Sound sculpture - Definition and Overview

Sound sculpture is one term for the multimedia artform where, as the name suggests, sculpture produces sound or, less often, the reverse. Most often sound sculpture artists were primarily either visual artists or composers, not having started out directly making sound sculpture.

Sound sculptures take the form of indoor sound installations, outdoor installations such as aeolian harps, automatons, or be more or less near conventional musical instruments. Cymatics has influenced sound sculpture.

Important artists include:

• Maryanne Amacher
• Bernard Baschet and Francois Baschet, the Baschet Brothers
• Harry Bertoia
• Ellen Fullman
• Alvin Lucier
• Paul Panhuysen
• Hans Jenny
• Bill Fontana

External links

• Baschet: Les Sculpture Sonores (http://www.baschet.net/)
• Het Apollohuis (http://www.artpool.hu/harmas/apollohuis_en.html)
• The Sound Sculpture Page (http://music.dartmouth.edu/~kov/soundArt/)
• Experimental Musical Instruments (http://www.windworld.com/)
• Home Page of Bill Fontana (http://www.resoundings.org/)
• Cymatics: the study of wave phenomena (http://www.cymaticsource.com/)
• Bill Fontana's musical sculptures: the shadows of John Cage (http://d-sites.net/english/fontana.htm:)

Further reading

• Panhuysen, Paul (Ed.) (1986). Echo : the images of sound. Eindhoven: Apollohuis. ISBN 9071638030.
• Grayson, John (1975). Sound sculpture : a collection of essays by artists surveying the techniques, applications, and future directions of sound sculpture. Vancouver, B.C.: A.R.C. Publications. ISBN 0889850003.