Universidad Nacional De Quilmes

Master in Sound Art

Sound art is a recent field in the history of world artistic creation. The concept of “sound art” encompasses areas of creation that go beyond the traditions of musical practice, since it is about productions that include the possibility of working without restrictions with all available sound materials (not only with those usually associated with to the music). In the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, a phenomenon of expansion and interrelation between various creative and artistic fields and disciplines in relation to music and sound is observed. Some of these disciplines are: formats and supports typical of the visual arts such as sculpture and installation; interactive art; the invention and construction of new musical instruments (experimental luthería); a diversity of performance practices; among other.

Various researchers coincide in affirming that sound art, a field in constant growth and expansion, constitutes an axis of central relevance of the artistic creation of our time. Seth Kim-Cohen (2009) explains that sound art throughout the 20th century acquired its own identity as an “expanded sonic field”, characterizing it as “non-cochlear” art (establishing an analogy with the concept of “non-retinal art” by M . Duchamp), in the sense of proposing various alternatives to both traditional musical arts and traditional listening practices. López Cano, for his part, explains that "the concept of sound art does not refer to a specific technique, artistic genre or practice, but to a transdisciplinary domain where specialists from extremely different fields, disciplines and artistic traditions concur (...) in the domain, diverse artistic behaviors originating from diverse traditions of contemporary and avant-garde art are mutually integrated, discussed and contaminated ". Thus, he concludes that sound art "is integrated into contemporary art paradigms while reformulating them and building its own" (López Cano, 2013).