The love affair between the museum and the arts of sound. But will it last?

Marina Rosenfeld Sheer Frost Orchestra Tate Modern, 2006 Produced by Electra Photo credit: Frederick Bemas (click on image to enlarge)

Recent institutional engagement with the arts of sound

Visual arts institutions are by no means new to the 'arts of sound'¹, given the confluence and cross-pollination between music, live art and visual art throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Artists' expanded practice from the 1960s onwards has ushered in sound in various guises into arts institutions, a road already paved by the Italian Futurists in the first decade of the twentieth century. Sound has been leaking into museums and galleries through artist/musician collaborations, in the form of soundtracks or as 'noise' that is part and parcel of live art. Whether it rode in on the coat-tails of Warhol's factory, video art, art bands, Fluxus, performance art or simply in the form of artists' ephemera available as commodities (CDs, records, tapes) in museum bookshops, the presence of sound in art institutions and museums is not a new phenomenon. However, until recent years sound in itself has rarely been the focal point of exhibitions. It is only in the past two decades that we have begun to witness the emergence of exhibitions solely devoted to the arts of sound (or the use of sound as a medium), which suggests that visual arts institutions are for the first time in history beginning to engage with sound as an artistic medium per se, as opposed to approaching it as secondary, or as an accompaniment to visual art or moving image.

Sound culture

In his volume Audio Culture - Readings In Modern Music (2004), Christoph Cox refers to the emergence of an audio culture, a culture made up of 'musicians, composers, sound artists, scholars, and listeners attentive to sonic substance, the act of listening and the creative possibilities of sound recording, playback and transmission'². Volumes such as Douglas Kahn's Noise Water Meat, A History of Sound in the Arts which contextualises key sonic moments in art of the twentieth century and Wireless Imagination, (Ed. Douglas Kahn and Gregory Whitehead) a history of radio and sound in the twentieth century have been instrumental in the development of a new awareness of sound culture. More recently a range of independent initiatives both online and across radio waves such as the excellent website UbuWeb (ubu.com), MOMA PS1's website WPS1 (wps1.org), New York City's independent radio station WFMU (wfmu.org) and London Musicians Collective's Resonance FM radio station (resonancefm.com) have made easily available both historical and contemporary sound based artistic outputs. The surge of sound culture anthologies in the recent years including the Auditory Culture Reader, (ed. Michael Bull and Les Back), Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring Of Modern Music (ed. Rob Young), Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music (eds. Chrisoph Cox and Daniel Warner) all point to a new contextualising of sound within the twentieth century. The notion of 'sonic' outputs (as opposed to musical or visual) is even at home in advertising, with Microsoft's recent advertising campaign for Windows XP for which the slogan reads 'Start something sonic'. The ease of use of technological tools to create and record sound and the introduction of community websites which enable easy distribution of sonic content has brought a new day-to-day familiarity with the production and distribution of sound based material, opening up new trajectories for getting sound based work out into the world.

Sound culture in museums

Manifestations of audio culture are gradually permeating museums, galleries and kunsthalles - institutions historically governed by visual culture and erected to preserve traditional artistic outputs that have by and large taken the form of painting and sculpture. This essay concerns itself with the meeting point between the 'audio culture' and visual arts institutions, aiming to examine points at which 'sonic substance' becomes significant for visual arts institutions, ways in which this assimilation is taking place and ruptures that emerge along the way.

