Reflections on the notion of Sound Art and the contexts and limits of Graphic Music

Abstract

This article addresses various approaches to the category of ‘sound art’ in order to question some of the aesthetic and historical arguments that supposedly support it. On the one hand, some ideas related to the notion of sound art as a discipline that is clearly differentiated from the field of musical creation will be reviewed. At the opposite side, the conception of sound art as an emerging field and meeting point of different disciplines in dissolution raises other interesting thoughts, such as the failure to achieve an effective symbolic legitimation through an independent canon, the processes that argue the appropriation of the term itself, the acceptance of the music as a possible depleted category, etc. The contradictions derived from this line of argument question whether it is only a theoretical or artistic discussion, or if, rather, other aspects participate effectively in the creation and delimitation of the various contexts of sound art (festivals, exhibitions, journals...). In this sense, graphic music –from its conception as a hybrid artistic manifestation– notes some ideological mechanisms that deny the fact that their presence/absence within the spaces of the art sound is due only to artistic reasons.