Re: [-empyre-] Thursday, 19th: Hearing and Listening
--empyre- soft-skinned space--I would tend to focus on the word inclusive in that previous quote, audience engagement is important, IAE doesn't help with this really. My gripe is not with with considered and qualified insider discourse, people need to build careers somehow, I guess, it's with artists who use IAE as a distraction; a situation where feigned profundity is coupled with art that's simply not up to the task. Not wishing to condemn thorough academic writing at all; although the Sokal affair does come to mind when a comparison between quantum physics and art is made. On 20 June 2014 04:11, Christoph Cox c...@hampshire.edu wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Rule and Levine's analysis of International Art English http://canopycanopycanopy.com/issues/16/contents/international_art_english was brilliant and hilarious (AND, it should be mentioned, a project of Triple Canopy, one of the key purveyors of contemporary art discourse, or IAE, I suppose). It's also certainly worth doing anthropological/cultural anthropological analyses of cultural discourses. But roundly condemning any conceptual or technical discourse about art is, I think, simply anti-intellectual. There are certainly bad and obfuscating writers of art discourse but also brilliantly illuminating ones. Of course, that's true in any field. Why should we expect (or want) art (or humanistic) discourse to be more jargon-free than any other discourse? Should we equally condemn hepatologists or quantum physicists or epistemologists for having peculiar insider discourses? That would be dumb, I think. Salome remarks: I do not think sound is necessarily political, and a vista is not per se political either, but listening and looking are. Sound is sound and a chair is a chair, but how I look at it or listen to it is political. I understand what she means, of course. But I think we need to be wary of that sort of distinction, as though the world is inert and meaningless until we impose meaning and value on it. Again, this sort of world/human, fact/value distinction easily slides into idealism and a theological inflation of the human. The world is vast array of forces, human and non-human, that impose themselves on us and vice versa, and that, each in their own way, are selective, evaluative, etc. It's not some dumb thing waiting for me to make (or not make) meaning and politics out of it. On 6/19/14, 12:06 PM, Semitransgenic wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hi Seth, not sure I can agree with this : ) The fatigue with the language of conceptual art expressed by Semitransgenic strikes me as a response to the very difficult and neverending work of resisting the dominant vocabularies of our times and places and actually, the very sentence ***a response to the very difficult and neverending work of resisting the dominant vocabularies of our times and places* is artspeak ; ) Unfortunately, like it or not, within the art-world IAE is a dominant vocabulary, it really has gone beyond a joke at this point. So: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/27/users-guide-international-art-english * **Will the hegemony of IAE, to use a very IAE term, ever end? Rule and Levine think it soon might. Now that competence in IAE is almost a given for art professionals, its allure as an exclusive private language is fading. When IAE goes out of fashion, they write, 'We probably shouldn't expect that the globalised art world's language will become ... inclusive. More likely, the elite of that world will opt for something like conventional highbrow English.'* ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Thursday, 19th: Hearing and Listening
and meaningless until we impose meaning and value on it. Again, this sort of world/human, fact/value distinction easily slides into idealism and a theological inflation of the human. The world is vast array of forces, human and non-human, that impose themselves on us and vice versa, and that, each in their own way, are selective, evaluative, etc. It's not some dumb thing waiting for me to make (or not make) meaning and politics out of it. On 6/19/14, 12:06 PM, Semitransgenic wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hi Seth, not sure I can agree with this : ) The fatigue with the language of conceptual art expressed by Semitransgenic strikes me as a response to the very difficult and neverending work of resisting the dominant vocabularies of our times and places and actually, the very sentence a response to the very difficult and neverending work of resisting the dominant vocabularies of our times and places is artspeak ; ) Unfortunately, like it or not, within the art-world IAE is a dominant vocabulary, it really has gone beyond a joke at this point. So: Will the hegemony of IAE, to use a very IAE term, ever end? Rule and Levine think it soon might. Now that competence in IAE is almost a given for art professionals, its allure as an exclusive private language is fading. When IAE goes out of fashion, they write, 'We probably shouldn't expect that the globalised art world's language will become ... inclusive. More likely, the elite of that world will opt for something like conventional highbrow English.' On 19 June 2014 15:27, Seth Kim-Cohen s...