In 2000 alone institutions in the UK (Audible Light, Modern Art Oxford and Sonic Boom, Hayward Gallery, London), Japan (Sound Art - Sound As Media, NTT: ICC Tokyo), and the US (Bed Of Sound, PS1, New York), staged several large scale exhibitions exclusively devoted to the arts of sound. Following in the lead of the above initiatives, museums and galleries since have seen a surge of exhibitions devoted to sound, often brought on board by outside curators. In 2002 Centre Pompidou initiated and toured a major exhibition titled Sonic Process; A New Geography Of Sound, whilst in the UK, Bristol's Arnolfini Gallery brought on board curator, musician and author David Toop to curate Playing John Cage (2005). At the same time in London, Electra's³ own Her Noise exhibition took place at South London Gallery with offshoots at the Tate Modern and Goethe Institute. Whilst exhibitions like these, along with a myriad of performance events and concerts which are now regularly held in museums and galleries, mark a significant move towards institutional engagement with this area of artistic production, they do not automatically guarantee a profound and long lasting institutional support (which would manifest itself through producing, commissioning or collecting) for artists working in the field. Whilst the enthusiasm for and openness towards sonic work by arts institutions cannot be disputed, the institutional relationship to sound remains complex one still in its nascent stages.

On the one hand, initiatives such as WPS1 internet radio station (described in it's mission statement as 'the world's first internet art radio station' and 'a live audio museum in cyberspace') initiated by PS1 in New York in 2003 (with sponsorship from Bloomberg), and the Variable Media Network initiative (variablemedia.net) pioneered by the Guggenheim Museum, Franklin Furnace⁴, (franklinfurnace.org) Rhizome.org⁵ (rhizome.org) and other bodies, and aimed at researching the preservation of artworks which are made in ephemeral formats) suggest a commitment to carving out new spaces for sonic work. On the other hand, a search through the Tate Collections database reveals that the collection (currently consisting of over 65,000 works) currently contains less than half a dozen of sound based works (Janet Cardiff's 'Forty Part Motet' (2001), Angus Fairhurst's 'Gallery Connections' (1991-1996) and Trisha Donnelly's 'Untitled' (2003)) - a telling statistic, which suggests that the engagement with this particular ephemeral medium has not yet found a more profound and long lasting path in to the museum. The mission of the Tate Collection reads: 'As the national collection of British art from 1500 and of international modern and contemporary art from 1900, Tate's art collection embraces all media, from painting, sculpture, drawing, and prints to photography, film, video, installations and performance.' Evidently sound based practice falls within installation or performance, as this is where the few sound based works that the Tate has acquired are situated.

Janet cardiff Forty-Part Motet, 2001 (British Edition) Lent by Pamela and Richard Kramlich and the American Fund for the Tate Gallery fractional and promised gift, 2000 (click on image to enlarge)

Suggested models for ways in which the arts of sound are making their way into the visual arts establishment

In order to examine the tensions in the contemporary relationship between sound based work and institutional frameworks, here I attempt to identify a number of models in which visual arts institutions currently tend to engage with the arts of sound. Even though the models listed below are increasing the visibility and profile of sound based practice, a closer analysis reveals that most of them are in fact creating a platform for a superficial engagement, which is unlikely to result in a deeper integration of the arts of sound into museums in the long run. The question remains - how much of the work that finds its way into the museum will become an integral part of its legacy, through inclusion in permanent collections, the creation of substantial catalogues making the work available for scholarly study in the future.

1. Musician/sound artist as entertainer at an exhibition opening or party or at special events in order to 'animate' object based works.

Established sound artists and musicians are regularly invited to DJ at openings or provide 'soundscapes' for parties or openings, yet it is ludicrous to imagine the exact opposite situation - whereby a painter would be asked to provide paintings as 'wallpaper' for somebody's concert. This emerges from the most traditional model in which museums have been known to work with music whereby modern composition/improvised music evenings are held, while audiences look around the show, wine glass in hand. These may be open to the general public, or maybe events which cater specially to members or 'friends' or donors. In any instance, the focus is on the work in the exhibition while the music serves as a way to enhance the evening.

A more contemporary version of this model can be seen at major biennials which are known for improving the glamour factor by inviting musicians and sound artists to provide entertainment at the opening.

A recent example may include the commissioning of established artist Stehpen Vitiello to provide a sound based environment for the exclusive party marking the launch of Tate's UBS sponsored re-hang of the collection. Despite the fact that Vitiello created an impressive installation in Tate Modern's Turbine Hall, the viewing of the work was restricted to the invite only party audience and never publicised or shown to the public.

