Sound Art: Noise vs Music
Julio Tlachi
February 24, 2020
Sound Aesthetics & Production: Reading Response #2
After reading both Labelle’s and Khan’s articles, it is interesting to read about the histories of sound. This type of contextualization is important to my understanding of the contemporary functions and roles that sound plays across all aspects of my life. In Khan’s article, it was interesting to read about ideologies like Dada, Bruitism, and the Italian Futurists which have had a great impact on avant-garde noise/sound art. It is crazy to imagine that at some point in Europe “noise music” was part of the mainstream culture. At one point, Europeans were fascinated with wartimes and the noises that came from wartime objects. Noise-making concerts were part of the culture making process. Thinking about this in the modern context, I cannot imagine a concert where an individual is only making noise from different objects as being popular. In the context of WWI, it is interesting to see how their version of “modernism” was about moving away from the representational form of sound as music to the more literal understanding of sound as “noise.”
After reading Khan’s articles, there are many similarities in Labelle’s article on John Cage. Similarly, Cage was interested in moving away from sound in its musical representation. It was no longer about the rules that were put into place to create a new composition. For Cage sound became a singular moment that could be put in a certain order to create a new way of experiencing and hearing sound. For Cage, it was not as important to create a piece that was harmonious or pleasing to the ear. In a similar sense to Bruitism and the Italian Futurist, Cage became interested in sound as noise producing. As a result, to a contemporary listener like me, it is uncomfortable at times to sit through the piece.
What is most interesting about Cage’s sound art pieces is even though Cage is interested in exploring noises, the pieces he creates pull from the musical form of sound as seen in his 4’ 33” composition. This juxtaposition creates the sense that discerning between noise and music is complex. It is not so black-and-white or linear as Khan’s article presents sound history. Even for sound theorists and artists, it seems like it is hard to create clear boundaries of the different aesthetics of sound in different periods of time.
