Noise, water, meat : a history of sound in the arts / Douglas Kahn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kahn, Douglas, 1951-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sound in art.

Arts, Modern--20th century.

Arts, Modern.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 455 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 1999.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

An examination of the role of sound in twentieth-century arts.This interdisciplinary history and theory of sound in the arts reads the twentieth century by listening to it--to the emphatic and exceptional sounds of modernism and those on the cusp of postmodernism, recorded sound, noise, silence, the fluid sounds of immersion and dripping, and the meat voices of viruses, screams, and bestial cries. Focusing on Europe in the first half of the century and the United States in the postwar years, Douglas Kahn explores aural activities in literature, music, visual arts, theater, and film. Placing aurality at the center of the history of the arts, he revisits key artistic questions, listening to the sounds that drown out the politics and poetics that generated them. Artists discussed include Antonin Artaud, George Brecht, William Burroughs, John Cage, Sergei Eisenstein, Fluxus, Allan Kaprow, Michael McClure, Yoko Ono, Jackson Pollock, Luigi Russolo, and Dziga Vertov.

Contents:

Listening through history; prelude: modernism; explanations and qualifications pt. I. Significant noises. Immersed in noise. Noises of the avant-garde pt. II. Drawing the line: music, noise, and phonography. Concerning the line. The sound of music. Ubiquitous recording pt. III. The impossible inaudible. John Cage: silence and silencing. Nondissipative sounds and the impossible inaudible. The parameters of all sound pt. IV. Water flows and flux. A short art history of water sound. In the wake of dripping: New York at midcentury pt. V. Meat voices. Two sounds of the virus: William Burroughs's pure meat method. Cruelty and the beast: Antonin Artaud and Michael McClure

Notes:

Originally published: 1999.

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-262-27667-4

1-282-09991-4

0-585-25598-9

OCLC:

614457401