SOUND AS THING: TO HEAR – TO SEE – TO EXPERIENCE

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of sound and acoustic image as spatial objects. Since music has traditionally been defined as a temporal phenomenon, it is unusual to consider it as a spatial phenomenon. For the first time about the possibility of «acoustic sculpture» spoke Marcel Duchamp (Marcel Duchamp) in 1913.

The authors trace the history of the formation of ideas about the spatial imagery of sound starting from the time of the ancient theater, when the tradition of antiphonic singing was born. The need to «see» music and to feel it stimulated light-music experiments, starting with the XVIII century (Newton, L.-B. Castel, etc.). In Russia, sound art in the form of light-music appeared in the late XIX century (N.Rimsky-Korsakov, A. N. Scriabin, M. Čiurlionis, V. Kandinsky). In the twentieth century, not only music, but poetry is reborn as an art of sounds perceived by eye and ear of the reader and listener. Many poets inspired by the ideas of light-music strive to understand the structural harmony of sound and color.

The article provides a typology of noises and describes the futuristic tools intonarumori (intonarumori) by Russolo L., the principles of the universal playability and structural aleatoriki invented be George.Kage. It also describes the genres of sound-art -sound performances, sound sculptures, sound installations, and defines the actual terms – «sound artist», «soundscape», «sound collage», biomusic.

It is argued that sound art conceptually opposes conservatism in music and pushes the horizons of musical creativity proclaiming new aesthetic canons based on the priority of freedom of experimentation with sound, musical images, compositions and instruments.

The authors argue that the aesthetic articulation of the spatial characteristics of sound predetermined artistic experiments with sound, which by the end of the XX century resulted in the avantgarde trends of «sound art». The article provides a systematization of existing attempts to define sound-art (A. Lockwood, M. Neuhaus, K. Markle) and emphasizes that the final definition nevertheless at this point has not been developed.

The preparation and publication of this article was supported by the RFFI grant No. 17- 03-00613 «The Phenomenon of the Object in Information Culture»