This page has links to ebooks available through UCI Libraries related to sound art and other similar subjects. It's intended to complement the in-class physical library that is available to you all, and as such, does not have any physical materials listed on it.
To access digital resources, you should either be connected to the UCI network (i.e., you signed in with your UCINet ID to the WiFi at some point in time) OR you need to have UCI's VPN turned on. Complete information about VPN is here: https://www.lib.uci.edu/connect
If you have any questions, please reach out to me:
stonesm@uci.edu
Scott Stone, Research Librarian for Performing Arts
Architectural Acoustics by
Acoustical engineering applies sound and vibration theory in practical terms, addressing the manipulation and control of sound to ensure the comfort, safety and productivity of those inhabiting a particular environment. Engineers in this area need to learn and reference the concepts and principles on which fundamental acoustic design practices are based, and understand why, when and how to use particular calculations, equations and techniques. Beginning with an overview of the subject's history, Architectural Acoustics reviews the fundamentals of acoustics and noise before moving onto the theory and practical applications of wave acoustics, sound transmission and vibration. Chapters on specific design problems follow, along with material on sound system modeling, ray tracing and auralization. This compendium of theoretical and practical design information brings together all the important concepts, equations, insights and specific design problems, covering material in depth at basic and advanced levels.
Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art by
Background Noise follows the development of sound as an artistic medium and illustrates how sound is put to use within modes of composition, installation, and performance. While chronological in its structure, Brandon LaBelle's book is informed by spatial thinking - weaving architecture, environments, and the specifics of location into the work of sound, with the aim of formulating an expansive history and understanding of sound art.
The Body in Sound, Music and Performance: Studies in Audio and Sonic Arts by
This highly interdisciplinary book features a host of international contributors and places emphasis on developments beyond the western world, including movements growing across Latin America. Within the book, the body is situated as both the site and centre for knowledge making and creative production. Chapters explore how insightful theoretical analysis, new methods, innovative practises, and sometimes within the socio-cultural conditions of racism, sexism and classicism, the body can rise above, reshape and deconstruct understood ideas about performance practices, composition, and listening/sensing.
Colloquium : sound art and music by
In 2012, Thomas Gardner and Salomé Voegelin hosted a colloquium, entitled "Music - Sound Art: Historical Continuum and Mimetic Fissures", at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. This colloquium dealt with the current fervent debate concerning the relationship between sound art and music. This book proposes the opening of the colloquium to a wider readership through the publication of a decisive range of the material that defined the event.
Experiencing Organised Sounds: The Listening Experience across Diverse Sound-Based Works by
Experiencing Organised Sounds investigates a wide horizon of sound-based works using a template consistently across its 16 studies. It has been written for both specialist and non-specialist readers aiming to address means of increasing appreciation and understanding related to the experience of sonic creativity (music involving any sounds, not just musical notes) across this repertoire, as well as to launch a discussion about how the reception of sonic creativity can be influenced by the circumstances of listening – in particular, regarding the qualitative difference between the in-situ as opposed to mediated experience. Although listening is the volume’s focus, complementary information from the musicians is offered to facilitate holistic work overviews. As the first composition presented was composed by a 15-year-old, the intention is to demonstrate that what might be considered a niche area of the contemporary arts is one in which both increased appreciation and participation could and should easily be achieved. The book’s work discussions are divided over three central chapters focused on fixed-medium compositions, performed and sound artworks. Experiencing Organised Sounds can be used as an undergraduate textbook, by experienced readers or those new to the area. All works discussed and related materials are available to readers online.
The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality by
Has the virtual invaded the realm of the real, or has the real expanded its definition to include what once was characterized as virtual? With the continual evolution of digital technology, this distinction grows increasingly hazy. But perhaps the distinction has become obsolete; perhaps it is time to pay attention to the intersections, mutations, and transmigrations of the virtual and the real. Certainly it is time to reinterpret the practice and study of music. The Oxford Handbook of Music and Virtuality, edited by Sheila Whiteley and Shara Rambarran, is the first book to offer a kaleidoscope of interdisciplinary perspectives from scholars around the globe on the way in which virtuality mediates the dissemination, acquisition, performance, creation, and reimagining of music.
