Last Wed night I was watching bits and pieces of a film on Robert Irwin
called "The Beauty of Questions' which covered similar terrain to the
Lawrence Weschler biography 'Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing
One Sees'. Both the film and the book are an indepth look at Irwin's
persona and his artistic practice. In the film Irwin speaks about his desire
to create situations where the viewer perceives themselves perceiving.

But if we catch ourselves perceiving is it not the same as waking from a
dream and remembering it? If you become aware of the mechanics of your
own understanding, what is your focus? It is no longer on the object
or the experience you are having, rather it is now on the mechanics of
comprehension or perceiving.

This weekend I had a house party and whilst I was djing, I was watching
people dance and I began to think about it....for Irwin the whole point
is to catch people become conscious of the fact that they are perceiving.
But my goal is to create situations and context within which to give
people an experience be it perceptual or phenomenological. I have
struggled with it for the past few months: what does that mean, what
sort of situations is it etc? But when I was standing back and watching
people dance, it seemed to answer a lot of questions. When you are
dancing you lose yourself in the fabric of the music, the people around
you. In some ways when I dance I feel like a fool because I think I
must not be doing it right, and I must look ridiculous. But watching
that group of people didn't seem to be any self consciousness, or discomfort.
There was only pleasure, and immediacy. No one seemed to be thinking to hard
about what they were doing, they just seemed to throw themselves into
the moment, and were present.

I am not sure that I can agree with Irwin; if you catch yourself
perceiving, then you are no longer perceiving. You are analyzing
something that happened, being critical of the act to some extent. But
when you are fully experiencing the phenomenological you are in the
moment completely. Your not thinking about what you did three hours ago,
nor are you considering where you are going to go in an hour, your
movements become fluid and your actions become whole. You don't really
care if you look like a fool, because your not aware that you are
supposed to care.

The question is how does one create a universal experience that equates
going off your head because 'Blue Monday' is on? Granted not everyone
was off their head dancing, and that is the crux. Is it even possible
to create the universal? How do you create a situation or environment
that makes someone stop thinking and just be?

Part of my current research has been to disseminate various research topics
(sound art, perceptual architecture, phenomenology, and art history). Within
this context I have been trying to create a flexiable working definition of
sound art.

It would seem incredibly simple. Is the nature of the descripition not in the
name:

sound art is art that utilizes sound as it's main medium: often but not
always eschewing the visual for a complete aural experience.


Can it be that simple though? Is it mearly, a way of making art using sound
instead of a physical material. Or is it's simplicity similar to describing a
color using it's own name?

'How would you describe the colour green? Well you know,
I would call it green.'

How does one go about defining and recontextulizing a genre when it's name is
fairly apt and descriptive? Yes you can call into play and name all the
sub-genres but at the end-green is still green, and sound art is still art
made using sound.

The same lens could then be turned around and asked of various mediums within
the visual art's. What is video art? Logically it's art that is made utlizing a
video camera, it's description is entirely dependent upon it's apparatus. This
is a very murky area to enter into because the nature of sound art and music for
that matter is reliant upon technology in respect to production and entirly
dependent in context of capturing and recording. But we do not think of either
of these mediums in such a manner: no one ever says sound art is simply a
function of Mini Discs, or DAT Tapes, or processing programs. Yet the term
video art which directly references the tools that create, the apperatus
seems to be more conclusive, concrete, descriptive name, while the term sound
art seems vague and undefinable.

Is the vagueness due to the actual nature within which we experience it? Video
is something we see, while sound is something we hear. While it has been proven
over and over that our senses (sight and sound) can betray us, is the act of
seeing simply considered to be more valid that the act of hearing? Sound is the
most phenomenological sense we could ever have. For those who have not lost
their hearing, immersion is constant and the ability to 'close one's ears' is
impossiable without the aid of an outside source. With seeing, one can
simply close their eyes and no longer see.

In addition the lines by how we define sound art are much more convoluted than
visual art, due to music. How does one quantify something as art vs. music?
What are the boundaries, where are the lines drawn? As an example take Beethoven
and Christina Kubisch. It is a widely held belief that Beethoven is music
and Christina Kubisch is not, or not nessicarily what is classically thought of
as music. But if music is simply the science of composing and putting together
notes and tones in a manner that create a structure than Christina Kubisch is
indeed music, she has simpley chosen to create a new structure. The same
parellels within visual art best define this, as an example 'painting' has
experience many deaths, but Pollack and Monet are still considered painters,
they are linked together by a medium. Why can the same not be for Beethoven and
Kubisch, why can music not be sound, and art at the same time. The link which is
the medium of sound is no different than paint which links Pollack and Monet.

Canonizing various elements of sound art is not as easy as within the visual
arts (i.e. modernism, post modernism, pop art, minimalism, etc.) This does not
nessicarily mean however that sound art has not responded to these cannons, as
there is a vast number of sound works that can be called modernist, or fluxist.
But the idea of calling out and creating definition which for better or worse
will be taken at face value( i.e. why
is green not blue etc etc). With the influx of bands such as Lightening Bolt,
Wolf Eyes, Double Leopards, and even Sonic Youth, noise is now being brought
back into the fold, something which at one time was considered a sound without
meaning, a distraction.

In a circuitous fashion I suppose what I am trying to say, is that I am not
entirely sure. Sound art is a way of making art work utilizing sound as the
main medium. But sound art can also be music, it can be noise. It's definitions
are dependant upon context, not content.