What is it about?
Noise pollution is an environmental problem, but the discourses surrounding its alleviation and prevention have tended to rely on a faulty understanding of the (non)divide between nature and culture. This (non)divide is better thought of in terms of invention, as is demonstrated in the field recordings of sound artists Chris Watson and Francisco Lòpez.
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Why is it important?
This paper addresses the problems of noise pollution from the perspective of sound art, which takes as its primary concern the ecology and nature of sound. In particular, field recordings, in which minimally altered environmental recordings are treated as compositions or aesthetic objects as such, are able to explore how we understand all sounds, including ones we consider to be "noise."
Perspectives
While I am not myself a sound artist, my interest in twentieth and twenty-first century sound art and experimental music is a constant theme for me.
Tom Kohut
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Noise Pollution and the Eco-Politics of Sound: Toxicity, Nature and Culture in the Contemporary Soundscape, Leonardo Music Journal, December 2015, The MIT Press,
DOI: 10.1162/lmj_a_00924.
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