The Oxford Handbook of Sound Art by
Sound art has long been resistant to its own definition. Emerging from a liminal space between movements of thought and practice in the twentieth century, sound art has often been described in terms of the things that it is understood to have left behind: a space between music, fine art, and performance. The Oxford Handbook of Sound Art surveys the practices, politics, and emerging frameworks of thought that now define this previously amorphous area of study.
Throughout the Handbook, artists and thinkers explore the uses of sound in contemporary arts practice. Imbued with global perspectives, chapters are organized in six overarching themes of Space, Time, Things, Fabric, Senses and Relationality. Each theme represents a key area of development in the visual arts and music during the second half of the twentieth century from which sound art emerged. By offering a set of thematic frameworks through which to understand these themes, this Handbook situates constellations of disparate thought and practice into recognized centers of activity.
Participatory Sound Art: Technologies, Aesthetics, Politics by
This book addresses a major gap in sound art scholarship: the role of audience participation. It offers a survey of participatory sound art from its origins in the historical avant-gardes to the non-institutionalized forms of sonic creativity in contemporary digital culture. In doing so, it proposes an innovative theoretical framework for analysing such phenomena, rooted in Pragmatist aesthetics, affordance theory and postcritique. Combining artwork analyses with qualitative studies, it focuses on three principal aspects of participatory sound art: the ways the materialities of the artworks facilitate and structure the participatory processes; the interplay of the creative agencies of the artists and the participants; and the postcritical approach to sound art's politics, unfolding through the participants' affective gestures. In considering these multiple dimensions, this book contributes to the growing fields of sound studies and participation studies, as well as to curatorial practice regarding sound art and participatory art.
Reinventing Sound by
Recent years have witnessed a true technological revolution with a global impact upon all areas of society, from entertainment to education. Technology, changing and evolving at increasing speed, undoubtedly shapes ways of seeing the world, something which requires profound reflection in terms of how reality is understood. It is undeniable that in this audiovisual world music plays a leading and prominent role. This is particularly notable when considering the importance of music in relation to the way it is featured on mobile devices and as manifested in terms of other communication technologies, its impact on new narrative forms and the prominence of audiovisual fiction in advertising, and the new ways of creating, receiving and disseminating music on the Internet. This book is divided into two sections, New Media, New Audiences and Music, Cinema and Audiovisual Practices: New Approaches, and the sixteen essays brought together here are the work of an international group of scholars who deal with different geographical and cultural contexts. One of the highlights of this volume is its interdisciplinary re-reading of a complex phenomenon that is undoubtedly a fundamental part of contemporary culture. As such, this collection will be of particular interest to both scholars and non-specialist readers.
Sound Art: Concepts and Practices by
Sound Art offers the first comprehensive introduction to sound art written for undergraduate students. Bridging and blending aspects of the visual and sonic arts, modern sound art first emerged in the early 20th century and has grown into a thriving and varied field. In 13 thematic chapters, this book enables students to clearly grasp both the concepts behind this unique area of art, and its history and practice. Each chapter begins with an exploration of key ideas and theories, followed by an in-depth discussion of selected relevant works, both classic and current. Drawing on a broad, diverse range of examples, and firmly interdisciplinary, this book will be essential reading for anyone studying or teaching the theory, history, appreciation, or practice of sound art.
Sound art revisited by
The first edition of Sound Art Revisited (published as Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Categories) served as a groundbreaking work toward defining this emerging field, and this fully updated volume significantly expands the story to include current research since the book's initial release. Viewed through a lens of music and art histories rather than philosophical theory, it covers dozens of artists and works not found in any other book on the subject. Locating sound art's roots across the centuries from spatialized church music to the technological developments of radio, sound recording, and the telephone, the book traces the evolution of sound installations and sound sculpture, the rise of sound art exhibitions and galleries, and finally looks at the critical cross-pollination that marks some of the most important and challenging art with and about sound being produced today.
