Open Space 3, 4, & 5 (review)

Douglas Kahn: Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts. Hardcover, 1999, ISBN 0-262-11243-4, 455 pages, illustrated, notes, index; The MIT Press, 5 Cambridge Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142-1493, USA; telephone (800) 356-0343; electronic mail mitpress-orders@mit.edu; World Wide Web mitpress.mit.edu

This book strives to provoke. Its arresting dust jacket, rendered in jangling green and blue, bears the nightmarishly distorted image of a human scream. Should contemporary musicians, particularly those involved with computer technology, expect to find anything inside relevant to their own activities?

The title presents a paradox. How could such disparate notions as "noise," "water," and "meat" have much of anything to do with sophisticated artistic concerns? And the subtitle--A History of Sound in the Arts--seems to presume and promise so much. Is it really possible for a single volume to adequately address such vast implications?

Anyone curious enough to crack the cover of Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts certainly will find an intriguing premise stated at the outset: "Sound saturates the arts of this century . . . None of the arts is entirely mute, many are unusually soundful despite their apparent silence, and the traditionally auditive arts grow to sound quite different when included in an array of auditive practices" (p. 2). Surely this seems reasonable--it actually is quite easy to imagine how other arts might be able to point toward new ways of thinking about sound. But which arts, which practices, and to what end?

A specification of the work's purview offers a compact answer:

The book concentrates on the generation of modernist and postmodernist techniques and tropes among artistic practices and discourses . . . The main ones discussed here are noise, auditive immersion in spatial and psychological domains, inscription and visual sound, the universalism of all sound and panaurality, musicalization of sound, phonographic reproduction and imitation, Cagean silence, nondissipative sounds and voices, fluidity at the nexus of performance and objecthood, William Burroughs' virus, and the bodily utterances of Michael McClure's beast language and Antonin Artaud's screaming. (pp. 2-3)

Thus, much of the content centers on elements of philosophy, aesthetics, and cultural history. Regrettably, however, there is little or no direct discussion of the pioneering technological developments of Leon Theremin, Maurice Martenot, or Robert Moog, or the no less revolutionary artistic contributions of Otto Luening, Vladimir Ussachevsky, or Milton Babbitt. The book's purview essentially ends with the late 1950s and only makes brief references to developments in the early 1960s, so many of this century's most interesting aural achievements are never dealt with.

A later statement of its purpose also clarifies at least part of its intended audience:

The history and theory of the arts are regularly used by artists in developing their own work. . . . [B]y concentrating on the actions and statements of artists within specific conditions, especially in acknowledging the complexities involved and the artistic possibilities that stem from them both then and now, I am attempting to maintain a perspective on art making that might be of use to working and aspiring artists. (p. 14)

Noise, Water, Meat is an interdisciplinary study designed to illuminate novel and provocative ways in which artists incorporated sound and aspects of sound into works created during the first half of the 20th century. In addition to music, examples are drawn from literature, the visual arts, theatre, and film. Indeed, it is less about music, per se, and more about various artistic genres of particular interest to the author. And like any "history," it is opinionated, rather than objective, polemical rather than comprehensive. Readers simply will need to decide whether its contents and attitudes are of any interest to them.

The author, Douglas Kahn, is on the Media Arts faculty at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia. Computer Music Journal readers may be familiar with the volume edited by Mr. Kahn...