@kim-cohen.com wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hello All Nice to be with you and thanks, Jim, for the invitation to participate. Art that engages sound is not a special case. The same obligations obtain, and the same privileges too. The fetishization of audio technology hearkens back to half-century-old discussions of the material support of visual artworks. Why should we care if the painting is on canvas or linen? Likewise, should we know or want to know if it's Supercollider or Max or a CD? Similarly, why is listening isolated, idealized, and idolized? Ultimately, the interactions that sustain interest and importance are not those between sound waves and eardrums, but between ideologies and economies, between societies and subjects, between history and concentrations of power. The fatigue with the language of conceptual art expressed by Semitransgenic strikes me as a response to the very difficult and neverending work of resisting the dominant vocabularies of our times and places. Such vocabularies are so pervasive as to operate transparently and to be adopted unproblematically as natural. The best international art-speak of the past fifty years has taken it upon itself to sprinkle sand in the gears of the cultural-industrial machinery. Of course, the machinery constantly recoups this sand as raw material for further manufacture. This recuperation produces both our collective fatigue and the demand for further innovation (I use the term cautiously) in the strategies and modes of alternative meaning-making. I fear - genuinely, I do - that our collective recourse to technology, to listening, to mute materiality, is a signal of retreat from the ubiquity of cultural-ecnomic hegemony. Sound schmound. Let's think about the relationships artworks create between audiences, institutions, conventions, ideas, and philosophies. Then we're on to something. Kindest regards to you all Seth www.kim-cohen.com On Jun 19, 2014, at 9:09 AM, Jim Drobnick wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- For today, Thursday, 19th, our focus will be on Hearing and Listening. While these topics may have been addressed in the past through perceptual or phenomenological methods, the questions by Jennifer Fisher, Eldritch Priest and Salomé Voegelin hint at the affective, bodily and political forces implicitly at work during this activity. Too often it is assumed that hearing or listening merely involves a passive transfer of sensory data, as if the ear were merely a conduit for information. But it's clear that the ear is subject to socialization and bias, training and discipline, personal idiosyncracies, and influence by the surrounding environment. The 3 questions today, then, seek to reflect upon the effects of such influences when attending to audio art: 1) Jennifer Fisher: What is the significance of spatial resonance and affect when listening to sound art? How do hearing and proprioception combine in formations of resonance? How might the resonances of ambient space -- whether a museum, concert hall or other venue -- operate contextually in curating sound art? My sense is that resonance operates somewhat differently from vibration: if vibration stems from the tactile sensing of a discrete object (or its
[-empyre-] Thursday, 19th: Sound Art, Technology and Innovation
--empyre- soft-skinned space--On the point of grants and innovation for innovation’s sake, take an academic department that is trying to create time and space for creative practitioners doing their thing at doctorate and post-doctorate level, it needs to somehow legitimise its activities in a context that can be understood by people in suits who control cash-flow. For instance, if you are at a Russell group university, and there is unending rhetoric about striving for “excellence,” it’s simply very difficult to justify spending money on “research” (much of which is essentially people noodling with art/music technology) if it doesn't appear to be “innovative.” It’s a game, a veneer, and it doesn't just apply to academia, prospective funding bodies of one kind or another can more easily be convinced of a project's merits if the proposal is spun as “new and innovate” but it is unfortunate that too much money seems to go to work that is often little more than yawn-worthy (novelty does not guarantee quality). I’m not sure how this will change because the technocratic imperative (and the influence of trends within the “creative industries”) that forms part of the rationalisation process of determining where the money goes, means that certain hoops will have to be jumped through, hence the need to big-up the “innovation” component. I also see a couple of commentators here stating that they switch off when discussion turns to technology (the “how” instead of the “why”). This is short-sighted really, it’s not an either or situation, it’s possible to maintain a healthy balance. One can be engaged in technologically mediated creative practice and still enjoy the how” while not letting this aspect of things dictate the value of a work. Having said that, I find all this pseudo-philosophical international art-speak waffle tiring; so many emperors, so many new clothes, seriously, enough already. I’m not adverse to conceptual art but we have reached overkill with this stuff, and I’m loath to see sound/sonic/audio arts adopting this jargon in an effort to validate itself. There are so many artists out there now working with sound, it seems like everyone is a “sound artist” these days, it kind of reminds of the explosion in DJ culture that we saw back in the mid-90s (overnight everyone was a DJ, all they needed was a set of CDJs and an auto-sync button, now it’s a Zoom H4 and some artspeak). ___ empyre forum empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au http://www.subtle.net/empyre
