ABSTRACT

The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art presents an overview of the issues, methods, and approaches crucial for the study of sound in artistic practice. Thirty-six essays cover a variety of interdisciplinary approaches to studying sounding art from the fields of musicology, cultural studies, sound design, auditory culture, art history, and philosophy. The companion website hosts sound examples and links to further resources.

The collection is organized around six main themes:

  • Sounding Art: The notion of sounding art, its relation to sound studies, and its evolution and possibilities.
  • Acoustic Knowledge and Communication: How we approach, study, and analyze sound and the challenges of writing about sound.
  • Listening and Memory: Listening from different perspectives, from the psychology of listening to embodied and technologically mediated listening.
  • Acoustic Spaces, Identities and Communities: How humans arrange their sonic environments, how this relates to sonic identity, how music contributes to our environment, and the ethical and political implications of sound.
  • Sonic Histories: How studying sounding art can contribute methodologically and epistemologically to historiography.
  • Sound Technologies and Media: The impact of sonic technologies on contemporary culture, electroacoustic innovation, and how the way we make and access music has changed.

With contributions from leading scholars and cutting-edge researchers, The Routledge Companion to Sounding Art is an essential resource for anyone studying the intersection of sound and art.

part |84 pages

Sounding Art

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

chapter |10 pages

Dams, Weirs, and Damn Weird Ears

Post-Ergonal Sound

chapter |10 pages

Sound Words and Sonic Fictions

Writing the Ephemeral

chapter |10 pages

Field Recording Centered Composition Practices

Negotiating the “Out-there” with the “In-here”

part |76 pages

Acoustic Knowledge and Communication

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

chapter |14 pages

String Theory

Denis Diderot's Philosophy of Sound and Everything

chapter |10 pages

Music to the Eyes

Intersensoriality, Culture, and the Arts

part |76 pages

Listening and Memory

chapter |8 pages

Introduction

chapter |12 pages

That Passing Glance

Sounding Paths Between Memory and Familiarity

chapter |8 pages

Postphenomenology

Sound Beyond Sound

part |88 pages

Acoustic Spaces, Identities, and Communities

part |60 pages

Sonic Histories

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

chapter |10 pages

Weimar Activism

Walter Benjamin's Work for Radio

chapter |10 pages

Mapping Sounding Art

Affect, Place, Memory

part |80 pages

Sound Technologies and Media

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

chapter |12 pages

Performance with Technology

Extending the Instrument—From Prosthetic to Aesthetic

chapter |12 pages

Distributed Sounding Art

Practices in Distributing Sound

chapter |12 pages

The Art of a New Technology

Early Synthesizer Sounds