Over the last few decades, traditional music performance has taken many different turns. The concert hall is no longer the only elected spot for musical endeavours and it often trades places with museums, alternative locations and public space. These new presentation sites have had an influence on the perception, form and shape of the performance. The beginning and end of a performance are no longer always fixed.

Composers have started to experiment with the duration and form of a concert. These experiments have had an influence on the whole ritual of attending a concert. Often it is the spectator who decides when and how long they are present at the show. Because of the changing length and form of the presentation, performers have also diversified. Human performers are sometimes replaced by automatons, electronics, animals or environmental factors.

The altered performance setting, the changing role of the audience, the dispensable performers and the widespread availability of technological tools have led to the infiltration of characteristics of other art forms in music. Various intermediate art forms  have come into being. Sound art is one of those intermediate forms, a hybrid of visual arts and music.

More often than not, it is no longer on the concert stage but in those intermediate art forms that experiment and innovation can be found nowadays. The majority of performances of classical, jazz as well as pop music rely on compositions that have been performed before. In pop music new tracks are often first recorded and released on CD, before they are brought before a live audience. The concert programme as well as the performed compositions of classical performances can frequently be consulted beforehand. The public knows what to expect and is no longer surprised.

An art form of which its visual as well as its musical representation are free of conventions, allows artists to fully focus on experiment. The alternative locations such as public space, the employment of new techniques and technologies and the regular use of fundamental natural phenomena contribute to the potential astonishment of the audience.

My research project Sounding sound art focuses on this young trend in art. Although sound art is not a new art form and builds further on precursors as the ancient water organs and wind harps, it is only recently that it has become a viable field in the world of art. The outburst of high profile exhibitions since the 1970s (Happy New Ears, 2007) has familiarized the term sound art, but it has also created a lot of confusion as to what is actually referred to. Experimental music, sound installations, performances, radio broadcasts, visual installations, field recordings, graphical scores, experimental instruments, technological demonstrations, kinetic sculptures, sound sculptures and so on, have all been presented under the denominator sound art (Maes, 2008). Sound art seems to be a trend in art which can include anything which produces sound or, in some cases, things which do not. Marking the borders of my research also involved marking the borders of sound art. The answer to the simple question ‘What is sound art?’ is more complicated than one imagines at first sight. The first problem already arises with the designation of this trend in art. In literature we can find various designations which often also have a different inherent meaning. Even terms that at first sight seem to be exact translations of one another have a different connotation. The term sound art often remains very vague, whereas Klangkunst is generally used more strictly. Klangkunst developed within the academic field of musicology and is oriented at the relation between sound and space, whilst the term sound art is used to appoint a wider variety of artistic expressions, often including field recordings and electronic compositions. (Engstrom and Stjerna, 2009)

Sound art can adopt very different visual and sonic forms. Some works produce sounds over 100 dB, while others make nearly inaudible sounds and still others do not create sound at all as their operation is based on the reflection of sounds from external sources such as the audience or the environment. Not only the amplitude, but also the timbre and frequency of the sounds utilized is very diverse. While most sound works remain within the range of human hearing (20 – 20000 Hz), other works explore the borders of the humanly audible, either above (ultrasound) or below (infrasound) the audible range.

The visual appearance of sound art is as varied as its audible manifestation. Every sound work has a material part joined to the work although these material parts are not always visible. Some artists hide the sound producing elements so that the only visual manifestation of the work is represented by its location. In other works the sound producing elements are arranged in such a way that they become visual elements. Some artists take it one step further and add external visual elements to the work that have nothing to do with the reproduction of sound.

In my research I attempt to detect what these very diverse works have in common and how they stand out from other, related art forms such as experimental instrument building and visual installations that produce sound. The distinction between sound art and related art forms is not always straightforward as some works can combine qualities of several artistic trends. I do not only investigate how sound art differs from other art forms but also what distinguishes sound art from setups in science museums and commercial applications.

To find these shared qualities and to mark the borders with other art forms, I have developed an analysis tool based on twelve parameters: perception (if the audience proceeds in the work and is part of the work or if the audience and the art work are separated from each other), space (if a complete space is treated as one situation that can be entered by the spectator), open form (if the art work has a clear-cut beginning and ending), variability (if the work is completely fixed or if it has a degree of variability), interaction (if essential qualities of the work, the course of the work and the perception of the visitor depend on the acts of that same visitor or on occurrences in the surroundings), organisation of sound (if chance is used consciously as a selection mechanism in a collection of possibilities or as aesthetic), visual component (if the work has a visual component and if this visual component takes shape as a location, as sound producing elements or as external visual elements that are added to the work), implementation of new techniques and technologies (if the work makes use of new techniques and technologies), endurance (if and in what way the work is durable), narrativity (if the work has a certain narrativity), performer (if the work makes use of performers, guides or attendants or if no one besides the visitor is present) and, place of presentation (where the work is shown). Through analysing many art works the area where sound art is located can be isolated and a distinction between sound installations and sound sculptures can be made.

In my own work I want primarily to arouse astonishment. I try to achieve this by presenting works in locations where an audience would not immediately expect them (public space (3times4)), through implementing alternative ways to convey sound (via a web of tubes and horns a singer could acoustically distribute sound above the heads of the audience (O_Rex)), through utilizing new manners to produce sound (falling water drops on very thin glass plates mounted on stainless steel staves (Ijspaleis)) or through providing a different experience than expected (the frightening medical aura vs. the rather relaxing experience (Oorwonde)). I have created several works that balance on the border between sound art and other art forms. The problems that I have encountered in developing my analysis tool are empirically researched and reflected on in my artistic practice. In turn my artistic practice helps me to test my analysis tool, through practical experience.

3times4 is an interactive work that converts movement into sound and image in real-time and reproduces this on the world-wide web as well as at the physical location where the webcam was setup. It explores whether sound art should be linked to a physical location or whether this can be omitted.

O_Rex, created in cooperation with the multimedia theatre group Crew, employed alternative techniques to convey sound and experimented with the relationship between audience and performers and with the scheduled starting time of a performance. The sounds could be heard, for example, by means of motor-driven horn robots and a web of horns that was hung above the heads of the audience.

Up & Down de Vliet, a collaboration with Dutch artist Nico Parlevliet, finds itself at the intersection of sound art and video art. The split-screen video, based on images from a lock, was made by Parlevliet while the sounds were created by myself. The work was presented in a centre for visual arts.

Ijspaleis (in development), a work constructed from several amorphous ice sculptures and glass plates with a thickness between 1 and 2.5 mm, investigates how a sound sculpture relates to a sound installation.

Oorwonde balances on the border between sound art and performance. It is an interactive audio operating table upon which visitors give themselves over to aural surgery, hearing and feeling the soundtrack of a fictitious operation.

The concept and construction of Oorwonde as well as its related practices are discussed in detail in further weaves of this exposition.