Sound Practices in the Global South by
This book develops a comprehensive understanding of the unique sound worlds of key regions in the Global South, through an auto-ethnographic method of self-reflective conversations with prominent sound practitioners from South Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. The conversations navigate various trajectories of sound practices, illuminating intricate sonic processes of listening, thinking through sounds, ideating, exposing, and performing with sound. This collection of conversations constitutes the main body of the book, including critical and scholarly commentaries on aural cultures, sound theory and production. The book builds a ground-up approach to nurturing knowledge about aural cultures and sonic aesthetics, moving beyond the Eurocentric focus of contemporary sound studies. Instead of understanding sound practices through consumption and entertainment, they are explored as complex cultural and aesthetic systems, working directly with the practitioners themselves, who largely contribute to the development of the sonic methodologies. Refocusing on the working methods of practitioners, the book reveals a tension between the West’s predominant colonial-consumerist cultures, and the collective desires of practitioners to resist colonial models of listening by expressing themselves in terms of their arts and craft, and their critical faculties.
Soundscapes of the Urban Past by
We cannot simply listen to our urban past. Yet we encounter a rich cultural heritage of city sounds presented in text, radio and film. How can such 'staged sounds' express the changing identities of cities? This volume presents a collection of studies on the staging of Amsterdam, Berlin and London soundscapes in historical documents, radio plays and films, and offers insights into themes such as film sound theory and museum audio guides. In doing so, this book puts contemporary controversies on urban sound in historical perspective, and contextualises iconic presentations of cities. It addresses academics, students, and museum workers alike. With contributions by Jasper Aalbers, Karin Bijsterveld, Carolyn Birdsall, Ross Brown, Andrew Crisell, Andreas Fickers, Annelies Jacobs, Evi Karathanasopoulou, Patricia Pisters, Holger Schulze, Mark M. Smith and Jonathan Sterne.
Sound unbound : sampling digital music and culture by
The role of sound and digital media in an information-based society: artists--from Steve Reich and Pierre Boulez to Chuck D and Moby--describe their work.If Rhythm Science was about the flow of things, Sound Unbound is about the remix--how music, art, and literature have blurred the lines between what an artist can do and what a composer can create. In Sound Unbound, Rhythm Science author Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid asks artists to describe their work and compositional strategies in their own words. These are reports from the front lines on the role of sound and digital media in an information-based society. The topics are as diverse as the contributors: composer Steve Reich offers a memoir of his life with technology, from tape loops to video opera; Miller himself considers sampling and civilization; novelist Jonathan Lethem writes about appropriation and plagiarism; science fiction writer Bruce Sterling looks at dead media; Ron Eglash examines racial signifiers in electrical engineering; media activist Naeem Mohaiemen explores the influence of Islam on hip hop; rapper Chuck D contributes "Three Pieces"; musician Brian Eno explores the sound and history of bells; Hans Ulrich Obrist and Philippe Parreno interview composer-conductor Pierre Boulez; and much more. "Press 'play,'" Miller writes, "and this anthology says 'here goes.'" The groundbreaking music that accompanies the book features Nam Jun Paik, the Dada Movement, John Cage, Sonic Youth, and many other examples
Soundwalking: Through Time, Space and Technologies by
Soundwalking brings together a diverse group of contemporary scholars, artists and activists in one of the first comprehensive studies of soundwalking - the practice of moving through space while carefully listening to what it has to say - to address urgent challenges and concerns of an environmental, ethical, social, and technological nature. Besides gaining insight into the historical development of soundwalking as a scholarly method and artistic genre, the reader will have a chance to learn from emerging voices concerned with this practice, of many different backgrounds and positionalities. Soundwalking demonstrates how attentive listening and walking might help with more careful and responsible navigation through the complex dimensions of our shared environments and entangled histories, often imperceptible on a day-to-day basis. The book encourages scholars, artists and also those unfamiliar with the concept, to engage with it in their respective fields and subjects of interest as an interdisciplinary method of critical inquiry and a creative mode of communication. This book inspires readers to discover anew the potential of walking and listening and will be of interest to students, researchers and practitioners in the areas of studies directly concerned with sound and beyond, including environmental humanities, landscape architecture, media, and cultural studies.
Heiner Goebbels and Curatorial Composing after Cage by
This Element introduces the notion of curatorial composing to account for certain musical practices that emerged from the 1960s as the founding concepts of music as an art – instituted in the modern era – were systematically dismantled. It raises the key question of how musical value and authority might be produced without recourse to an external principle, origin, transcendental framework, or other foundation. It argues that these practices do not dismiss the issue of value or simply relativise it but shift the paradigm to a curatorial concern for composing public encounters and staging events. The Element shows that Lydia Goehr's elaboration of the work-concept provides a framework that was transformed by John Cage in his work from 0'00” (1962) onwards. The Element then introduces Heiner Goebbels' practice and focus on his role as Artistic Director of the Ruhrtriennale (2012–14), which it argues was an extension of his curatorial composing.
Gallery Sound by
Sound is an integral part of contemporary art. Once understood to be a marginal practice, increasingly we encounter sound in art exhibitions through an array of sound making works in various art forms, at times played to very high audio levels. However, works of art are far from the only thing one might hear: music performances, floor talks, exhibition openings and the noisy background sounds that emanate from the gallery café fill contemporary exhibition environments. Far from being hallowed spaces of quiet reflection, what this means is that galleries have swiftly become very noisy places. As such, a straightforward consideration of artworks alone can then no longer account for our experiences of art galleries and museums. To date there has been minimal scholarship directed towards the intricacies of our experiences of sound that occur within the bounds of this purportedly 'visual' art space. Kelly addresses this gap in knowledge through the examination of historical and contemporary sound in gallery environments, broadening our understanding of artists who work with sound, the institutions that exhibit these works, and the audiences that visit them. Gallery Sound argues for the importance of all of the sounds to be heard within the walls of art spaces, and in doing so listens not only to the deliberate inclusion of sound within the art gallery in the form of artworks, performances, and music, but also to its incidental sounds, such as their ambient sounds and the noise generated by audiences. More than this, however, Gallery Sound turns its attention to the ways in which the acoustic characteristics specific to gallery spaces have been mined by artists for creative outputs, ushering in entirely new art forms.
After Sound: Toward a Critical Music by
After Sound considers contemporary art practices that reconceive music beyond the limitation of sound. This book is called After Sound because music and sound are, in Barrett's account, different entities. While musicology and sound art theory alike typically equate music with pure instrumental sound, or absolute music, Barrett posits music as an expanded field of artistic practice encompassing a range of different media and symbolic relationships. The works discussed in After Sound thus use performance, text scores, musical automata, video, social practice, and installation while they articulate a novel aesthetic space for a radically engaged musical practice. Coining the term "critical music," this book examines a diverse collection of art projects which intervene into specific political and philosophical conflicts by exploring music's unique historical forms.
The Cambridge Companion to Electronic Music by
Musicians are always quick to adopt and explore new technologies. The fast-paced changes wrought by electrification, from the microphone via the analogue synthesiser to the laptop computer, have led to a wide diversity of new musical styles and techniques. Electronic music has grown to a broad field of investigation, taking in historical movements such as musique concrète and elektronische musik, and contemporary trends such as electronic dance music and electronica. A fascinating array of composers and inventors have contributed to a diverse set of technologies, practices and music. This book brings together some novel threads through this scene, from the viewpoint of researchers at the forefront of the sonic explorations empowered by electronic technology. The chapters provide accessible and insightful overviews of core topic areas and uncover some hitherto less publicised corners of worldwide movements. Recent areas of intense activity such as audiovisuals, live electronic music, interactivity and network music are actively promoted.
