Thoughts....On Sonic Art

In a world where visual art takes precedence over the sonic realm it is useful to examine the way painting has remained a powerful tool in enabling one to cut to the essence of what seeing really means.Within the constraints of the frame the artist is able to impose boundaries that emphasis the decisions made over subject matter, subjectivity, emotional response to and representation of, the seen and the way in which it is perceived. Here is where sonic work canbe heard as the natural summit of conceptual art. We hear all the time, every day, but it is only when a snapshot or collage of soundis confined within its own distinct time frame, (the process of recording replacing the painters canvas or the photographers lens)that the real essence of what it is to hear, is revealed. This abstraction of the multitudinous event reconstituted into a singular experience has enabled the conceptual hypothesis that obfuscates the translation of the three dimensional world into a flat two dimensional visual representation to be overcome in Sonic Art that surrounds us. With multi-speaker spatialisation sound can break out of the novelty stereo aspect that like a canvas can reduce its dimensional impact. For Sonic Artists the trained ear is like the visual artists conscious eye, a means of distilling the very heart of our waking experience. If to live is to broaden ones experience then to listen is a way to open up the ear and unblock another channel through which lifecan be revealed.For years many pieces of Sonic Art have been organised likea Classical Performance, with the audience seated in rows armedwith a programme to lead them through the recital. Each pieceis played often from a recording in turn followed by polite applause. This is an anathema that sonic art should rail against.It is as though the classical repertoire of standard compositions by dead composers is something to aim towards, in an attempt at gaining respectability with the vain concept of being taken seriously. This is no more revolutionary than the idea that painting is the highest form of art against which site specific installations andinteractive work is frivolous and meaningless.Sonic art arrived in response to the dead end that music had found itself in when serialism and dissonance were exhausted.Unlike two dimensional visual art confined to the cul-de-sac of gallery walls, and Classical Music's elevated fortress behind the high brow walls of concert halls, Sonic art like conceptual, performance and site specific art responds to it's audiencewhere it finds them. On the beach, in the town centre, in a garden,at places of work and education, in hospitals, or on a mountain.The commonly held view of many art critics is that interactive work can only be experienced once and then becomes repetitive and pointless. This is crass, ignorant and built on the supposition that only a trained eye can unlock the many hidden depths held within the layers of a great painting. The painter's technique, his relationship with the subject, what he is really trying to say. It is as though hundreds of years ago with the development of stable pigments the only language able to convey anything of universal meaning was developed and agreed upon and art had reached it's nadir. Hidden depth and meaning can be imbued in works of all media, and sonic/interactive work can add yet more layers withthe ability to respond to those present long after the artist has left the building. It can really TALK to its audience, it can hold a two way conversation without the need of some Freud obsessed amateur psychologist /art critic gently holding the patron's hand and condescending to their supposedly limited knowledge. Do not get me wrong, to have the privilege of connecting with a great painting and to share that euphoric connection with the ideas, heart and mind of an artist who though not present, is able to communicate with great clarity through their work is not an experience to be easily dismissed. Just do not assume that that samesense of elevation and emotional engagement can only be achieved through a musical or visual connection. Sound, with its multi-dimensional cascades of cadence, vibration and timbre can elicit these same responses if only you open your ears, heart and mind to the possibility.