A Sound installation is often an interdisciplinary time-based artform and can be seen as a convergence of both sound production and art installation. It is considered an intermedia (mixed-media, multimedia, cross-media) practice, (a concept employed in the mid-sixties by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins to describe the ineffable, often confusing, inter-disciplinary activities that occur between genres that became prevalent in the 1960s) and is often associated with sound art and sound sculpture (a sculpture or any kind of art object that produces sound, or the reverse).
Sound installations are usually time-based and thus able to engage a visitor (or spectator) in the disposition of sounds in relation to a three dimensional or virtual environment over a period of time.
Some of the more familiar Sound Installation practices include:
• site-specific – in dialogue with the surrounding space (environmental art, land art, public sound art). See Synapse Installation by local Sydney artist Mark Brown. The work comprised a site specific sound installation, Industrial exhaust fan mounted in gallery door, paint scrapings, faulty florescent light fitting, public address speakers & temperature / humidity oscillator.
• linear – the development of a sound structure similar to a musical composition. See Scott Horscroft’s 8 Guitars, review by Lawrence English in Cyclic Defrost.
• interactive – incorporating computer, sensors, mechanical and kinetic devices. See Nigel Helyer’s Naughty Apartment (interactive sound sculpture).
• source-specific – using sound sources, such as speakers or musical instruments placed at different spacial points. See work by Sophea Lerner engaged in practice as research on sound in public space and distributed participatory transmission practices.
• body-specific – similar to performance art where someone uses their own body to create the work. See the Sydney Body Art Ride as a local example. Jake Lloyd Jones a Sydney based artist conceived a body art ride where participants are painted to form a living rainbow that rides to the ocean and immerses itself in the waves. The proceeds from the rides support childrens cancer research and the last successful ride this year was on Sunday the 15th of February, 2009.
• immersive – intensive sound spaces that often use immersive audio signal processing technology to heighten the awareness of movement and placement of sound sources. See datsincredible. An interactive installation in which the participant(s) ‘drive’ the musical processes from behind the wheel of a seventies streetfighter style icon… a Datsun motorcar!
Links to Sound installation // Sound sculpture // Sound artists
Nam June Paik – http://www.paikstudios.com/
Harry Parch – http://www.corporeal.com/cm_main.html
Nigel Helyer – http://www.sonicobjects.com/
Gale Priest – http://www.snagglepussy.net/
Colin Black – http://users.tpg.com.au/users/cydonian/c_black.html
Ryoji Ikeda – http://brainwashed.com/ryoji/bio.html
Yuko Mohri – http://www.mohrizm.net/
Stelarc – http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/
Joyce Hinterding – http://www.sunvalleyresearch.com/
Jodi Rose – http://www.singingbridges.net/
Alex Davies – http://schizophonia.com/installation/index.htm
Sean Bridgeman (Clatterbox) – http://www.clatterbox.net.au/
Ross Bencina (AudioMulch) – http://www.audiomulch.com/
Nosie, Water, Meat: A History of sound in the Arts, By Douglas Kahn
Interactive Public sound art: (A case Study. PDF download) David Birchfield, Kelly Phillips, Assegid Kidané, David Lorig
NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) – http://www.nime.org/
IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences) in Tokyo – http://www.iamas.ac.jp/tokyo/index_en.html
Prix Italia (International competition for Radio, Television & Web) – http://www.prixitalia.rai.it/ENG/DefaultENG.aspx
Artspace (Sydney, NSW) – http://artspace.org.au/dontmiss/dontmiss.php
ISEA (Inter-Society for the Electronic Arts) – http://www.isea-web.org/eng/links3.html
IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) – http://www.ircam.fr/?L=1
Art from Japan – http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/cat_art_from_japan.php
STEIM (Center for research & development of instruments & tools for performers in the electronic performance arts) – http://steim.org/steim/index.php
SIGGRAPH (Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Graphics and Interactive Techniques) – http://www.siggraph.org/
Ars Electronica Festival – http://www.aec.at/en/
I-CubeX – Motion sensors for digital media control – http://infusionsystems.com/catalog/index.php
Cycling 74 Tools for new media – http://www.cycling74.com/
ZKM (Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe – http://on1.zkm.de/zkm/e/
Daniel Langlois Foundation – http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/index.php
Immersive sound project – http://www.kunstradio.at/BREGENZ/IS/index-e.html