‘Absorption and Resonance: Sound and Meaning’ is the title of a sound art exhibition that took place between November of 2008 and January 2009 at the Henie Onstad Centre (HOK) in Norway. Most of the works reviewed in this beautifully presented book were submitted to the NOTAM Sound Art Competition held a year previously.
The book is both a lush catalogue, with photographs and some artist sketches, and a collection of short essays on sound art. It is edited by NOTAM Director Jøran Rudi with contributions by himself as well as Katharine Norman, Leigh Landy, Aeron Bergman and Steiner Sekkingstad. These texts are quite self-contained and although they sometimes reference specific works in the exhibition, they go beyond the event and discuss issues of terminology/concept, space, perception and the history of sound art (specifically in Norway).
The first part of the book discusses the works that were presented at the exhibition. Here, they are lucidly commented on by editor Jøran Rudi and Professor Aeron Bergman from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts as well as by conceptual artist Camille Norment, composer Lars Petter Hagen and HOK curator Lars Mørch Finborud.
Although these discussions are clearly insightful, unless the reader was present at the exhibition or has had the chance to see/hear these works in person, it is sometimes difficult to precisely picture the exhibition and how it was experienced. I would assume most of the texts were not really intended to stand alone from the actual works. So this section may be of limited usefulness for readers new to sound art in general or those not familiar with the works that were exhibited. Some of the discussions are a little more descriptive than others; an accompanying DVD of the works presented would have been invaluable to the reader in this part of the book, or indeed a website with sound samples from the works or brief audiovisual overviews of the installations.
The lack of supporting video or audio is especially felt in Bergman’s discussion of A Liar’s Map by Ewa Jacobsson, where the text presumes the reader is already familiar with the work. Yet Bergman’s comments on Øystein Wyller Odden’s Stone Piece are much more descriptive of the work and together with his critique there are photographs and sketches that help the reader picture the work more clearly. This piece is central to the exhibition as it won the NOTAM Sound Art Competition 2008. It includes a string quartet which played at the opening event, and for its musical material uses the sound of the actual installation being made (a stone shattering a glass door). Bergman suggests perhaps with a hint of contradiction that this piece is a ‘prepared readymade that may be likened to processes surrounding a modernist prepared piano competition’, from which he construes the piece, really, as a ‘staged readymade’, the making of which becomes parsed into music for the string quartet.
Bestiarium Digitalis by Christian Bermúdez (reviewed by Rudi) is easier to picture, yet still it assumes familiarity with the work. Rudi compares Bermúdez’s set of collected sound files to a medieval bestiary and discusses the aesthetic and theoretical implications. Rudi also writes on Bjørn Askefoss’ Muliot, with more detail about the diffusion, set-up and use of images.
Lars Petter Hagen reviews Emil Bernhardt’s Wittgenstein Chairs, whetting the reader’s appetite for the piece yet confirming that his texts, in particular, were meant for the exhibition.
Camille Norment’s comments and description of Karusell by Espen Sommer Eide are quite comprehensive. The description is entwined with an aesthetic and contextual discussion of the piece, but Norment comments on technical details of spatialisation, software and physical sensation which all help the reader to better grasp the work. Sounds like Vågan by Siri Austeen is also reviewed by Norment. Austeen has created a documentary-like work in sound and image around the Norwegian municipality of Vågan in Lofoten, northern Norway. The discussion is compact but usefully describes the actual presentation for the reader through words. Norment’s text can be quite evocative: ‘ The mountain creek bubbles, the café crowds babble…’ or ‘ As the fender Groans and the meat hooks clang, gulls cry and laugh…’ helping us imagine this sound document of Vågan.
