter is the employing of the human body as an object, but also the source of sound (composer Alvin Lucier [1931], performer and protagonist of cybernetic art Peter Stelarc). From among foreign artists who maintain relations to Slovakia’s cultural environment, two significant names are the Hungarian author Viktor Lois (1950) who creates sound objects from civilization wastage, and the Slovak sculptor Vladimír Labat (1946), resident in Hungary, who has been crafting string and percussion sound objects since the late 1970s.
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