Art and Technological Sound: The Revival of Experience

Author:

Paul Landon

Cited Authors:
  • Adorno, Theodor - "The Form of the Record" in Broken Music: Artists' Recordworks
  • Armes, Roy - On Video
  • Atlan, Henri - Entre le cristal et la fumée
  • Barthes, Roland - Image, Music, Text
  • Bélisle, Josée - Bill Viola
  • Benjamin, Walter - Illuminations
  • Bergson, Henri - La pensée et le mouvant
  • Bijvoet, Marga - "How Intimate Can Art and Technology Really Be?": A Survey of The Art and Technology Movement of the Sixties
  • Block, Ursula & Glasmeier, Michael - Broken Music: Artists' Recordworks
  • Bürger, Peter - Theory of the Avant-Garde
  • Crimp, Douglas - "On the Museum's Ruins" in The Anti-Aesthetic
  • Crimp, Douglas - "Pictures" in Art after Modernism: Rethinking Representation
  • Doane, Mary Ann - "Ideology and the Practice of Sound Editing and Mixing" in Film Sound: Theory and Practice
Abstract:

This thesis interprets the work of five contemporary artists who combine technologically reproduced sound with visual elements in their production. Installations by Joseph Beuys, Stan Douglas, Joey Morgan, Bill Viola and Michèle Waquant are analyzed. The relationship between art and technology is discussed in the context of the historical avant-garde's attempts to popularize art through technology in the beginning of the twentieth century. Arguments are made to suggest that the multi-media nature of technological art allows its viewers to experience it sensorially. A hypothesis is made stating that this experience is similar to the pre-technological experience of art posited by Walter Benjamin.