5 comments about Noise, Water, Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts.

1. Whereas our present technology upheaval is driven by the computer, about eighty years ago it was driven by audiophonic technologies: radio was new on the scene; film and animated cartoons were moving to sound; dramatic improvements were occurring in phonography, microphony, and other audiophonic technology; and the prospect of television was in the air. But artists were slow to take advantage of the possibilities opened by these new media; and radio art, audio art, asynchronous sound film, and soundscape experimentation based on recording technologies were postponed for decades. The discontinuity of these artistic traditions stands as a historical lesson that, even though the technological and conceptual requirements exist and have generated sporadic material realization, these requirements are still insufficient for maturation into an artistic practice.
   
   Music was especially successful in protecting its own domain from new media and consistently refused to incorporate the imitative sound associated with phonography. The line which separated music from noise, which took a new meaning when audio equipment began to chart sound curves and separate them from background noise, was well guarded and seldom crossed. Even the musical avant-garde, which emphatically crossed that line as symbolized by Pierre Schaeffer's musique concrete and John Cage's experimentation with silence, retained some of the conventions of high musical culture and silenced other sounds that also claimed for attention. Nevertheless, the mere existence of the phonograph, its ability to hold any one sound in time and keep all sounds in mind, produced a new status for hearing.
   
   Douglas Kahn, an art critic and academic, starts from the postulate that "none of the art is entirely mute, many are unusually soundful despite their apparent silence, and the traditionally auditive arts grow to sounds quite different when included in an array of auditive practices." The auditive practices that he explores, some soundful in themselves, others contingent on ideas of sound, are associated with the names of of persons or movements that have become largely recognized as precursors to a range of artistic activities: Luigi Russolo, the Dadaists, Dziga Vertov and Sergei Eisenstein, Antonin Artaud, John Cage, William Burrough and other Beats, the musique concrete composers, artists associated with Fluxus, and others. In sum, he offers an interdisciplinary history and theory of sound within the avant-garde and experimental arts from the early twentieth century to the 1960s.
   
   The story starts with Luigi Russolo's founding text, The Art of Noise, published in 1913 and already resonating with the sounds of war. As this Futurist manifesto proclaimed, "we find far more enjoyment in the combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds than in rehearsing, for example, the Eroica or the Pastoral." Although Marinetti's onomatopoeic reportage of the battle of Adrianople opened the way for soundful practices associated with the term bruitism, they also attracted savage criticism such as the following indictment by a Russian avant-garde artist: "the Italian 'amateurish' Futurists, with their endless ra ta ta ra ta ta, are like Maeterlinck's heroines who think that 'door' repeated a hundred times opens up to revelation."
   
   At about the same time, the Dadaist movement, endlessly debating the Cabaret Voltaire of Zurich, also left a legacy of artistic revolution which included sound practices: noise music, noise making, and even sound poetry and other forms of bruitism. On the other hand, the Surrealist movement that took on after World War I was singularly silent, and Andre Breton's antipathy toward music seems to have blocked other artists to explore sound other than through printed words and composed images: Man Ray's playful, punning image of a woman's nude torso with the twin sound holes of a cello painted on her back, or Bunuel's grand piano with dead donkeys draped across the strings in his film Un chien andalou,, were already testimonies that music could shout for attention while staying silent.
   
   John Cage appears throughout the book and is the subject of much attention and critique. As the author notes, many people have heard the world differently because of his efforts, yet they may not have heard all he had hoped to hear, for he wanted to hear all. With regard to the line separating sound and musical sound, Cage played a unique role in that he took the avant-garde strategy to its logical conclusion. 4'33'', his silence piece, extended the field of materiality to all the non-intentional sounds surrounding the performance, including the sound of the growing agitation of certain audience members. Yet Cage's silence, the author remarks, "was dependent from the very beginning on silencing", as it reproduced the mandate to be silent during a concert, when even a clearing of one's throat or murmuring is considered as a breach of decorum. For Douglas Kahn, Cage's silence constitutes a silencing of the social, the political and ecological, and these are the dimensions in sound and music that his text seeks to reinstate.
   
   What I particularly liked in the book are the vignettes into the life of the avant-garde, some of which contradict commonly held beliefs and images. For instance, Pierre Schaeffer, the founder in 1948 of musique concrete, confessed toward the end of his life that "it took me forty years to conclude that nothing is possible outside DoReMi... In other words, I wasted my life." Or Andy Warhol, showing to art dealer Ivan Karp his first paintings where pop icons and cartoon figures were covered by splashing and dripping, justified his gesture by saying: "You have to do that. You must drip! It means that you are an artist if you drip!" Eventually, the art dealer convinced him to renounce the dripping, to which Warhol responded: "That's just wonderful you should say that, because I don't think I wanna drip."



2. If at times overly academic, Douglas Kahn's seminal work "Noise, Water Meat: A History of Sound in the Arts" should be required reading for any course related to sound and such audio-visual domains as film and television.
   
   In his book Kahn adresses the historical changes (or, development?) in noise abatement, looking at noise as a cultural, musiological and essentially political phenomenon (with an apparent inspiration from Jacques Attali). Accompanying the different types of noise abatement in Western modernity (as voiced e.g. by Arthur Schopenhauer), are also - as Kahn illustrates - different experiments into the use of noise, whether defined as a strictly musical or cultural phenomenon. In music we thus find such experimental composers as John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer (exploring different types of musique concrète), in film we find early auteurs as Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein and Grigori Alexandrov (through the use of natural sounds, asynchronism and different sonic counterpoints). Even in other - less obviously sonic - arts may we find otherwise elaborate experiments with sounds and noise(s). Take for example the vivid attempts at breaking the rigid rules of communication and narration through distinctly phonetical, verbo-literary experiments in the works of James Joyce and William Burroughs - or the creative disruption of the organic line in the paintings of say Gerhard Richter.
   
   Further examples could be found ad nauseum, and Douglas Kahn goes to great length in his interesting and well-documented explorations. Noise IS a part of the arts as much as our close environment, whether we register or hope to reject it.
   
   Kahn's pioneer-footsteps, thus, leave a vivid trail for others to follow, for in his book - if nothing else - he has shown how different sonic experiments (and, more specifically, different types of noise) are all around us. Instead of conservative strategies of silencing and abatement, we should listen!



3. The subject and content of this book is of great interest to me, and the book delivers quite well. The only fault I could find was in the use of a superfluously extensive vocabulary. I would compare it to listening to comedian Dennis Miller do stand up. It's often funny, but the guy is so knowledgeable as to leave me blank too often. It is such a good book that I'm discouraged by what I perceive as a limited audience potential.

   Still, I give 5 stars without hesitation, since the book is a great read that got my creative juices flowing and brought me up-to-date regarding the history of art forms in which I am deeply involved. Setting aside the excessively rigorous verbiage, it is very well written. I highly recommend it.




4. Kahn's text sprawls over 358 pages, and is filled with innovative insights into the auditory component of the 20th century avant-garde. I found the most brilliant section to be his critique of John Cage. Cage created music with the aim of "quieting the mind, to open it to divine influence." Kahn is the first to articulate what I have felt, that Cage, the zen anarchist, is just as manipulative with this goal as any tonal symphonic architect! As Kahn puts in,

   "...Cagean silence...has silenced other things, as it dwells at the problematic edge of audibility and attempts to hear the world of sound without hearing aspects of the world in a sound" (p. 4) Kahn turns on its head Cage's stated aim of "just letting sound be," speaking rather of "Cage's dominion of all sound and always sound," a project to turn all sound into music! (p. 197)

   Much of the rest of the book, the sections on "Water Flows and Flux" and "Meat Voices," is a wandering chronicle of various avant forms, and Kahn has fun with organic analogies. But it's a fascinating trip through little-known terrain, and Kahn is a fearless and creative guide!




5. This astonishing history of twentieth century art offers a deep and profound view of intermedia and multimedia through the aspect of sound. Kahn's narrative is beautifully written and well researched. He supports the text with a wealth of documentary sources that permit further research. This book is a seminal contribution to research in intermedia, multimedia, and media studies. KF

   Book review published in Design Research News, Volume 6, Number 8, Aug 2001 ISSN 1473-3862.

No comments about Paris: City of Art: Expanded Edition.

5 comments about People of Paradox: A History of Mormon Culture.

1. A fantastic book. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about Mormons and Mormonism.



2. Finally, someone has put together all of the anomalies inherent in the LDS religion and culture. Well, not all. But enough that you get a really good idea of all of the paradoxes that are so frustrating. It was fascinating to see so many of the perplexities spelled out. However, I believe there is somewhere a statement to the effect "there must needs be an opposition in all things"; but who would have thought that it was built-in?



3. I found this to be a very valuable book. Terryl Givens taught me aspects of LDS history that I did not know or simply hadn't dawned on me. As a small example, in talking about building the Nauvoo temple, he mentions the extremely small population that took on the building of the Kirtland Temple. "Instead of the 100 or so members who populated the Ohio town when that temple was announced in 1832, Nauvoo in 1841 was the center of a burgeoning Illinois Mormon population in excess of some 12,000." - pg 109. Every time I think about such a small band of people taking on the building of the Kirtland Temple I get dizzy. And when I consider the amazing growth of the church in only a few years amid all the difficulties they also endured I am still amazed even though I have known the story since my childhood.
   
   However, this isn't another telling of the history of the church. Givens examines the culture of the church and the various strains within that culture that had their roots in the revelations received by Joseph Smith, the strains of culture brought in by the various groups of immigrant converts, the impact of the various migrations due to persecution, the temporary isolation in the West, and the growing pains of becoming a global church in modernity.
   
   This is an ambitious book that accomplishes the author's aims amazingly well. Givens admits that he has left out material on popular culture and folk expressions that deserve treatment. He also recognizes that some of the Western cultural distinctions of high culture and serious art will have less meaning to an increasing membership outside that cultural heritage.
   
   Givens presents his material in sixteen chapters divided into three parts. Part 1 establishes the "Foundations and Paradoxes in Mormon Cultural Origins". The four chapters lay out the cultural dichotomies of authority and radical freedom, the idea of searching and certainty, the very practical (banal) aspects of everyday life that are also tied up with Mormon ideas of the sacred, and the sense of being the chosen people versus the effects on our culture from persecution, migration, and isolation.
   
   Part 2 is "The Dancing Puritans" and covers the period from 1830-1890. The six chapters examine the idea among Mormons that the "Glory of God is Intelligence", along with architecture, music, dance, theater, literature, and the visual arts. The author's emphasis is how the seeming conflicts of the Part 1 play themselves out in the circumstances and means of expression by the artists during this period.
   
   Part 3 is "A Moveable Zion - Pioneer Nostalgia and Beyond the American Religion" and covers the years from 1890 to the present. Givens again takes us through the way thinkers fit into and don't fit into Church culture. He also takes us through the realities of church correlation. The topics of architecture, music, dance, theater, literature, and the visual arts are examined regarding their developments. Film is also added to the chapter of theater. Givens also talks about the implications of the majority of the church not only being outside Utah and the Western states, but also outside the United States.
   
   Since I have lived all my life in the church, but here in Michigan, I learned a great deal about the life of the Saints in the West that I did not know and it was all most interesting. However, I have also lived my life deeply involved in music (my undergraduate degree is in music theory and I have studied piano since I was a child), and I found some of Givens' analyses and conclusions a bit exasperating. Some of what he and the some of the artists in the book claim are difficulties with Church culture have more to do with the life of artist everywhere and in all places. On page 337 we read this sentence: "No wonder, as Southey noted despondently, a survey of responses to the Mormon Arts Festival revealed that `more than one-third or all patrons believed that art was basically irrelevant to the church.'' Talk about missing a glass two-thirds full!
   
   My guess is that more than a third of the population at large sees the fine arts as irrelevant to their life in any way. Having been a classical musician all my life, I can't tell you how few people care about this music as anything more than a kind of muzak. For the life of me, I can't understand people who tell me they like to listen to Mozart to relax. How can you be listening to that music with anything but amazement and excitement is beyond me.
   
   Yes, there are cultural aspects to the church that can be exasperating to any of us; even with a full, strong, and burning testimony. However, I found the emphasis on the exasperations of "intellectuals", academics, artists, and so forth to be quite provincial. A plumber or a farmer can be frustrated by aspects of the church as easily as a painter, writer, or a pianist. I grew up in a working class home and worked on an assembly line for a couple of years when I was very young and found that people from any background could find all kinds of things to get worked up over. Some of them were even legitimate and meaningful hurts rather than a frustration that the church won't re-fashion itself into what any given individual thinks it should or could be. I have seen people shaken to the core over the way sugar beets and potatoes were being farmed, commodities were being canned, the way the church facilities were being maintained, and the endless list goes on. The artist's problem is the same the problem everyone else has. The church is about active belief and engagement at that level. The rest, including being a "cultural Mormon", is pretty much incidental.
   