Lars Mørch Finborud comments on Transfer by Bjørn Erik Haggen and Transporting Rituals by Øyvind Torvund. The first piece muses on the (now old!) question of sound divorced of its cause and gives a little background to the notion of sound art. It reflects on the power of something as simple as the sound of writing, when projected through a multi-speaker set-up. The technical description is clearly not accurate, but perhaps this is not so important as it gives specialists the opportunity to read a fresh description of wonder at the phenomenon of close miked sound being spatialised. It also provides for some brief semiotic speculation. The second piece, by Torvund, is well described and uniformly interrogated, giving the reader a hint of what seems to be a strangely atmospheric work. The last text in the catalogue section, The Inward Rising by Stain Skagen and Monica Winther, is no more than a programme entry, so there is not much to say here.
I wish the short essay section was available online as only 800 copies of the book were printed. Katharine Norman’s brilliant writing considers the poetics of space in dense but rewarding text, the structure of which is defined by fragments from a Cage-like personal story acting as epigraphs to each section. This story is also printed, without breaks, at the end. Norman’s almost hypertextual approach leads us through issues of perspective, meaning, the traces of sound and some diverting sound art examples, from Lucier, through Westerkamp, Fontana, Migone (!), Lane and Perry, and Monaghan. This guided meditation on sound art and space is at once entertaining and satisfying.
Jøran Rudi’s chapter is really an overview of both the book and the exhibition. I would have appreciated reading/finding this at the very beginning of the book because it places everything, usefully, in context. In transparent language, Rudi provides a brief discussion of the idea of sound art and its historical context and highlights key notions such as space and place. He also discusses some of his fellow writers’ ideas and impressions on the exhibited works. In the account of the history of recording and editing, I was surprised to find the omission of film-sound or optical recording on film, as this is actually the first practical sound-editing method publicly available to artists such as Fischinger and Pfenninger, and of course highlighted by Cage in his much quoted Credo. These artists had recourse to editing well before 1940, whilst the tape recorder was not really used by composers until the early 1950s. I am also puzzled that in all historical backgrounds to sound art nobody seems to mentions the Russian drawn-sound composers Avraamov and Sholpo. They were probably the earliest to experiment with the direct relationship between image and sound, providing the basis for a media archeology of sonification.
Leigh Landy focuses on a discussion of the terminology for sound art practice and its conceptual implications. This is more widely discussed in Landy’s Understanding the Art of Sound Organization (MIT Press, 2007) but very welcome within this book as, to date, his may well be the most thorough consideration of classification issues in this field. I, for one, believe that being able to name something accurately and consistently is essential to understanding it. In the end, though, it seems we must live with the many nuances of terminology which describe this comparatively new art form as it differentiates from traditional music and is expressed by practitioners and theorists in so many languages.
Aeron Bergman, in a fresh journalistic vein, brings some exciting ideas to the mix by talking of ‘expanded sound’. Although I am not completely sure I understand perfectly what he means by it, the use of liturgical music to ground the history of expanded sound is tantalising. Bergman argues that this music was inscribed within ‘larger metaphysical narratives’, which presumably ‘expands’ it semantically (p. 143). But, wouldn’t similar narratives of power and politics be present in royally patronised chamber music? I was also interested to read a brief mention of Dziga Vertov’s Enthusiasm, yet I was left wanting more. The inclusion of Stalling’s approach to soundtracks as a forerunner of sampling in the context of expanded sound is also interesting. I wonder why Jacques Tati is not mentioned, as his Mon Oncle (1958) and later Playtime (1967) offer exemplary audiovisual essays in sound and meaning.
Steiner Sekkingstad provides a very appropriate historical overview of selected points in Norwegian sound art. I think it is a fitting closing chapter as it puts the approach of this country’s artists (and the book, to an extent) into better perspective. We learn of further installations that, although one not may have had the chance to visit, fire the imagination, such as Natasha Barret’s Adsonore, Per Barclay’s Festspillutstilling, Maia Urstadis’ 23 GMT and Trond Lossius’ Cubic Second, as well as Kjell Bjørgeengen’s installation for The Power Plant. Finally, Sekkingstad discusses The Sound Gallery at Bergen (Lydgalleriet) and writes about the usefulness of having a gallery specifically for sound art. At this point, I think readers like me will feel the urge to travel to Norway in the near future. I also hope this book has a second print run, soon!
