Sonic turn

Abstract

The 1960s witnessed an unprecedented shift in the cultural soundscape, as the boundaries between music, visual art, and everyday noise began to dissolve. In tandem with the meteoric rise of pop music, which was rapidly transforming from mass entertainment into a vehicle for experimentation and countercultural expression, artists across continents continued to probe sound as a material in its own right. What had traditionally been dismissed as background or interference such as feedback, distortion, and mechanical hums suddenly acquired aesthetic weight, resonating with the radical energy of the decade. Sound and visual artists actively pursued chance-based operations and radical sonic experiments, thereby contributing to the articulation of sound art as a practice distinct from music. This convergence of popular innovation and avant-garde inquiry signaled the development of a heightened sonic awareness, one that would ripple across disciplines and recon!gure the role of sound in contemporary art. [excerpt]