The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art explores and delineates what Sound Art is in the 21st century. Sound artworks today embody the contemporary and transcultural trends towards the post-apocalyptic, a wide sensorial spectrum of sonic imaginaries as well as the decolonization and deinstitutionalization around the making of sound.
Within the areas of musicology, art history, and, later, sound studies, Sound Art has evolved at least since the 1980s into a turbulant field of academic critique and aesthetic analysis. Summoning artists, researchers, curators, and critics, this volume takes note of and reflects the most recent shifts and drifts in Sound Art--rooted in sonic histories and implying future trajectories.
"Sound Art. The First 100 Years of an Aggressively Expanding Art Form (Sanne Krogh Groth, Lund University, Sweden, and Holger Schulze, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) Part I After the Apocalypse. The Desert of the Real as Sound Art 1. The Sonic Aftermath. The Anthropocene and Interdisciplinarity after the Apocalypse (Anette Vandsø, Aarhus University, Denmark) 2. Composing Sociality. Toward an Aesthetics of Transition Design (Jeremy Woodruff, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey) 3. Dealing with Disaster. Notes toward a Decolonizing, Aesthetico-Relational Sound Art (Pedro J. S. Vieira de Oliveira, Sound Artist and Independent Scholar, Germany) 4. Vocalizing Dystopian and Utopian Impulses. The End of Eating Everything (Stina Marie Hasse Jørgensen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) Part II Journeys Across the Grid. Postcolonial Transformations as Sound Art 5. “Diam!” (Be Quiet!). Noisy Sound Art from the Global South (Sanne Krogh Groth, Lund University, Sweden) 6. Curating Potential. Migration and Sonic Artistic Practices in Berlin (Juliana Hodkinson, Royal Academy of Music, Denmark, in Conversation with Elke Moltrecht, Academy of the Art of the World, Germany, and Julia Gerlach, Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) 7. Four Artistic Journeys i. Pockets of Communities (Holger Schulze, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in Conversation with Emeka Ogboh, Columbia’s Institute for Ideas and Imagination, France) ii. Cairo Baby-Doll. Some Remarks on a Cairo Sound Art Scene (Søren Møller Sørensen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) iii. When I Close My Eyes Everything Is So Damn Pretty (Can’t Do the Thing You Want, Can’t Do the Thing You Want, Can’t Do the Thing You Want) (Samson Young, Composer and Artist, Hong Kong) iv. Sound in Covert Places. Indonesian Sound Art Development through Bandung Perspectives (Bob Edrian, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia) 8. Sound Art in East and Southeast Asia. Historical and Political Considerations (Cedrik Fermont, Musician and Independent Scholar, Berlin, Germany, and Dimitri della Faille, University of Quebec, Canada) Part III Come Closer ... Intimate Encounters as Sound Art 9. Kiss, Lick, Suck. Micro-Orality of Intimate Intensities (Brandon LaBelle, University of Bergen, Norway) 10. Gender, Intimacy, and Voices in Sound Art. Encouragements, Self-portraits, and Shadow Walks (Cathy Lane, University of the Arts, London, UK) 11. Sonic Intimacies. The Sensory Status of Intimate Encounters in 3-D Sound Art (Sabine Feisst and Garth Paine, Arizona State University, USA) 12. Intruders Touching You. Intimate Encounters in Audio (Holger Schulze, University of Copenhagen, Denmark) Part IV De-Institutionalize! Institutional Critique as Sound Art 13. Inquiring into the Hack. New Sonic and Institutional Practices by Paulina Oliveros, Pussy Riot, and Goodiepal (Sharon Stewart, Utrecht University, the Netherlands) 14. Outside and Around Institutions. Two Artistic Positions i. Working in the Sounding Field (Annea Lockwood, Vassar College, USA) ii. Conversations and Utopias (Holger Schulze, University of Copenhagen, Denmark, in Conversation with Mendi Obadike, Pratt Institute, USA, and Keith Obadike, William Patterson University, USA) 15. Audiogrammi of a Collective Intelligence. The Composers-Researchers of S2FM, SMET, NPS, and Other Mavericks (Laura Zattra, Francesco Venezze Conservatory of Music, Italy) 16. Sounding in Paths, Hearing through Cracks. Sonic Art Practices and Urban Institutions (Elen Flügge, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland) Part V The Sonic Imagination. Sonic Thinking as Sound Art 17. The Sonic Fiction of Sound Art. A Background to the Theory-Fiction of Sound (Macon Holt, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK) 18. Women Sonic Thinkers. The Histories of Seeing, Touching, and Embodying Sound (Sandra Kazlauskaite, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK) 19. ""Specific Dissonances."" A Geopolitics of Frequency (Alastair Cameron, Independent Scholar, UK, and Eleni Ikoniadou, Royal College of Art, UK) 20. A Universe in a Grain of Sound. The Production of Time and Fiction in Machinic Sound Art (Tobias Ewé, University of British Columbia, Canada) Part VI Making Sound. Building Media Instruments as Sound Art 21. The Instrument as Theater. Instrumental Reworkings in Contemporary Sound Art (Sanne Krogh Groth, Lund University, Sweden, and Ulrik Schmidt, Roskilde University, Denmark) 22. From Turntable to Neural Net. Sound Art, Technoscience, Craft, and the Instrument (Chris Salter and Alexandre Saunier, Concordia University, Canada) 23. The Instrument as Medium. Phonographic Work (Rolf Großmann, Leuphana University of Lünenberg, Germany) 24. How to Build an Instrument? Three Artistic Positions--Articles and Interviews i. Membrane. Materialities and Intensities of Sound (Carla J. Maier, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, in Conversation with Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Cornell University, USA) ii. Pickups and Strings. On Experimental Preparation and Magnetic Amplification (Yuri Landman, Academy for Pop Culture, the Netherlands) iii. Mechanics. From Physicality over Symbolism through Malfunction and Back Again (Morten Riis, The Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus, Denmark) Notes References Contributors Index"
Sanne Krogh Groth is Associate Professor of Musicology at Lund University, Sweden. She is Office Director of the Sound Environment Centre, Lund University, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the online journal Seismograf. She is author of the book Politics and Aesthetics in Electronic Music (2014) and is currently conducting field-based research on experimental music and de-colonial aesthetics in Indonesia. Holger Schulze is Professor of Musicology at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and Principal Investigator at the Sound Studies Lab. He is the author of numerous books including Sound as Popular Culture (2016), The Sonic Persona (Bloomsbury, 2018), and Sound Works (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Reviews for The Bloomsbury Handbook of Sound Art
[This book] deserves a wide and engaged readership, for this is an important collection of curated essays that drives the debates around sound art into new territories. Its focus on sound as an operative force that might hold power to account makes it that rare thing, a most timely textbook. --The Wire Sanne Krogh Groth and Holger Schulze have edited a volume of almost 600 pages that consists of very interesting texts that explain how social perspectives and art historical theory can fruitfully be applied to sound art and yield insights not easily developed through the traditional focus on sound and space. The book makes a very good case for why it is necessary to expand the reading and understanding of sound art's many sub-genres in order to grasp the contemporary developments, in particular socially engaged works with political intentionality. --Joran Rudi in Organised Sound, December 2020 An innovative, comprehensive and timely volume that I cannot recommend enough. --SoundEffects A welcome and important book that greatly enriches the scope of the sound art domain and should be of considerable interest to both theorists and practitioners. --Journal of Sonic Studies
