Materialism in sound art
My practice and research is stems from the idea of the ‘material’ in sound art, through this practice we can achieve more immersive, diegesis focused cinematic scores. The principal movement that pathed the way for this practice is music concrete, pioneered by Schaeffer and Henry. Music concrete is composition using non-musical sounds, by considering the various qualities inherent in everyday sounds (pitch, length, percussion, timbre) you can layer and arrange these elements into a piece of music.
Acousmatic music developed out of music concrete, a complete decontextualisation of the sounds used for composition, the only matter of concern is the final noise rather than the source. This form of music is a subversion of our natural cause and effect method of listening. We analyse our environment for many reasons, to orient yourself or determine whether danger is present. We listen to a sound and immediately attach the source. Acousmatic music removes the source, and forces the audience to listen to these sounds in a musical way. I believe that it is impossible to completely remove context, the psychoacoustic and psychological elements at play mean that the audience will most likely be able to recognise elements of the noise. Either the audience can recognise the origin of the sound (such as the door and the sigh) or if the noise has been manipulated beyond recognition, the material remains. The sound of wood, metal or stone will remain recognisable.
I would like to take this methodology and approach to music making, and apply it to my project in a slightly different way. I would like to play music through a material using a transducer and record it’s vibrations in a space, this way I will achieve musical expression while maintaining the material identity. Hopefully this will result in a more believable sound than if I were to synthesise a metallic cello per say, at least this is what Mark Mangini’s postulations on psychoacoustic qualities of real recordings being more immersive lead me to believe. (DUNE research)