Topic > Ears Have Walls by Steven Connor - 1324

Introduction: In 'Ears Have Walls: On Hearing Art' (2005) by Steven Connor Connor presents us with the idea that sound art has gone outward or has ability to bring the outside inside. The sound work makes us aware of the continuous emphasis on division and partition that continues to exist even in the most radically modifiable or polymorphic exhibition space, because sound spreads and escapes, like smell. Unlike music, Sound Art does not usually require silence for its proper presentation. Containers of silence called music rooms resonate with the aesthetics and effects on the body of an exhibition space; white walls, floorboards to create optimal acoustics and an ethereal sense of time and space. When presented in an exhibition space, the well-known expansiveness and permeability of sound art can be more articulated. Steven Connor delves into mixing and creating sound using computerization, as well as sound habits; it is immersion, pathos and objectivity. 1st PARA: Connor is concerned with how Sound Art is a vehicle for change in the gallery, particularly how sound can extend beyond the walls of the gallery to ventilate it with the sounds of what lies outside it, or to temporalize the place. Connor talks about the Sonic Boom Exhibition held in London in 2000, which featured 23 sound artists who exhibited at the Hayward Gallery. The show placed emphasis on sculptures or objects that produced sound. David Toop, the curator of the Sonic Boom exhibition, faced "a decidedly suburban noise pollution problem," says Connor. When you enter the exhibition you are immediately overwhelmed by a thick cloud of noises and sounds. How many sound objects can you put in a space? David Toop defends his approach with the help of a w...... middle of paper ......dead with hands slapping him on the head and a scofflaw spitting in his face. The slapping hands are frozen in mid-air and therefore trigger noise-related associations. This association with noise is also manifested in the mocker's spitting and the way he suddenly stops before reaching Christ's halo: to perceive a sound in its reality we need the space of silence, not carnival. Glasmeier believes that this is exactly what John Cage does in 4'33''. There is a suggestion of noise in Cage's work just like in Angelico's. The 4'33'' performer approaches the instrument three times, giving the instrument the possibility of noise without the reality of that noise: the spectator becomes the performer, imagining how that noise can be articulated. It's just like a blank sheet of music that still embodies the music without ever being played; triggers associations with sound.