2. Musician/artist collaborations in exhibitions.

This model allows for a deeper engagement with the arts of sound, although it still demonstrates a lack of confidence in bringing in sound based work on the part of the institution. An example of this model may be the exhibition Sonic Process; A New Geography Of Sound curated by Christine Van Assche of the Pompidou Centre (2000), in which musicians and sound artists were paired together with visual artists and commissioned to create new installation works. Collaborations included Mike Kelley and Scanner; Richard Dorfmeister/Rupert Huber/Gabriel Orozco, amongst others. Although this exhibition allowed for commissioning new work, its core curatorial strategy was to crate 'museum friendly' hybrid works, incorporating, in most cases, moving image - a decision that felt like a safety mechanism in case the actual focus of the show proved to be too unpalatable for visitor tastes. As a result, although the exhibition claimed to explore the new geographies of electronic music, it ultimately stayed away from truly welcoming these communities into the museum, resulting in a fairly conventional exhibition dominated by video installations.

Christian Marclay Sounds of Christmas People Like Us performing inside the Sounds of Christmas installation Tate Modern, 2006 Produced by Electra Image courtesy of Electra (click on image to enlarge)

3. Performance or education departments bringing in sound practice into the building - music as a way 'reaching out to new audiences'.

Often the smoothest in-roads into museums for less established practices are via the education departments or via performance/live art initiatives, which often have more freedom as they are less closely scrutinised by the institutional agenda, pressures and budgets, given their 'lower ranking' on the institutional hierarchies. Admittedly getting institutional commitment for a one day event is always likely to prove much easier than for a 6-8 week installation. Examples of these may include: Serpentine Gallery's recent sound events, 'Late at Tate' series at Tate Britain, Whitechapel's 'Adventures in Music'. In my own experience of collaborations with a range of institutions through Electra, performance and education curators have often been our most sympathetic partners in bringing sound based work into museums and galleries. Electra's own recent projects such as Christian Marclay's 'Sounds Of Christmas' at Tate Modern (2004), Marina Rosenfeld's 'Emotional Orchestra' (2005) and 'Sheer Frost Orchestra' (2006) at Tate Modern have all been brought into the institution in this way.

Marina Rosenfeld Sheer Frost Orchestra Tate Modern, 2006 Produced by Electra Photo credit: Frederick Bemas (click on image to enlarge)

4. Rock and art: shows and 'art bands'.

Exhibitions which explore the cross pollination between music and art have been very popular over the past decade (these shows often feature rock memorabilia, guitars etc or draw on the 'cool' factor of the musicians). Examples would include MOMA PS1's recent exhibition Music Is A Better Noise (2006), the forthcoming Museum Of Modern Art Chicago exhibition Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967 curated by Dominic Molon.

5. The visual artist who is also a musician and includes music or sound in his/her museum shows.

Another way in which the arts of sound find themselves in the museum is through exhibitions of household name artists who also happen to be musicians or heavily engaged in sound practice. Perhaps making for the most natural entry into museum spaces, these works will simply be included in retrospectives and solo exhibitions, receiving equal treatment as all other works by the artist. Examples may include artists such as Rodney Graham, Martin Creed, Christian Marclay, Janet Cardiff and numerous others.

6. Sound art exhibitions.

Some of the most prominent exhibitions showcasing sound based work over the past decade have been those that engage with the arts of sound as a genre - these are often the more formal outputs in which they contextualise the work within the narrower definitions of 'sound art' and concern themselves with properties and relationships between sound, space, and architecture and light. The exhibition Frequencies [Hz] (2002) held at Frankfurt's Schirn Kunsthalle could be cited as one of the best examples. Although exhibitions such as this tend to be the best environments to show sonic work, as they guarantee a relatively high level of commitment from the institution (resulting in considerable technical and financial resources being put towards installation and the needs of the work), the flip side often tends to be that such exhibitions can marginalise the work, by contextualising it as 'sound art' - perhaps an artform that exists within its own niche. For those not actively interested in 'sound art' as a genre, there would be little reason to visit such a show. In my own experience of approaching institutions about Electra's projects, I have come across responses such as 'But we already did a sound art show a few years ago' - meaning this area of practice was 'ticked off' the institutional agenda for a little while.

