The Domestic Soundscape and beyond… presenting everyday sounds to audiences
This PhD submission contains a select portfolio of practical works that have been created in answer to my research questions. This Thesis contextualises those works in a theoretical framework, linking them explicitly to the academic discourses with which they are inexorably bound. The introduction of this Thesis examines the research context in which research questions were formed. Evaluating a complicated previous project and describing a seminal, difficult encounter with the realm of sound art, this section explores some of the problems involved with presenting everyday sounds to audiences and proposes that these problems might in part be solved by forming new presentational strategies. Problems discussed include the difficulty of presenting everyday sounds to audiences who do not have access to the same information and knowledge that the work’s creator(s) have; presenting everyday sounds to audiences in conditions which offer limited scope for interaction and participation; and presenting everyday sounds to audiences which rely specifically on the primacy of those sounds alone to communicate a message to listeners. The questions that are formed in order to begin solving these problems include looking to feminist art practices of the 1960s/70s for inspiration regarding how theories concerning the value of everyday sounds might be practically applied to artmaking in domestic contexts; exploring ethnographic or Anthropological models to see how everyday sounds might be presented to audiences through investigative, participatory formats; investigating the possibilities for subverting or expanding the frameworks through which sound art is typically disseminated so that that territory might better accommodate the specific resonances and associations of everyday sounds; and proposing Internet-based strategies for presenting everyday sounds to audiences which are inherently intertextual, participatory, and social. The first Chapter of this Thesis examines how the home might be re-envisioned as a sound art site and brings the theories of John Cage together with feminist art thought to reinvent that space as a specifically sonic site. In the second Chapter, investigative anthropological approaches to the everyday are the focus of the discussion. This Chapter explores the context of radio as an inherently domestic medium, and discusses how it might be used as such for the presentation of everyday sounds to audiences. In the third Chapter of this thesis, I position my research in relation to the established tenets of contemporary sound art. Exploring ideas of subversion and critique, this Chapter looks at the proposed revisions to those established tenets which I have offered throughout my research. The final Chapter explores how I have used the Internet both in specific instances and more generally within my practice, connecting my research with emergent recording technologies and Internet platforms which allow everyday sounds to be socially shared. In the conclusion, I discuss what the key findings of exploring these questions have been.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations