Notes on Sound: Sound Art and Sound as a Medium

­jake jones, kaylee lockett



This is active discovery.

You are the audience. Sound art is not meant for an exclusive audience of audio engineers, musicians and other professionals. You already have all the words you need to talk about sound.

The work is about and for YOU.

There must be SPACE for exploration and discovery. This includes SPACE for failure.

Sound art is not a new frontier.

Sound art is what it is. Its components are not employed as signifiers to signifieds. It does not build a bridge that you can recognize and cross. Sound is a river. Sound is happening all the time. We usually only engage with it when it is providing us with information (there’s a car approaching, there’s someone at the door), or when it’s organized in language or music. This is closer to language than music. This is not extramusical.

Sound art is like poetry. Poetry is like dance. What repetitions, rhythms, associations make up its poetics?

The materiality of the work is important, but it is not the only important thing about the work.

Objects can be sounding bodies

Objects can be listening bodies.

Sound is movement. Time manipulates the movement of sound, and vice versa. Sound is a time machine.

Sound can access inaccessible spaces and illustrate radical alternatives.

Sound is a community building device.

We are sounding bodies.

We are listening bodies.



Lorelei d’Andriole