7. Sound and vision - shows about the senses - synaesthesia.

A number of exhibitions that investigated sound as material in recent years have been centred around the notion of synaesthesia - a neurological condition in which two or more bodily senses are coupled. In the cases of these exhibitions, the focus was the relationship between sound and image. Such exhibitions included What Sound Does A Colour Make (exploring the fusion of vision and sound in electronic media) - a travelling exhibition organized by the Independent Curators International (iCI), New York, Visual Music (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., and The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.), Son Et Lumieres at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, 2004-2005.

8. New commissions and new galleries.

It has been rare for museums to commission and collect sound based work, for a range of reasons which (depending on the work) include difficulty in displaying the works in the existing space, accessibility (sound based work is often deemed 'difficult' by institutions pressured by maximising visitor figures and showing accessible work), investment in equipment, sound proofing etc. However, some ambitious examples might include works such as Tate Modern's recent Turbine Hall installation 'Raw Materials' by Bruce Nauman followed by Bill Fontana's 'Harmonic Bridge' (which was brought to the Tate by an external partner - Platform For Art). It is worth noting, however, that neither of these two works now appear to now be part of the Tate Collection, which somewhat undermines the importance given to them by the institution.

Examples of more committed engagement might include MaSS MOCA (the Massachussetts Museum Of Modern Art in North Adams, MA, US) which has several permanent sound works which it has commissioned - Bruce Odland & Sam Auinger's 'Harmonic Bridge', Walter Fandrich's 'Music for a Quarry' and Christina Kubisch's 'Clocktower Project'. These projects continue to be displayed on the museum's website as 'current exhibitions' and are contextualized as a permanent part of the museum's programme. Similarly, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield, CT, US) is said to have included a sound gallery in its new building which opened in 2004 thus showing a long term commitment to showing this type of work, whilst the Milwakee Art Museum (Milwakee, WI, US) has reinstalled its contemporary galleries last December to include various sound works acquired over the past three decades.

Christina Kubisch Clocktower Project Commissioned by Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA, US Image courtesy of Mass MoCA (click on image to enlarge)

The use of 'sonic substance' as the material art is made from is not new. It is called music and it has been with us for centuries, performed in music halls, opera houses, street festivals and everywhere in between. In his volume Noise, The Political Economy Of Music French economist Jacques Attali traces the social role of music and musicians through history within the wider proposal of listening to our society (as opposed to looking upon the world). For Attali music, or 'noise of a society' is both a mirror and prophecy of that society. Attali suggests that if we listen to the sounds of society (its art, festivals etc) we will understand better the 'folly of men'⁶ and be able to see where our society is going. For Attali the world is 'for hearing... it is not legible, but audible'.⁷ Attali's notion that our musical process of structuring noise is also our political process of structuring community may at times oversimplify, but his text does encourage a deeper examination of the relationships between society and its sounds. So if we are witnessing a time when our museums are engaging with the noises of society in a more decisive manner than ever before, this may be pointing to a more profound cultural shift. In other words, when sound begins to travel around spaces originally designed to display and preserve art objects such as paintings and sculptures, the very nature of the institutions in question - their role, economic models, exhibition and preservaton strategies - must be re-examined with a view to accommodating for these new types of work. Not only must we then examine the actual sounds of our society but the sounds in relation to where they are ending up and in what form.

Embracing sound based practice in a profound way no doubt presents a complex task for any institution, although not insurmountable if the works are treated with as much commitment as any other artwork. As the above examples illustrate, any visual arts institution that wishes to truly engage with such practices needs to acknowledge that to commission, exhibit and collect sound based work can require substantial time, financial and at times even physical commitment - as sometimes these works may require an architectural adjustment to the space.

