- What is sound?
Sound, by a very physical definition, refers to vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear. In art, sound commonly refers to music. In a musical point of view, music can be composed of organized sounds and silence, as proposed by Edgard Varese and John Cage respectively. Very broadly, sound refers to the aural component of almost any and every activity.
- How has it been use in culture and society?
Sound is the crux of communication; to speak, to record and to communicate verbally all hinge on the very essence of sound. Sound can be represented in art through a variety of exhibitions, which include, and are not exclusive to, music, kinetic sculptures and conceptual art pieces. The most notable example of sound as art comes in the form of popular music.
- What makes it an art?
Sound can add complexity to art pieces for audiences of art. Through several layers of sounds, listening to an audio piece repeatedly can provide more and more information to an audience for them to better paint a picture of what goes on in an art piece by allowing them to pay more attention to subtleties in the audio piece that they would not have noticed before. Such subtleties include the noises the recording instruments make, or the sounds of the environment in the backdrop of the tape. The lack of sound can also add to the overall aesthetic of an art piece. For example, silence can invoke mystery or suspense in an audience. Through manipulations of sounds, artists will be able to express themselves and invoke thoughts and feelings in an audience, which serves the same purpose as art.
- How does advancement in audio technology affect our sense?
The development of phonography has undoubtedly allowed for better freedom of expression for sound artists by allowing sounds to be more reproducible and editable. Through recordings artists would be able to add several layers to sounds to perfect the audio piece that they want to send out. One example lies in pop music, where artists pile layers and layers of beats and sound effects to mask surface noise and create a more enjoyable audio pleasure. Artists may also choose to emphasise on surface noise as a tool to invoke suspense, as Theodor Adorno had pointed out.