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Acoustics of the Everyday: Between Growth and Conflict in 1960s Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2015

MIKI KANEDA
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Abstract

Focusing on a multimedia practice labelled ‘intermedia art’, this article shows how experimental musical practices complicate popular characterizations of the idea of politics in 1960s Japan that are polarized by their focus on extraordinary economic growth, on the one hand, and radical protest, on the other. Like their counterparts in art, experimental musicians and artists such as Shiomi Mieko, Kosugi Takehisa, and Yuasa Jōji took an interest in everyday sounds, spaces, and technologies as sites for artistic exploration. However, their musical approaches did not share the overtly political engagement with the scenes of protest playing out in the public sphere that played a central role in the visual arts. Through an investigation of the notion of ambiguity in the acoustics of intermedia, the article seeks to re-examine understandings about the role of sound in shifting perceptions about political participation.

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Twentieth-Century Music , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 71 - 96
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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