Sound art

Sound art is art about sound that uses sound both as its medium and as its object of inquiry. Unlike music, which is subordinated to melody, rhythm and harmony within a temporal composition, sound art focuses on the physical and perceptual nature of sound itself: its timbre, spatiality, silence, noise and the acoustic properties of an environment. Works often take the form of sound installations, in which sound unfolds within a specific space, and the viewer-listener, by moving through it, becomes a participant in the sound field. The roots of the field lie in the Futurists' experiments with the "art of noises," in the work of John Cage, who radically rethought silence and chance, and in the activity of Fluxus and early electronic music. Artists such as Max Neuhaus (credited with the very term "sound installation"), Bill Fontana and Christina Kubisch created spaces where sound becomes a sculptural and spatial experience. Sound art is closely linked with new media, performance and Conceptualism, and its works are shown in galleries, museums and public space. Ukrainian artists also work in this field, combining sound practices with the exploration of memory, landscape and the urban environment.