For an introduction to Russolo’s concepts of noise, I have turned to musician and composer David Toop, writing in Tate etc:

“Almost 100 years ago, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, the Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo proposed the idea that urban and industrial sounds, including the noises of modern warfare, were a new and enthralling source of musical material. Their nature was unprecedented – their intensity, volume, texture and shape – and so musical history should come to an end. The slow evolution of musical language had suffered a massive stroke, to be replaced by a vigorously healthy art of noises.”

It’s a century since Russolo wrote it, and more than 50 years since John Cage questioned the fundamental difference between music and noise, but but for most, the art of noise is still “a puzzle with no satisfactory solution” [Toop, ibid].

Reading the Art of Noises manifesto by Luigi Russolo, I am aware of the fickle and contradictory nature of hindsight. Reading this letter, written shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, is like reading a palimpsest upon which the history of noise art, sound art, musique concrete, phonology, plunderphonics, electronica, acousmatica – whatever term you’d apply to your own niche interest within the radicalisation of listening habits from the mainstream to the unknown, the classical to the experimental – of a hundred years has been written.

It is an illuminating and illusory, concise and confrontational articulation of the directional shift in music making, sound accretion, instrumental innovation in the mechanised world; from harmony to dissonance, and ultimately the breakdown of music into noise, to be mirrored by the shift from instrument to mechanical tone, and it could have been written yesterday, or in the ‘eighties, the ‘sixties, the ‘thirties, even. It predates Cage, Varèse and magnetic tape, yet true to Futurist form, its radicalism is in the pronouncement that noise can dominate music, much as industrial noise has come to dominate the landscape. Man conquers nature, and the authoritarian tone of the Fascist politics of Italian Futurism is unmistakable even in the championing of noise against the rigid structures of established music.

The world post-mechanical reproduction has altered sound and how we listen as much as it has altered visual media and how we see. This document sets out the ambitions and failures of a manifesto for listening change in as insightful a way as one could hope for from a man with no formal musical training, no knowledge of instruments, an intense distrust of ‘pure sounds’ and desire to hear the noise of the battlefield usurp the harmony of the orchestra.

Ultimately, his manifesto sees the Futurist movement in noise art borne out by musicians conducting a heartfelt study of noises, committing such noises to memory – now recorded – and composing with noise as source, yet not quite in the manner Russolo predicted;

“After being conquered by Futurist eyes our multiplied sensibilities will at last hear with Futurist ears. In this way the motors and machines of our industrial cities will one day be consciously attuned, so that every factory will be transformed into an intoxicating orchestra of noises.”.

Whilst the post-industrialisation of global economic centres (the centres of art markets, and we’re to believe, art-making) has put paid to this ambition, the increased influence of noise art, coupled with urban renewal, has led to an audibility, and visibility of experimental sound in our cities. The shift from industry to culture as signifier of urban capital has brought with it the transformation of sites such as Bankside power station, the Baltic flour mill, and Liverpool’s Dockside developments into major contemporary art spaces, and the Turbine Hall, in exhibitions by the like of Bruce Nauman, can once again manifest the sound of industrial urbanism, bringing noise art home to the factory. We may not see with Futurist eyes the beauty of violence in war, but we might be beginning to hear art with Futurist ears.

Looking into Futurist Noise Art led me to trace a small trail – a jigsaw puzzle of ill-fitting parts – through sound and its heightened sensibilities, which I invite you to explore here.

Russolo proposes radically new ways of structuring sound, explored by musicians such as Varèse, Cage [2, 3], Stockhausen, and the proponents of Musique Concrete and Sound Art.

A talk by Douglas Kahn, entitled “Cage & Phonography” [below], and an article exploring the impact of phonography and its application in art.

‘Cage at Wesleyan’ Symposium, Middletown, Conn. 27 February 1988
the means of recording sound – a critique of sound,  Varèse and Cage from outwith music, outwith aesthetics.

The impact of noise and other stimuli on the inhabitants of the city is articulated in terms of anxieties and societal change by theoretician Georg Simmel, in his seminal essay ‘The Metropolis and Mental Life’.

The autistic spectrum of auditory disorders renders 90% of those with autistic characteristics ‘hypersensitive‘ to auditory stimuli, many perceiving all sound without selection, unable to filter the important auditory signals from the irrelevant. Acute sonic perception, hearing every noise for what it is, registered without discrimination – an ideal of sorts in Futurist noise – leads to an inability to cope with the modern urban environment and its incessant stimuli.

The figure of the flaneur enters societal discourse, and his modern counterpart is the citizen sporting headphones – the ipod* user – within, and distinct from the crowd.
*already having supplanted its forebear, the Walkman, by providing digital storage for near-endless continuous play.

