Description |
In this interdisciplinary history and theory of sound in the arts Douglas Kahn reads the twentieth century by listening to it- to the emphatic and exceptional sounds of modernism and those on the cusp of postmodernism, recorded sound, noise, and silence; the fluid sounds of immersion and dripping; and the mear voices of viruses, screams, and bestial cries. Focusing on Europe in the first half of the century and the United States in the postwar years, Kahn explores aural activities in literature, music, visual arts, theater and film. Placing aurality at the center of the history of the arts, he revisits key artisitc questions, listening to the sounds that drown out the politics and poetics that generate them. Artists discussed include Antonin Artaud, George Brecht, William Burroughs, John Cage, Sergei Einstein, Fluxus, Allan Kaprow, Michael McLure, Yoko Ono, Jackson Pollock, Luigi Russolo, and Dziga Vertov |