Sound-Art History

The Biblical Record: Converting Scripture into Sound

Sound, Sound & Word, Sound Art, Sound-Art History, Uncategorized, Word
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Alexander Scourby in Affair in Trinidad, Columbia Pictures, 1952. Wikimedia; American Bible Society, The Talking Bible, 5 vols, 1964 ‘Heard Through the Word’ (Romans 10.17) In 1964, the American film, theatre, TV, and voice actor Alexander Scourby recorded all sixty-six books of the King James Version of the Bible. His reading was the first complete acoustic capture of the Scripture…
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Making Ready Duchamp 2: Sculpture Musicale

Art History, Sound, Sound Art, Sound-Art History
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‘Cum on feel the noize’ (Noddy Holder, 1973); ‘Hidden Noise’ (Marcel Duchamp, 1916).  On 28 October 2014, fine art and art history students on Art/Sound (an art history module run by the School of Art, Aberystwyth University) engaged in a workshop that provided a two-fold immersive experience: of noise and of silence. Both phenomenon involved attentive listening, but of different…
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Making Ready Duchamp 1: Erratum Musical

Art History, Sound, Sound Art, Sound-Art History
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‘Time and chance’ (Ecclesiastes 9.11).  Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) was one of the most important visual artists of the twentieth century: the father of Dada, minimalism, conceptualism, and performance art, among other movements. He was also one of the pioneers of what would become sound art. In 1913, Duchamp developed three musical pieces of which Erratum Musical is the most complete.…
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Preface to ‘Art/Sound’

Art History, Image, Sound Art, Sound-Art History
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‘What I have in my own mind is a complete fusion of the two concepts’ (Herbert Read, Education Through Art (1943)).  The ‘Art/Sound: Practice, Theory & History 1800-2010’ module will be launched at the School of Art, Aberystwyth University in September 2014. It’s anticipated that this will be the first in a suite of modules, presented under the aegis of the…
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‘Soh’ What!

Sound Art, Sound-Art History
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New, distant Scenes of endless Science rise! (Alexander Pope, ‘An Essay on Criticism’ (1709)).  The Noises of Art: Audiovisual Practice in History, Theory, and Culture was convened by the School of Art, Aberystwyth University, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and Aberystwyth Arts Centre on the 4 to 6 September 2013. The delegates comprised established scholars, PhD students, and independent…
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The Noises of Art

Art History, Image, Sound, Sound Art, Sound-Art History
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Noise accompanies every manifestation of our life (Luigi Russolo, The Art of Noises (1913)); I think it is in sound’s nature to be free and uncontrollable and to go through the cracks and and to go places where it’s not supposed to go (Christian Marclay).   The boundary between visual art and aural modes of creative practice is porous. Since the beginning…
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The Listening Art Historian (30 05 2013)

Sound-Art History
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I feel like a gramophone needle placed at the very edge of the record and moving inwards towards the first track (email to NE:02 06 2013). I participated at The Courtauld Institute of Art’s workshop series ‘The Listening Art Historian’. As I remarked to MZ (one of the organizers), in respect to the study of sound and art history we are…
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