Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts

by Douglas Kahn

An examination of the role of sound in twentieth-century arts.

Genres: Music, Art, Nonfiction, Film, Art History, History, Academic

472 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Douglas Kahn is Professor of Media and Innovation at the National Institute for Experimental Arts at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is author or editor of several books, including Noise Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts (1999) and, most recently, Source: Music of the Avant-Garde (2011) and Mainframe Experimentalism (2012).

Reviews

[Lisa]

How could he have excluded Pauline Oliveros!!!!

[Matthew Butler]

I come back to this book from time to time whenever I get interested in sound art, but it's never as juicy as I think it should be. I don't mind dense theory, but Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts is too vague and too opaque to hold my interest for long. There are very good chapters such as "The Parameters of All Sound", which touches on inaudible Fluxus work, but others have little to do with auditory phenomena at all. Paint dripping on canvas? Language virus? I don't think so. There's the obligatory discussions of Cage, Black Mountain College, musique concrète, futurism, and experimental soundtracks, but little to do with actual Sound Art from artists coming out of a visual arts tradition who collage and arrange audio as their primary medium. Too much Wagner and not enough Whitehead for my taste.

[Molly Lane]

me when modernism. this was actually interesting ok

[Dawn]

Always find this book really intriguing but almost impenetrable, have tried to read it cover to cover many times but always end up giving up. Maybe others will find more to love here. Still, not a bad book by any means but be warned that it can be a hard read.

[Cambra]

SCIENTOLOGY, why are you everywhere? and why does everything I touch point to a career in body work???

[Yi Kee]

A book fill of profound theories, concept describing the modernist period. This book in my opinion is a Cage-centered book, much discussion were oriented with Cage's concept, biographies , books, beliefs and statements, which then leads to the shaping of Avant-Garde music scene. This is a book full of information but rarely any insights from the author.

[Owen Davis]

Life changer! A deep insight and history of experimental sound practices.

[lynchculture]

Oha...

[Ayanna Dozier]

Kahn provides an interesting examination on the use/role of sound in the arts. This book leaves much to be explored however and is quite masculine in its approach to sound. This is particularly noted when Kahn discusses the role of the scream in sound art. Screams are aggressive and are only featured in relation to masculinity or themes surrounding such. I don't critique this in a manner that suggests that women's screams have to be void of aggression but rather that for Kahn the role of the scream is like a primal urge to aggregate, à la Artaud, and in that sense comes from a masculine place. I'm almost certain that theorists have picked up on this and I don't believe that Kahn believes that scream in art is only framed within this binary model, it's just how he writes about it in this book though and that's a shame.

[Jsun]

very interesting at times. sometimes it meanders into territory that doesn't hold my attention and strays from the core aims of the book. very dense. its a compendium of ideas that i return to often.

[Nancy]

Still one of the best overviews of the history and influence of sound in the arts.

[Treynolds]

Great book regarding predecessors of new media.

[Justyna]

Mentioning Maldoror and Poems in the introduction - boom ting!

[Jonathan]

Lil to nothing of sonic weaponary... But plenty on Italian/Russian Futurism...

[Lindsay]

Difficult to get through, but provides some interesting material for thought.