Eight Lectures on Experimental Music by
In this brilliant collection, path-breaking figures of American experimental music discuss the meaning of their work at the turn of the twenty-first century. Presented between 1989 and 2002 at Wesleyan University, these captivating lectures provide rare insights by composers whose work has shaped our understanding of what it means to be experimental: Maryanne Amacher, Robert Ashley, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, James Tenney, Christian Wolff, and La Monte Young. Collected here for the first time, together these lectures tell the story of twentieth-century American experimental music, covering such topics as repetition, phase, drone, duration, collaboration, and technological innovation. Containing introductory comments by Lucier and the original question and answer sessions between the students and the composers, this book makes the theory and practice of experimental music available and accessible to a new generation of students, artists, and scholars.
Experimentations: John Cage in music, art, and architecture by
Experimentations provides a detailed historical and theoretical analysis of the first three decades of experimental composer John Cage's aesthetic production (ca. 1940-1972). Paying particular attention to Cage's inter- and cross-disciplinary engagements with the visual arts and architecture during this period, the book sheds new light on some of Cage's most controversial and influential innovations, such as the use of noise, chance techniques, indeterminacy, electronic technologies, and computerization, as well as upon lesser known but important ideas and strategies such as transparency, multiplicity, virtuality, and actualization. Ultimately, it traces the development of Cage's avant-garde aesthetic and political project as it transformed from the emulation of historical avant-garde precedents such as futurism and the Bauhaus, to the development of important precedents for the post-World War II movements of happenings and Fluxus, to its ultimate abandonment in the aftermath of problems encountered in the vast, multimedia composition
Listening Through the Noise: The Aesthetics of Experimental Electronic Music by
Contemporary electronic music has splintered into numerous genres and subgenres, all of which share a concern with whether sound, in itself, bears meaning. Listening through the Noise considers how the experience of listening to electronic music constitutes a departure from the expectations that have long governed music listening in the West.
Live Electronic Music by
During the twentieth century, electronic technology enabled the explosive development of new tools for the production, performance, dissemination and conservation of music. The era of the mechanical reproduction of music has, rather ironically, opened up new perspectives, which have contributed to the revitalisation of the performer’s role and the concept of music as performance. This book examines questions related to music that cannot be set in conventional notation, reporting and reflecting on current research and creative practice primarily in live electronic music. It studies compositions for which the musical text is problematic, that is, non-existent, incomplete, insufficiently precise or transmitted in a nontraditional format. Thus, at the core of this project is an absence. The objects of study lack a reliably precise graphical representation of the work as the composer or the composer/performer conceived or imagined it. How do we compose, perform and study music that cannot be set in conventional notation? The authors of this book examine this problem from the complementary perspectives of the composer, the performer, the musical assistant, the audio engineer, the computer scientist and the musicologist.
Machine Music by
Sound and music is a product of technology. Whether we are enjoying a concert, working in a sound studio or listening with headphones on, technical equipment lays the foundation of our musical experience. In Machine Music. A Media Archaeological Excavation postdoc, composer and PhD Morten Riis tunes into normally undetected layers of music. Musical machines - be it ancient or modern instruments, computers, loudspeakers or amplifiers - are not just silent mediators of sounds. They all have their own unique voices. We simply have to learn to listen to them.
The Selected Letters of John Cage by
This selection of over five hundred letters gives us the life of John Cage with all the intelligence, wit, and inventiveness that made him such an important and groundbreaking composer and performer. The missives range from lengthy reports of his early trips to Europe in the 1930s through his years with the dancer Merce Cunningham, and shed new light on his growing eminence as an iconic performance artist of the American avant-garde. Cage's joie de vivre resounds in these letters―fully annotated throughout―in every phase of his career, and includes correspondence with Peter Yates, David Tudor, and Pierre Boulez, among others. Above all, they reveal his passionate interest in people, ideas, and the arts. The voice is one we recognize from his writings: singular, profound, irreverent, and funny. Not only will readers take pleasure in Cage's correspondence with and commentary about the people and events of a momentous and transformative time in the arts, they will also share in his meditations on the very nature of art. A deep pleasure to read, this volume presents an extraordinary portrait of a complex, brilliant man who challenged and changed the artistic currents of the twentieth century.