   Not long after I began piano lessons I became a deacon and was soon called to be the pianist for priesthood meeting. Over the decades of playing in various wards and branches around the world I have learned about people and their preference for the familiar and the way "everyone" (meaning their congregation) does things. I can't tell you how many times I have been told "we don't sing that hymn here" and I always respond, "Well, now we do". But this is a people issue, not an LDS issue. It has also happened when I have played for non-LDS congregations and even for non-religious groups.
   
   Being an artist is about making your art. You can't worry about what others think about you. You will likely have to work hard for quite awhile to bring others around to your point of view. You also can't worry about being a `great artist' because you almost certainly are not (I certainly am not). That does not mean that you shouldn't be an artist or make your art. At any level you are helping to build a base for the arts and developing the kind of environment we all need for art to flourish. If all there were in the world was, to use the clichés of this book, Beethoven and Shakespeare, there would have been no audience for them, no artisans to provide their instruments or theaters, no performers, and consequently no Beethoven of Shakespeare. If you are an artist, or lover of the arts, or even if you can only give place in heart to think about the arts, do so and we will all be more greatly blessed.
   
   Another issue is the aspect of creating art specifically for Mormons. That can be a good thing, but it can also be limiting (not because of the subject, but because of the size of the audience). We are only twelve or thirteen million people in a world of billions. My advice is to make and participate in great art and spread it to the world. Some of it can be specifically Mormon, but why not increase your chances for success by creating for a bigger audience. This doesn't mean you have to pander or turn your back on the church or its principles. It does mean you have to be strong and spend time presenting your art and your point of view rather than passively condemning the world for not recognizing your talent.
   
   I recommend this book to everyone interested in Mormon culture, whether you are a member or not. Of course you don't have to agree with the author on anything or everything to learn some new things and get a lot of food for thought. And that is all you can ask of a book. Well, that and larger print. To whomever chose the font size and type for this book: please provide darker and bigger type in the future. My eyes aren't as young as they used to be and I found the act of reading this book more of a chore than it needed to be. I also wish Givens had a website for the book that pointed us to images of the artworks, sound clips, and video so we could experience the arts more fully. The black and white images provided are very helpful, but an additional website would have been that much more helpful.
   
   With a few small quibbles aside, this is a great resource and an important contribution to any of us who care about our culture. I am grateful.
   
   Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI



4. The print is so small in this book I simply put it away without reading. Will try to locate my magnifying glass and maybe I can make some sense of it.



5. The thesis of the book is that the four primary paradoxes with which Latter-day Saints encounter the world have influenced the cultural and artistic history of the religion. I found it interesting from the historical aspect but purchased the book mainly to understand the paradoxes that Givens describes. (Don't worry - they are not deal breakers!) This book should be in the collection of everyone who has an interest in the development of art and culture in Mormonism.

5 comments about Magazine Design That Works: Secrets for Successful Magazine Design (That Works Series).

1. Briefly looking through this book you can quickly see that it is not a technical design book.
   
   It does a very nice job at praising various popular magazines, and it does highlight fundamental design practices within magazine design.
   
   It is a good overview book. It is also a good book to see many images of successful magazines without having to hunt down various magazines.
   
   However, the problem is the book does not going into the technical process of magazine layout. Magazine layout IS a very technical process that most books don't explain. There is much about the grid - it is extremely important and very under estimated. It is also more simple than most people would think. There is also much about magazine layout and structure this book will not cover. Also about the whole process, from layout to print. There are a MILLION questions and problems that pop-up while designing a magazine. Many considerations and variables that vary. This book does not bring up any of those.
   
   Can you design a magazine after reading this book? No.
   Can you evaluate and understand magazines better after reading this book? Yes.
   Can you get a feeling for what magazine design is about after reading this book? Yes.
   Can you get some great ideas out of this book? Yes. ...you can also get them by looking through quality magazines.



2. Very helpful in what's "hot" in magazine design. Covers differnt genres in mag. design. Extensive reasearch and helps generate different design ideas. Only complaint: Took 2 long to recieve. From my order date, it took over a month.



3. I think a person's appreciation of this book depends on their particular field and learning style. I work as a graphic designer for a number of different hobby magazines, and my learning style is that of a sponge - I see something, I soak it up. This book was PERFECT for me. I like to page through it, soak up the ideas, immerse myself in these various styles of good design before embarking on my own projects. I have a number of design collections, but this is the best one I've seen that's magazine specific. I also found the articles interesting and to the point, but they are more of a supplement to the designs.



