Sonic Art & Sound Design- P8:Sonic art is a new art form, or rather, forms. As we shall see, it can encompass a wide range of activities, perhaps wider than almost any other art form. It is an unusual case, based upon a medium that has traditionally been regarded as inferior and subservient to other creative or expressive forms. | A NEW FORM EMERGES Summary to suggest that sonic art was the invention of John Cage Edgard Varèse Steve Reich or any other single artist. What these pioneers did however was to establish in their very different ways the belief that sound by itself could be art the very specific ways in which music organises sound are not always wholly necessary and as Cage suggested given the opportunity sound can speak for itself. Given the substance of its foundations it is perhaps hard to understand why it took so long for sonic art to emerge from the shadow of its ancestors. There are a number of possible reasons for this but one major factor is almost certainly the technologies that are often involved. Although as we shall see later not all sonic art relies upon high technologies such methods do tend to be widely used. For as long as these remained relatively exclusive there was little possibility that the work that they made possible would be at all commonplace and therefore that it could be widely accepted. The sampler and later the computer together with the related technologies of the DJ were to change all that. By making the creation of works of sonic art a less elite activity works began to be created in greater numbers and in a diversity of forms. A new generation of artists now looked for sources and references theories and ideas upon which to base themselves and their work. Looking back a short time showed little more than the traditional and academic practices of electroacoustic music and fine art. Looking back a whole generation brought to light the work of Cage Reich Varese Schaeffer and others. Looking back further still Russolo s Art of Noises manifesto see was rediscovered connections were recognised and the emergence of sonic arts as a form in its own right was on the way. 14. Commenting on his score Cage explains This is a score 192 pages for making music on magnetic tape. Each page has two systems comprising eight lines each. These eight lines are .
