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Wavefront Aesthetics: Attuning to a dark ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2015

Marie Højlund*
Affiliation:
Department of Aesthetics and Communication, Aarhus University, Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark
Morten Riis*
Affiliation:
Centre for Participatory IT, Department of Aesthetics and Communication, Aarhus University, Helsingforsgade 14, 8200 Aarhus N, Denmark

Abstract

In this article, we offer an object-oriented ontological perspective to complement the diversity of sounding ontologies, challenging the human perspective as the only valid perspective and call for the necessity of including perspectives of objects such as a speakers, voices and light sensors. Subscribing to this view also confronts music and sound art as consistent autonomous categories and focuses on how the pieces attune to the environment, emphasising meetings, transformations and translations through and with other objects. These meetings generate an ecological awareness of causal aesthetics where objects time and space each other. This contrasts with traditional analysis of music and sound art, which is based on the assumption that time and space are containers in which sound and music unfold. We analyse two contemporary pieces by the authors in an attempt to unfold a dark ecological1 approach to test the implications, limits and potentials for future use and development.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2015 

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