Reading sound
Textual Value Devices in Gallery Sound
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3198607 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Whitney Johnson, W Chris Johnson (School of the Art Institute of Chicago, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 163-180 |
| Publication date | 2022-07-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Sound Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2055-1940 • E-ISSN: 2055-1959 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/20551940.2022.2105023 |
| OpenAlex | W4293731113 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 46 |
As sound practices continue to evolve in the gallery arts, conceptual texts create value for audiences who have been trained to see but who are still learning to listen. Based on 105 semi-structured interviews and four years of ethnographic observation, this paper finds that, contrary to the reliance on hearing in music or vision in the other gallery arts, gallery sound has had to rely, paradoxically, on reading audiences. After a look at models of cultural-economic valuation, this study finds that sound artists tend to rely on written language to value their works, and these textual value devices appear on a variety of interfaces. Artist statements are communicated through online platforms, handouts, didactic panels, and grant applications as instances of economic agencement – rendering the aesthetic economic – for works that otherwise might be mistaken for music or visual art. Respondents explained this reliance on text in terms of art world isomorphism, as a response to technical maladaptation, and as a tool for sensory learning. The resulting hierarchies of aesthetic value have implications for the relationship between sensory perception and conceptual understanding throughout the gallery arts and beyond
Acoustics · Aesthetics · Art · Conceptual framework · Perception · Performance art · Social science · Sociology · Sound art · Soundscape · The arts · Visual arts · Computer Science · Diverse Musicological Studies · Media, Communication, and Education · Music Technology and Sound Studies · Psychology
Popular culture and high culture
Living in a Material World
Listening to Noise and Silence
The field of cultural production
Handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education
The Discovery of Grounded Theory
Political Epistemics
Art and Society. Readings in the Sociology of the Arts
Valuing Culture and Economy
The Emancipated Listener
On Justification
An Ontology for the Ethnographic Analysis of Social Processes
Re-conceptualizing Museum Audiences
Culture and Social Psychology
Living with the H-Index? Metric Assemblages in the Contemporary Academy
A thousand plateaus
Beyond Representation and Signification
Beyond the polemics on the market
The Iron Cage Revisited
The market of symbolic goods
Boundary processes
A general theory of artistic legitimation
Constructing an artistic field as a political project
Assembling an Economic Actor
Sound Acts
Agencement/Assemblage
Commensuration as a Social Process
Motivation and Justification
"Cultural" Concepts and the Language-Culture Nexus
Senses and artifacts in market transactions
The economy of qualities
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |