Onto-aesthetics of Sound and Auditory Culture. Metatheoretical Discourse in Sound Studies

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26485/ZRL/2020/63.4/2

Keywords:

sound studies, onto-aesthetics, auditory culture, sound culture studies, sound machineries

Abstract

The article presents a critical approach to the sound studies debate, concerning its metatheoretical aspects. The point of departure is a paper by Brian Kane that opens the first issue of “Sound Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal”. Kane criticizes the ontoaesthetic perspective within the discipline. My aim is to introduce sound studies both as an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary field of humanities, dominated by two — instead of one referred by Kane — research strategies: audio-antropological and onto-aesthetical. By focusing on the latter, where the works by Christoph Cox and Salomé Voegelin are situated, I want to propose a different, affective-materialistic approach to sound studies, based not on the opposition between signification and sound/vibration, but on the relationship between the Deleuzoguattarian machinic concepts and the musical avant-garde. Referring to excerpts from articles and manifestos by Luigi Russolo, Edgar Varèse, Pierre Schaeffer and Pauline Oliveros, I show that the machinic sound imagination once accompanied the historical avantgarde and neo-avant-garde movements. It is the key to break with the anti-post-structural approach in sound studies in favor of a more relational perspective. This perspective, within the onesthetic paradigm, would allow for the interpretation of sound machinery as elements of the machine system (aesthetic, social, cultural) in which sound operates.

References

Barthes Roland (2015), Ziarno głosu, przeł. J. Momro, „Teksty Drugie”, nr 5.

Brzostek Dariusz (2014), Nasłuchiwanie hałasu: audioantropologia między ekspresją a doświadczeniem, Wyd. Naukowe UMK, Toruń.

— (2015), Tyrania oka, pokora ucha? O potrzebie sound studies, „Teksty Drugie”, nr 5.

Cage John (2017[1968]), Experimental Music [w:] tegoż, Silence. Lectures and Writings, Marion Boyars Publishers, London.

Cavarero Adrianna (2015), For More than One Voice. Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression, trans. P.A. Kottman, Stanford UP, Stanford, California.

Cox Christoph (2011), Beyond Representation and Signification: Toward a Sonic Materialism, „Journal of Visual Culture, vol. 10(2).

Deleuze Gilles, Guattari Felix (2015), Tysiąc Plateau, red. językowa i merytoryczna Bednarek J., Wydawnictwo Bęc Zmiana, Warszawa.

—, — (2016), Kafka. Ku literaturze mniejszej, przeł. A.Z., K.M. Jaksender, Wydawnictwo Eperons- Ostrogi, Kraków.

Derrida Jacques (1997), Głos i fenomen. Wprowadzenie do problematyki znaku w fenomenologii Husserla, przeł. B. Banasiak, Wydawnictwo KR, Warszawa.

Dolar Mladen (2006), The Voice and Nothing More, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Eitan Zohar, Rothschild Inbar (2011), How Music Touches: Musical Parameters and Listeners’ Audio-tactile Metaphorical Mappings, „Psychology of Music”, vol. 39, no 4.

Glosowitz Monika (2019), Maszynerie afektywne. Literackie strategie w najnowszej polskiej poezji kobiet, Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, Warszawa.

Hilmes Michele (2015), Is There a Field Called Sound Culture Studies?, „American Quarterly”, vol. 57, no. 1.

Ingold Tim (2007), Against Soundscape [w:] Autumn Leaves: Sound and the Environment in Artistic Practice, ed. Carlyle A., Double Entendre, Paris.

Kane Brian (2015), Sound Studies without Auditory Culture: a Critique of the Ontological Turn, „Sound Studies”, no 1.

Kultura dźwięku. Teksty o muzyce nowoczesnej (2010), red. Cox Ch., Warner D., przeł. J. Kutyła,

M. Matuszkiewicz, M. Mendyk, S. Wieczorek, I. Socha, D. Gwizdalanka, J. Gałuszka, J. Jarniewicz, słowo/obraz terytoria, Gdańsk.

Oliveros Pauline (2010), Kilka obserwacji dźwiękowych, przeł. J. Kutyła [w:] Kultura dźwięku. Teksty o muzyce nowoczesnej, red. Cox Ch., Warner D., słowo/obraz terytoria, Gdańsk.

Russolo Luigi (2010), Sztuka hałasów: Manifest futurystyczny, przeł. M. Matuszkiewicz [w:] Kultura dźwięku. Teksty o muzyce nowoczesnej, red. Cox Ch., Warner D., słowo/obraz terytoria, Gdańsk.

Schaeffer Pierre (2010), Akuzmatyka, przeł. J. Kutyła [w:] Kultura dźwięku. Teksty o muzyce nowoczesnej, red. Cox Ch., Warner D., słowo/obraz terytoria, Gdańsk.

The Sound Studies Reader (2012), ed. Sterne J., Routledge, London – New York.

Varese Edgar (2010), Wyzwolenie dźwięku, przeł. M. Matuszkiewicz [w:] Kultura dźwięku. Teksty o muzyce nowoczesnej, red. Cox Ch., Warner D., słowo/obraz terytoria, Gdańsk.

Voegelin Salomé (2016), Historical Interest: a Pragmatic Provocation for a Continuum of Sound [w:] Colloguium: Sound Art and Music, eds. Gardner T., Voegelin S., Zer0 Books, Winchester.

— (2019), The Political Possibility of Sound, Bloomsbury Academic, New York.

Downloads

Published

2021-03-11

How to Cite

Lniak, A. (2021). Onto-aesthetics of Sound and Auditory Culture. Metatheoretical Discourse in Sound Studies. Zagadnienia Rodzajów Literackich The Problems of Literary Genres, 63(4), 27–39. https://doi.org/10.26485/ZRL/2020/63.4/2