The city structure as source of ‘industrial’ soundscape inspires visual artists such as Dadaists, Assemblage and Pop art, Kinetic artists such as Jean Tinguely, and sound artists such as David Cunningham and Christian Marclay.

Films such as Godard‘s Nouvelle Vague, Wenders’ Alice in The Cities, Godfrey Reggio’s Qatsi trilogy make use of experimental and noise music as soundtracks to visual poems on urbanity. One scene in Delicatessen (dir. Jeunet/Caro), contrived compared to these realists, nevertheless makes plain the link between urban dwelling and concrete noise art.

The literary sphere of Georges Perec’s ‘Life: A User’s Manual‘ [Time Magazine review] allows the reader a lingering view on tenement dwelling in much the same way Jeunet and Caro encourage the viewer to eavesdrop – with each chapter a room, each plotline an apartment in this great Parisian building framing the pieces of the puzzle that create the work. Urban life, as much as sound, is shown to be a jigsaw requiring sorting, the catalyst in this case is mortality – a struggle towards achieving our goals in life, and the mystery left behind in death.

Noise art, in its explosive, anti-form, hidden and recollected nature, could be seen to explore the abject in sound – the aesthetic of noise is death and memory, with rhythm bringing sex to the mix (as witnessed in Delicatessen). Here’s an essay on contemporary musicians that delve into the abject, the excreted and sublime aesthetics of noise, and a timeline of noise music.

Finally, two great experimental music blogs for those interested in hearing more, and an essay on noise as critique…

http://continuo.wordpress.com/

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Mix-Blog: A bit like a mix-tape but with blogs instead. Read more from the series here.

This blog presents a direct challenge to the visual artists, designers, architects, town planners and politicians to open your ears! We fight for a shift in thinking – away from dominant visual design world to one where the practise of music and sound design is elevated to an equal footing. The first post below explores the current state of our soundscape and the following posts will investigate theories of noise, experimental soundscapes and music as used within design.

It’s written by Brian, manging director of music design company Open Ear

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OUT OF TUNE: The urban crescendo, deafening spaces and noise, noise, noise!

“ Modern man is beginning to inhabit a world with an acoustic environment radically different from any he has previously known.

 Noise pollution is now a world problem.

 The world soundscape has reached an apex of vulgarity in our time….

 Universal deafness is the ultimate consequence.”

R. Murray Schafer, The Soundscape, 1977.

Ecologist R Murray Shafer, head of the World Soundscape Project, wrote the book “The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World”in 1977 to document many years spent measuring increasing sound levels in Western cities. He concluded that a combination of man-made factors contribute to the continuous and seemingly exponential rise in noise level in our urban areas. Shafer warns that the eventual outcome will be “universal deafness” for us all and predicts the sound levels will continue to rise to the increasing detriment of our health unless we change our ways with tighter regulation, better education and a process of ‘ear cleaning’.

Over 30 years on, Shafer’s apocalyptic warning seems to be more relevant that ever. Our cities have got louder. We continue to create noise in any way we can – new technologies, increased traffic, more people and more industry adds to the cacophony. Looking a little deeper, you can begin to see the reasons why – has our politicians, town planners, architects and design community in general neglected the sense of hearing?! Architectural spaces are filled with hard and reverberant surfaces because they ‘look nice’. Bars, restaurants and shops drown out our conversations with badly selected generic pop music. Websites batter you with intrusive soundtracks and hidden mute buttons. Mobile phones provide the unwanted soundtrack to our public transport journeys. The list goes on…

Why do we place such little importance on our city soundscapes and sound of the spaces within them? Why do our designers, architects, artists, creatives, not to mention politicians, continue to undervalue sound? Although sometimes there seems to be a fine line, sound doesn’t have to be noise! If used in the right way, it can have a significant and powerfully positive affect for anyone experiencing it. Science shows how music can be used to improve health, with music therapy being one of the best known means of combating mental illness. Business theory tells us that successful brands are not purely visual, with market leaders reaching out to consumers ears as well as their eyes. Psychology shows how big an influence music is over our choices – listening to music can tell us what wine to buy, encourage us to stay longer, spend more money and can even alter the taste of that wine! 

As more and more research continues to support the positive impact of sound on both a commercial and health level, we believe this presents the design community with a fantastic opportunity -  for collaboration, education and implemention of better sound! The following posts in this blog will give various examples, theory, and research to support and expand on the above. We welcome your comments and feedback, just make sure and keep your voices down …. 

See also (full reading list will be presented at the end of the month)

Noises – live AV project by Brian d’Souza and Ling Lee / Myspace

Positive Soundscapes
Spaces Speak, Are you Listening?

Find out more about Brian & Open Ear here.

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Mix-Blog: A bit like a mix-tape but with blogs instead. Read more from the series here.