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Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. [1] Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. [2]
Sound art dates back to the early inventions of futurist Luigi Russolo who, between 1913 and 1930, built noise machines that replicated the clatter of the industrial age and the boom of warfare. Dada and surrealist artists also experimented art that uses sound.
- Tessa Solomon
- Luigi Russolo, Gran Concerto Futuristico (1917) Luigi Russolo is may be best known as a painter associated with the Futurist movement in Italy, but he’s also considered one of the first experimental noise artists, if not the very first one altogether.
- Marcel Duchamp, Erratum Musical (1913) Marcel Duchamp was fascinated by the potential to visualize sound, and he was even once quoted as saying, “One can look at seeing; one can not hear hearing.”
- John Cage, 4’33” (1952) American composer John Cageand Marcel Duchamp were artistic collaborators, both fixated on redefining the boundaries of music. For his masterpiece, Cage mined the potential of silence, revolutionizing sound art and performance in the process.
- Bill Fontana, Distant Trains (1984) By the 1960s and early 1970s, advances in electronic media had expanded the potential for visual artists and composers working at the intersection of sound and sculpture.
- Haroon Mirza
- Carsten Nicolai
- Camille Norment
- Christine Sun Kim
- Jacob Kirkegaard
- Samson Young
- Zimoun
- Thessia Machado
- Susan Philipsz
Haroon Mirza has won international acclaim for installations that test the interplay and friction between sound and light waves and electric current. Being fascinated by altering electricity and transferring its characteristics to multiple senses, most recently Mirza has incorporated another natural force into his work: solar energy. In 2018 the ar...
Living and working in Berlin, Carsten Nicolai is best known as a sound artist, using the name Alva Noto, and as the co-founder of Raster-Noton, an influential German experimental music label. Nicolai also works as a visual artist, often seeking to visualize sound, often engaging his work with science and mathematical patterns such as grids and code...
Camille Norment is an interdisciplinary multimedia artist, composer, and performer based in Oslo. At the 2015 Venice Biennale Norment represented Norway in the Nordic Pavilion, with a three-part solo project that included a large-scale sound and sculptural installation, a publication series, and a sonic performance series. The artist explored the s...
California-born, Berlin-based sound artist Christine Sun Kim takes a humanistic approach to sound that resonates with the concept of voice. Born deaf, the artist recalls that she was taught to believe that sound could not be a part of her life. Through her works, she explores her subjective experiences with sound. Her 2015 sound and video installat...
Danish artist Jacob Kirkegaard uses his own sound recordings to create acoustic explorations. His works have dealt with themes such as radioactivity in Chernobyl and Fukushima, border walls in global and metaphorical contexts and melting ice in the Arctic. 4 Rooms (2005) is a sonic presentation of four deserted rooms inside the Zone of Alienation i...
Graduated with a PhD in Music Composition from Princeton University, multidisciplinary artist Samson Young works in sound, performance, video, and installation. Pastoral Music and Nocturne(2015) are politically charged sound performances, conceived in reaction to a series of night bombing footage that the artist has collected from new sources and a...
Using simple and functional components, Zimoun builds architecturally-minded organisms of sound. Zimoun lives in Bern, Switzerland, working with the support of a team of assistants to develop and realize his site-specific, immersive installations. For these works, he uses simple materials from everyday life and industrial usage, such as cardboard, ...
New York-based sound artist and performer Thessia Machado builds large-scale instruments using circuits of electrical wire vines, speaker blooms and light-sensitive tendrils. Machado’s practice evolved organically from sculpture to sound, eventually aligning with the legacy of experimental music and hand-made instruments. In 2017, she was a recipie...
Winner of the 2010 Turner Prize, the first sound artist to do so, Susan Philipsz works with spaces, narrative and sounds. The Scottish artist, now based in Berlin, was trained as a sculptor, and Philipsz still considers herself a sculptor today, though her materials are time and space rather than marble or plaster. She won the prestigious Turner Pr...
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Aug 26, 2013 · Introduction to sound art suitable for undergraduates and advanced scholars. Offers history and definition of sound art and related concepts, comparing sound art to music. Describes sound art’s position in the art world. Color photos and accompanying CD of examples. Brief biographies of important sound artists at end of book. Licht, Alan.
Jul 15, 2021 · Sound art is a hybrid art form that bridges visual art and experimental music.
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This article provides an overview of sound art, encompassing its history and artistic development, and the complexities of the term’s use as a categorisation.