Evidently the notion of 'audio culture' and its importance in contemporary artistic production remains something that museums and galleries have for sometime now been grappling with. But as of yet, examples of a profound engagement with such forms are far and few between. Aforementioned institutions such as MASS MoCA with it's series of commissioned sound based works and initiatives where spaces are built specifically to accommodate sound based work provide a good examples of a thoroughly considered engagement with the arts of sound.

The key question is whether or not this particular strand of practice is indeed significant enough to merit the commitment and investment on the part of visual arts institutions. Do the arts of sound 'belong' in a museum, or are they better off scattered across a range of sites: public sites, performance halls, independent initiatives and DIY galleries, to name but a few. Do these practices need to be embraced by museums as a part and parcel of contemporary practice that should be collected, written about and displayed?

Just like there is no single way to define 'the arts of sound', there is no single way to resolve the ideal relationship between museums and diverse sonic practices. Perhaps one can only conclude that institutional engagement with audio culture at large requires a shift of gear and a willingness to commit resources and take risks.

From the experience of working collaboratively with a range of institutions on a variety of sound based projects, I believe that the deciding factor in the success of any project is the level of institutional commitment to a particular artist and a particular piece of work, and that failure to deliver successful high profile sound based projects in visual arts institutions cannot be attributed to an intrinsic difficulty of presenting sound based work, but to the lack of resources, time or commitment invested by the institution or the commissioner into the project. Institutional engagement, however ultimately reflects the value ascribed to the work within the institution, which brings us to the core issue of where the value of any work of art lies, and according to what criteria institutions at any given time assign that value.

Bibliography:

Attali, Jacques, (1977), Noise: The Political Economy Of Music. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.
Bull, Michael & Back, Les, (2003), The Auditory Culture Reader. Berg, Oxford and New York.
Cage, John, (1973), Silence: Lectures And Writings. Marion Boyars, London.
Cox, Christoph (ed), (2004), Audio Culture: Readings In Modern Music. Continuum Books, London, New York.
Kahn, Douglas, (1999). Noise, Water, Meat: A History Of Sound In The Arts. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, London.
Kahn, Douglas, & Whitehead, Gregory (eds), (1994), Wireless Imagination: Sound, Radio & The Avant Garde. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass, London.
Labelle, Brandon, (2004), Site Specific Sound. Errant Bodies/Selektion, California, Frankfurt.
Toop, David, (1995), Ocean Of Sound, Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. Serpents Tail, London.
Toop, David, (2004), Haunted Weather: Music, Silence And Memory. Serpents Tail, London.
Young, Rob (ed), (2002), Undercurrents: The Hidden Wiring Of Modern Music. Continuum Books, London, New York.

Notes:

1. The 'arts of sound' is a term introduced by Douglas Kahn to describe practice that often gets referred to as 'sound art'. The term 'the arts of sound' at this stage seems to me to be the only acceptable term for the wide spectrum of artistic practice that is being discussed here.
2. Cox Christoph, (2004) Audio Culture, Readings in Modern Music, 'Music and the New Audio Culture', introduction xiii, Continuum Press.
3. Electra is a London based contemporary art agency (headed by the author of this text) which specialises in commissioning, producing and exhibiting art projects across disciplines, presenting them within the UK and internationally. Much of Electra's work involves working with the arts of sound.
4. Franklin Furnace Archive, Inc. was founded in 1976 to serve artists who choose publishing as a democratic artistic medium and who were not being supported by existing artistic organisations.
5. Rhizome.org is a nonprofit organisation that was founded in 1996 to provide an online platform for the global new media art community.
6. Attali, Jacques, (1977), Noise: The Political Economy Of Music. University Of Minnesota Press, USA, Chapter 1, p 3.
7. ibid, Chapter 1, p 3.

Lina Dzuverovic, 2007