4D: Seminar Questions

  1. What is sound?
  2. How has it been used in culture and society?
  3. What makes it art?
  4. How does advancement in technology affect our sense?

Sound fundamentally encompasses any activity or object that comprises of an aural component, and that as Max Neuhas says, comprises of almost everything in the world. Sound could be created from the smoothing melodies of classical music to the jarring noises created by the jackhammer. As long as vibrations are transmitted through the air, sound is present.

The purposeful use of sound probably dated way back as a communication tool or signalling tool and evolved to have embody an aesthetic beauty in musical compositions (some assumptions made).  However, fast forward to the time where phonographs were invented, it held the ability to record channel noise and surface noise. Hence, what was previously perceived as “silence” has since been brought to the foreground in sound making processes.

What constitutes sound as art, as Max Neuhas, has been pretty ambiguous a category due to the endless possibilities of sounds that go under this umbrella. However, it is these endless possibilities that sound entails which allows a constant deconstructing of different sound layers. In manipulating the different layers of sound (from purposefully composed pieces to noises to even silence), it surfaces new ideas that makes sound a piece of art.

The invention of phonographs allowed the new discovery of the ability to record sounds of the environment and also the sound made by the recording apparatus. This ability to record channel noises or surface noises shed new light as to how noises that were previously seen as artificial silence could be brought to the foreground.  Such a discovery also caused an inherent necessity or desire to fill up every void of silence available.

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