Christoph Cox
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226543031
- eISBN:
- 9780226543208
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226543208.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Theory, Analysis, Composition
From the invention of the phonograph through contemporary sound art, field recording, and experimental film, artists have become attracted to those domains against which music has always defined ...
More
From the invention of the phonograph through contemporary sound art, field recording, and experimental film, artists have become attracted to those domains against which music has always defined itself: noise, silence, and environmental sound. Christoph Cox argues that these developments in the sonic arts are not only aesthetically but also philosophically significant, revealing sound to be a continuous material flow to which human expressions contribute but which precede and exceed those expressions. Cox shows how, over the past several centuries, philosophers and artists have explored this “sonic flux” and, in the process, contributed to a rethinking of ontology, temporality, and the relationships between sound and image. Through the philosophical analysis of works by John Cage, Maryanne Amacher, Max Neuhaus, Éliane Radigue, and others, Sonic Flux contributes to the development of a materialist metaphysics and challenges the prevailing positions in cultural theory, proposing a realist and materialist aesthetics able to account not only for sonic art but for artistic production in general.Less
From the invention of the phonograph through contemporary sound art, field recording, and experimental film, artists have become attracted to those domains against which music has always defined itself: noise, silence, and environmental sound. Christoph Cox argues that these developments in the sonic arts are not only aesthetically but also philosophically significant, revealing sound to be a continuous material flow to which human expressions contribute but which precede and exceed those expressions. Cox shows how, over the past several centuries, philosophers and artists have explored this “sonic flux” and, in the process, contributed to a rethinking of ontology, temporality, and the relationships between sound and image. Through the philosophical analysis of works by John Cage, Maryanne Amacher, Max Neuhaus, Éliane Radigue, and others, Sonic Flux contributes to the development of a materialist metaphysics and challenges the prevailing positions in cultural theory, proposing a realist and materialist aesthetics able to account not only for sonic art but for artistic production in general.