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A Metamorphosis of the Muses: Referential and contextual aspects in sound art*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2009

Lílian Campesato
Affiliation:
Music Department, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil E-mail: lilicampesato@usp.br

Abstract

This paper addresses some aspects related to the use of sound to create referential and representational discourses in sound art. We concentrate on the particular use of sound in this repertoire whose delimitation is still increasing among practitioners. As a relatively new art genre it oscillates between aesthetical and organisational strategies that are commonly found in the domain of both music and visual arts. At the same time, it resists being fully incorporated by these two domains as it develops a discourse that is very specific to its own. To analyse these relations we focus on two fundamental aspects for the study of sound art: space and time. The sound art repertoire approaches these two aspects in a very particular way, placing them at the core of its creative process and establishing connections with conceptual and referential aspects that are put in evidence by sound. We will concentrate on two different points of view: on one side, we analyse how sounds can build temporal discourses that become attached to specific spaces; on the other side, we consider the use of a space that emerges from contextual connections triggered by sounds.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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