4. I'm just launching a new magazine, so I have alot to learn. I have read some terrific books; this is not one of them. Basically the pictures are nice, but I honestly cannot think of one thing I learned from this book.



5. I found this book to be a good place to look for inspiration and overall themes. It doesn't get too much into the nitty-gritty, hard-working pages of ads mixed with content, but it does talk about process and consistency of voice. The author lets several editors explain the design choices they made when faced with title relaunches and updates, and how those choices reinforced the type, photography, writing style, and illustrations used. There are rationale breakdowns of section headers, feature articles, grids, typography, photographic styles, etc, for several well-maintained and respected magazines.

3 comments about Basic Fishing Lure Carving.

1. This book is great for beginner carvers. Lots of instruction and lots of pictures



2. The book is actually very good because it explains step by step how to create a lure that seems to work pretty well.
   It does provide a lot of ideas on how to do things to simplify the lure making process, but in some cases, the ideas are more complicated on the book than other solutions I have seen in other places/books.
   I would definitively recommend it for people that are starting and that would like to understand the basics of luremaking. It also has Instructions for only one lure and plans for another (even when it has a couple other ideas in the photos in the back)



3. My husband loves to carve and this is the first book I've seen that addresses carving lures. His mother, years ago, actually made feathered fishing lures for a local business who sold their product far and wide - a very tedious task. Of course, with the advent of machinery to do such things the business, which was local to our area, is now long gone.

No comments about Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A Concise History of Western Art (with CD-ROM).

2 comments about Mediterranean Modern (Design House).

1. As a former architecture major (my freshman year), and a draftsman (at a local architect's office), I added this tome to my collection (Gwathmey, Wright, Greene/Greene, etc.). However, it is short on interiors, story, and strong on a duplication of swimming pools.
   bgeary263@live.com (I include my address in case a reader can recommend a truly fine book.)



2. This book is a spectacular example of the classic modern style of homes that are so pleasing to the palette. The very homes whose clean lines melt right into the surrounding milieu inviting you to come join in this union of nature and man-made. Make this master of texts a great addition to your library. I'm very glad that I did!

1 comments about Magical Secrets About Aquatint: Spit Bite, Sugar Lift & Other Etched Tones Step-by-Step.

1. Specialized information. Beautiful color reproductions of artwork. Step-by-step instructions. Informative artist biographies. Very valuable dvd, detailing the entire processes. This book is a veritable handbook for aquatint! It contains a wealth of specific information which is written in a straight forward approach. There are many worthwhile insights into this process-heavy technique. Also, through the analysis of artists work, a window is opened into Crown Point Press's history, and into the very studio were artists make etchings. It is the third volume in a series dedicated to the intaglio printmaking processes. The appendix reveals how to print your plate, "The Crown Point Press Way," and you will be amazed at the difference in quality! This book is a perfect element to enhance every student's printmaking studies. An essential tool in any print shop. Excellent addition to an art bookstore or library. A distinguished hardcover book to add to a collector's shelf. (I also love the Sol LeWitt print on the cover!) Reasonably priced for the amount of information and detail provided. The book is worth the price alone--think of the dvd as a bonus!

5 comments about Spectrum 13: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Spectrum (Underwood Books)).

1. Maybe Im kidding myself...but I bought this book on the basis that this book was supposed to represent the best in fantasy art. Unfortunately, what I'm seeing here is a lack of ideas. Strong technique in any work of art can only go so far. I bought this book because I wanted to be inspired. I didn't get that. What I got was a book where most of the pages are devoted to representing things like gnomes, elves, fairies, dragons, demons, psychopaths, robots, etc.--rather than representing worlds or ideas. This is really for artists working from a design standpoint rather than a creative one.



2. Staggering levels of talent in this arcane collection. Contains every imaginable fantasy style and sub-genre.



3. This is a high-quality volume with a wide variety of science fiction and fantasy art from many talented artists.



4. This book really does live up to expectations. Good quality images. If fantasy art is your thing would recomend this book.



5. Este libro es realmente una joya. Si estas estudiando ilustracion, arte, o si quieres ampliar tus horizontes, este libro te servira de ventana tanto para inspirarte como para observar como distintos profesionales del mundo aplican su metodologia y resuelven conflictos de composicion, tecnicas, etc. Son solo imagenes, no hay tutoriales de "como lo hizo", si buscas ese tipo de libros esta no es tu opcion... solo te sera util si tienes el deseo de analizar, y observar por cuenta propia. definitivamente una joya, un profesor en casa.

No comments about Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian.