Listening to noise and silence: toward a philosophy of sound art

Listening to Noise and Silence engages with the emerging practice of sound art and the concurrent development of a discourse and theory of sound. In this original and challenging work, Salomé Voegelin immerses the reader in concepts of listening to sound artwork and the everyday acoustic environment, establishing an aesthetics and philosophy of sound and promoting the notion of a sonic sensibility.

A multitude of sound works are discussed, by lesser known contemporary artists and composers (for example Curgenven, Gasson and Federer), historical figures in the field (Artaud, Feldman and Cage), and that of contemporary canonic artists such as Janet Cardiff, Bill Fontana, Bernard Parmegiani, and Merzbow.

Informed by the ideas of Adorno, Merleau-Ponty and others, the book aims to come to a critique of sound art from its soundings rather than in relation to abstracted themes and pre-existing categories. Listening to Noise and Silence broadens the discussion surrounding sound art and opens up the field for others to follow.

Table Of Contents:

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part one Listening

Being Honeyed

To Listen

Dynamic Things and Places

Critique of a Remote Critic

Listening to the Soundscape Recorded

Listening to the Radio

Conclusion: Sonic Solitude

Part two Noise

Bad Taste

Noisy Non-Sense

How can you hear it when you do not know what you are listening for? - Noise and Modernism

Noise and Postmodernism

Sonic Noise

Conclusion: Noisy Voices

Part three Silence

Conceptual Silence

When there is nothing to hear you start hearing things

The silent "I"/ Sonic Subjectivity

Crickets

Silent Duration

Symbolic, Semiotic and Social Sound

Moments of Coincidence

Radiophonic Silence

Conclusion: Silence as Context of Auditory Aesthetics

Part four Time and Space

Sitting in Rooms

Resonating Places; Sounding Time

Geography of Timespace

Inhabiting a Playfull Agonism

Building Sonic Bridges and Towns

A Sonic Sensibility for New Media Art

Narrating temporal places/ migration

The Timespace of Radio

Conclusion: Into the Now of Listening

Part five Now

Sonic Pasts: an Afterthought

Perception and Sensation

Sound as 'Pathetic Trigger'

The Duration of Perception

The Refrain of Now

Bibliography

List of Works

Notes

Index

Reviews

“The examples under discussion range from by-now canonical soundworks...to recent works by a clutch of lesser known artists...Voegelin's critical style is so singular that she avoids cliche in the treatment of all these artists, prising them out of a conversation about music and into a challenging treatise on the art of listening.” – The Wire

“The book's arguments are complex and developed with rigour, making a perceptive contribution to an emerging debate. In its favour, the work consistently forces the listener off-track to think critically about just what it is that makes listening so powerful and so elusive.” – Will Montgomery, The Wire, August 2010

“Reviewed in the London Review of Books 23 September (UK)” –

“Listening to Noise and Silence will be of interest to a great many people following breakthrough trends within art and philosophy.” – Art Monthly

“Salome Voegelin has written an excellent book about sound art, escaping cliché and easy categorizations. She establishes a proper aesthetics and philosophy of sound, with a compelling phenomenological account of noise and silence.” – Neural

“In Voegelin's evocative image, noise holds the listener hostage to his or her own listening... Listening to Noise and Silence contains many moments that sound artists and others will find insightful.” – Avant Music News

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