Sound Art or Art of Listening?
Since its appearance in the early 1980s, the notion of “sound art” has struggled to find a stable definition. The vagueness of this term has not prevented it from often being used in the visual arts, where it highlights the dominant role of sound in the creation of certain works of art. This article addresses the inherent issues surrounding this notion by looking at two major exhibitions associated with the emergence of the term “sound art”: Für Augen und Ohren: Objekte, Installationen, Performance [Berlin] and Écouter par les yeux: objets et environnements sonores [Paris]. My focus is on the discussions that followed these exhibitions, wherein it became possible to move beyond sound objects and into the realm of different ways of listening, within the visual arts themselves. This leads me to gauge the theoretical and practical effects of this paradigm shift, and to look at its aesthetic and political consequences. From this standpoint, it is important to open this inquiry to include the history of sound techniques, studied notably in the field of Sound Studies, as well as the relationships between listening and action, which has been analyzed in ethology.