'The "sonic turn" in recent art reflects a wider cultural awareness that sight no longer dominates our perception or understanding of reality. This sourcebook provides, through original artists' statements and key theoretical writings, a genealogy of sonic pathways into arts; philosophical reflections on the meanings of noise and silence; dialogues between art and music; investigations of the roles of listening and acoustic space; and a comprehensive survey of sound works by artists from the avant-garde era to the present.

'Artists surveyed include Marina Abramović, Vito Acconci, Doug Aitken, Maryanne Amacher, Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Kim Cascone, Martin Creed, Philip Dadson, Paul DeMarinis, Bill Fontana, Kim Gordon, Dan Graham, Joyce Hinterding, Rebecca Horn, Ryoji Ikeda, Mike Kelley, Christina Kubisch, Bernhard Leitner, Alvin Lucier, Len Lye, Christian Marclay, Max Neuhaus, Carsten Nicolai, Hermann Nitsch, Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik, Luigi Russolo, Karin Sander, Mieko Shiomi, Michael Snow, Yasunao Tone, Bill Viola, and Stephen Vitiello.

'Writers include Jacques Attali, Germano Celant, Michel Chion, Ralph T. Coe, Christoph Cox, Suzanne Delehanty, Helmut Draxler, William Furlong, Liam Gillick, Paul Hegarty, Chrissie Iles, Branden W. Joseph, Douglas Kahn, Allan Kaprow, Dan Lander, W. J. T. Mitchell, Michael Nyman, Jacques Rancière, Luigi Russolo, R. Murray Schafer, Michel Serres, Antonio Somaini, David Toop and Paul Virilio.' (Back cover)

Sound is one of the Documents of Contemporary Art series, co-published by Whitechapel Gallery and The MIT Press which document major themes and ideas in contemporary art. Other sourcebooks of the same series are also available in the Archive. For more details, please go to this page.