# Terms: Sound Art/Sound Artist - Useful?



## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

I have recently come across the terms "sound art" and "sound artist" in my exploration of contemporary music. When I searched TC there were _very_ few uses of either term. I think most people would agree that musicians could be reasonably called sound artists. Clearly, some would say that certain people are sound artists but not musicians. In this sense the term "sound artist" could be more inclusive by including all "musicians" as well as other artists who work creating sound art. Since many definitions of music would implicitly define all musicians as sound artists, other people would simply say the two terms, "sound artist" and musician, are equivalent. I also realize that some would say that certain "sound art" is simply not art at all.

Are there reasons to speak of someone as a sound artist _rather_ than as a musician? Do the terms simply add confusion to dialog? Basically, do you think the terms "sound art" and "sound artist" are useful, good, better, bad, unnecessary, etc.?


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

When people ask me what I listen to I often say 'Art music', I prefer it to the generalised term; 'classical', which doesnt generally include anything past the the early twentieth century, and is incorrect.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I'm personally an advocate of the term "sound art", but I don't think it should refer to music alone. I use it to encompass any creation that explores any sound, which means I use in reference to poetry as well as music. Of course, poetry is a traditionally aural medium - meant to be read aloud and heard - and I think it is still necessary to read aloud to oneself to fully appreciate it. As I also said in another thread, I'm interested in the inter-connected neuroscience of music and language because they share brain regions that produce and receive sound. Anything that tickles these regions should be "sound art".

I realise that other people use it to mean something much more impressionistic, but I disown that.


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## Guest (Mar 12, 2012)

The terms came about as a way of identifying a particular approach by certain composers. While it's true that any musician could be called a sound artist, the term qua term distinguishes a person interested in sound for its own sake from a person interested in using sounds in order to construct pieces out of them.

That, in brief, is its usefulness. To distinguish two different approaches to the materials.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

some guy said:


> The terms came about as a way of identifying a particular approach by certain composers. While it's true that any musician could be called a sound artist, the term qua term distinguishes a person interested in sound for its own sake from a person interested in using sounds in order to construct pieces out of them.


That's an interesting distinction. Do you think the terms are then really part of another community and that community does not consider their product or work to be music? Or do they also call their work music?


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## Guest (Mar 12, 2012)

Yes, only part of the distinction is about approach. The other part is an attempt to avoid the inevitable "but that's not music" response.

It's an endrun around that. Call what you do "sound art" and you avoid--or hopefully avoid--the whole "is it music?" debate.

I do not personally find that debate at all interesting or useful. I find all of the sound artists' work to be music. So I very naturally (and unconsciously, too!) emphasized only the "approach to materials" part of the situation, which is a distinction I do find useful.


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

When I first heard the term "sound art", I immediately thought it was useful explicitly to avoid the "Is it music?" question. I can see how those artists would be rather tired, annoyed, or disgusted by the question. "Sound art" would bypass that issue as you say. I also imagined that some sound artists might not view their work as music but as something different. I don't know if that's true of any sound artists.

On the other hand, "sound art" allows others to respond, "Ah, so it's not really music. It's sound art instead." As you say, the debate is probably not interesting. It says more about the debators than about music and sound.

I will admit that while more than 99.9% of the works discussed on TC certainly sound like music to me, there are a small number that do not. Intellectually I accept them as music, but emotionally those works just don't _seem_ like music to me. I expect that, with time, my view will be considered antiquated.


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I don't think the term "sound art" evades the question "what is music?" at all, because music is a form of art, and "sound art" begs the question, "what is art?"


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

Within visual art there is painting, sculpture, drawing, etc. While painters and sculptors are visual artists, not all visual artists are painters. This would be equivalent to saying musicians are sound artists, but not all sound artists are musicians. I think it depends on exactly how the term is used.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

I trained in classical piano from the age of six and went straight through conservatory, became professional and did an entire later second bachelor's and master's training in composition and theory. To me, 'Sound Artist' sounds, if not pretty damn contrived and silly, very trendy and more than pretentious.

'Sound Art' is taught in places other than music conservatories, and can have the 'Sound Artist' very savvy about sound, 'building' pieces with many electronic tools, while it may never require they read a note of music or play an instrument. (With my background, and all I've put into it, I think I'd feel at least a tich miffed to be thought of or introduced as a 'Sound Artist.' Lol.)

Talent, profound musicality, and 'musicianship' can happen anywhere, including in those who never went to school or trained in any of it.

A musician is still, I think, thought of as one who is literate in the reading, writing, performing and or composition of music including all the technical fluidity of writing 'the language' so to speak.

Sound Artists are not from that branch of the discipline.

There is no reason to 'dis' or ban them from all that is good music of any genre, but there is that everything to distinguish their training, and often what they come up with, from the works of trained and expert musicians.

Like any newer technology and the discipline that develops around it, another generation will see those who are very versed in both, and make an easy and non-labored synergy of the two.

There are already very able classical musicians incorporating sophisticated electronics and 'sound art' elements in their written works, as well as engineered electro-acoustic works which were originally improvised and later revised in studio happening in some of the more 'musically sophisticated' arenas of alternative pop music.

If Sound Art is not a lesser ability or skill, it does require much less technical training vs. a classical music training.

The same could be said about digital artist vs. actual painter.

Since Sound Art is somewhat new, I tend to think there is interesting work there but not much of it near the strength or durability of works coming from their parent discipline, which was / is a more rigorous one.

At present an Art school university freshman may major in Sound Design or Sound Art, barely any prerequisites needed.
One cannot walk into a university level music department and get accepted as a music major without years of previous dedicated and earnest training, and almost always by audition.

I wouldn't get too hung up on some semantic tangent, though. They have to name courses 'something' and Artist is always a glam tag. It is up to the person called 'artist' to come up with the goods.

In the classical music realm, 'artist' is usually thought of as one active in the visual art as painter, sculptor, etc. For performing classical musicians, 'Artist' has become somewhat the terrain of the pop music industry, and though it still applies to all creative art disciplines across the board, the more it is touted about by the pop industry, the more the finer art arenas tend to shy away from the word.

ADD: P.s. 
In pop, mix and remix maestros are also categorically 'Sound Artists.' While it takes talent, work, and a musical sense to make anything of interest which is worthwhile in that particular genre, they are not, by definition, "composers," but more like the collage artist, who collects bits and pieces of other artists' original material and cuts and pastes them together in an assemblage, once in a while adding a line or filling in a blank area with their own (that is the original part, but it is again, reacting to a context of the works of others.)

If they make up their own music from ground 0, they are 'composing,' whether they know how to notate it or not.

What they most often are not doing is sitting down, thinking up something completely new, fresh from their own imagination, and putting it down, orchestrating it, or any of the other very different parts and processes involved in completely original work. It devalues the word 'composer,' to call them composers if the mix-masters are not. I would accept 'arranger' very readily.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

emiellucifuge said:


> When people ask me what I listen to I often say 'Art music', I prefer it to the generalised term; 'classical', which doesnt generally include anything past the the early twentieth century, and is incorrect.


'classical' small 'c' is globally understood as meaning all western art music, from the medieval right through contemporary classical of this day.' -- this is even defined and clarified in the everyday everyman resource, "Wikipedia."

Maybe you meant that, but it did not come out that way. 'Classical upper-case C denotes the music only of the Classical Era, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

another inadvertent duplicate. sorry, I'll get it down eventually.


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