Aesthetic Strategy of Sound Art-How Could it be Public?

Abstract

Public art in the latter half of the twentieth century saw great changes in its means of expression along with the changes in how public space is envisioned, from symbolic and political spaces into spaces with multilayered meanings that are weaker in their centrality. More specifically, public art has changed from being monumental to being everyday, and also to things that are not overwhelmingly conspicuous. In this article, I examine these techniques of expression, and the forms of sensory perception that support that expression, based on examples of the works of the sound artists Max Neuhaus, Rolf Julius, Suzuki Akio, and others. The technique, which they share in common, is the use of faint sounds. Faint sounds are used as triggers, and are tied to the greater sounds of the surroundings. In other words, the listener is connected in a special relationship with the environment as a whole in a way that normally cannot be sensed. And in that process one listens not to the meaning of the sound but to its surface texture. Through such means, these artists are in the vanguard of contemporary public art.