Re: [-empyre-] Thursday, 19th: Hearing and Listening
--empyre- soft-skinned space--Hi Seth, not sure I can agree with this : ) The fatigue with the language of conceptual art expressed by Semitransgenic strikes me as a response to the very difficult and neverending work of resisting the dominant vocabularies of our times and places and actually, the very sentence ***a response to the very difficult and neverending work of resisting the dominant vocabularies of our times and places* is artspeak ; ) Unfortunately, like it or not, within the art-world IAE is a dominant vocabulary, it really has gone beyond a joke at this point. So: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jan/27/users-guide-international-art-english * **Will the hegemony of IAE, to use a very IAE term, ever end? Rule and Levine think it soon might. Now that competence in IAE is almost a given for art professionals, its allure as an exclusive private language is fading. When IAE goes out of fashion, they write, 'We probably shouldn't expect that the globalised art world's language will become ... inclusive. More likely, the elite of that world will opt for something like conventional highbrow English.'* On 19 June 2014 15:27, Seth Kim-Cohen s...@kim-cohen.com wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- Hello All Nice to be with you and thanks, Jim, for the invitation to participate. Art that engages sound is not a special case. The same obligations obtain, and the same privileges too. The fetishization of audio technology hearkens back to half-century-old discussions of the material support of visual artworks. Why should we care if the painting is on canvas or linen? Likewise, should we know or want to know if it's Supercollider or Max or a CD? Similarly, why is listening isolated, idealized, and idolized? Ultimately, the interactions that sustain interest and importance are not those between sound waves and eardrums, but between ideologies and economies, between societies and subjects, between history and concentrations of power. The fatigue with the language of conceptual art expressed by Semitransgenic strikes me as a response to the very difficult and neverending work of resisting the dominant vocabularies of our times and places. Such vocabularies are so pervasive as to operate transparently and to be adopted unproblematically as natural. The best international art-speak of the past fifty years has taken it upon itself to sprinkle sand in the gears of the cultural-industrial machinery. Of course, the machinery constantly recoups this sand as raw material for further manufacture. This recuperation produces both our collective fatigue and the demand for further innovation (I use the term cautiously) in the strategies and modes of alternative meaning-making. I fear - genuinely, I do - that our collective recourse to technology, to listening, to mute materiality, is a signal of retreat from the ubiquity of cultural-ecnomic hegemony. Sound schmound. Let's think about the relationships artworks create between audiences, institutions, conventions, ideas, and philosophies. Then we're on to something. Kindest regards to you all Seth www.kim-cohen.com On Jun 19, 2014, at 9:09 AM, Jim Drobnick wrote: --empyre- soft-skinned space-- For today, Thursday, 19th, our focus will be on Hearing and Listening. While these topics may have been addressed in the past through perceptual or phenomenological methods, the questions by Jennifer Fisher, Eldritch Priest and Salomé Voegelin hint at the affective, bodily and political forces implicitly at work during this activity. Too often it is assumed that hearing or listening merely involves a passive transfer of sensory data, as if the ear were merely a conduit for information. But it's clear that the ear is subject to socialization and bias, training and discipline, personal idiosyncracies, and influence by the surrounding environment. The 3 questions today, then, seek to reflect upon the effects of such influences when attending to audio art: 1) Jennifer Fisher: What is the significance of spatial resonance and affect when listening to sound art? How do hearing and proprioception combine in formations of resonance? How might the resonances of ambient space -- whether a museum, concert hall or other venue -- operate contextually in curating sound art? My sense is that resonance operates somewhat differently from vibration: if vibration stems from the tactile sensing of a discrete object (or its emission from a particular point in space), might resonance afford more delocalized, contextual, intensification of hearing and proprioception? 2) Eldritch Priest: Through tropes such as the often cited “the ears are never closed,” artists and theorists alike routinely posit audition as form of “exposure,” a veritable faculty that lays us open and vulnerable to the world. But as Steven Connor notes
