Sound of Thinking

A Listener's Companion to Conceptual Music

AvCraig Dworkin

Inbunden, Engelska, 2026

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Beskrivning

A lively compendium of musical practices and compositions that upend notions of creativity and expressivity while diversifying our sense of the musical canon. An artist draws two octaves of pitches randomly from a hat, just enough to set each syllable of the dictionary definition of imprimer (to score, to print). Trawling the internet for cute videos of cats “playing” piano, an artist splices together a complete, note-perfect performance of Arnold Schoenberg’s Opus 11. Half a century after the release of Miles Davis’s album Kind of Blue, a jazz quintet spends months of focused practice to reproduce the original exactly. These performances share a common denominator: absolute fidelity to the outcome of a system. From Marcel Duchamp to Yoko Ono, Steve Reich to Sun Ra, The Sound of Thinking brings together a diverse array of musical or sonic works that are algorithmic, automatic, permutational, procedural, or otherwise structured in contrast to the creative expressivity typically associated with artistic production. In twenty-six short essays, each keyed to a term that begins with a different letter of the alphabet, Dworkin discusses work composed or performed according to a predetermined rule, transforming artistic creation into a system running its course. The pieces detailed here, drawn from more than a century of musical experimentation, offer a fresh perspective on the history of innovative music by decoupling music from expression and by shunting creativity from the level of organizing sounds to the level of devising a system that can do the organizing. Not only does this book spotlight the critical role of music in twentieth-century conceptual art, but it also identifies previously overlooked links among diverse artists and movements.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum:2026-04-30
Mått:152 x 229 x 25 mm
Vikt:594 g
Format:Inbunden
Språk:Engelska
Antal sidor:328
Förlag:The University of Chicago Press
ISBN:9780226847696

Utforska kategorier

Musikböcker inom Kultur
Medievetenskap inom Samhälle och politik
Essäer inom Skönlitteratur

Mer om författaren

Craig Dworkin teaches literary history and theory at the University of Utah. He is the author of Reading the Illegible, No Medium, Dictionary Poetics, and Radium of the Word: A Poetics of Materiality.

Recensioner i media

"Craig Dworkin’s new book is a rhizomatic atlas, a poetically mapped room of musical possibilities in which one door leads to a Wittgensteinian room and another onto a whale’s vagina. Whether you’re new to its imaginative possibilities or a long-time resident of its frontiers, The Sound of Thinking’s unique scholarship and textual virtuosity are a perfect introduction to the 'resonant paper' of conceptual music."

Innehållsförteckning

Introduction: Definitions and caveatsKey works by John Cage; Éliane Radigue; Christopher DeLaurenti; Maryanne Amacher1. Alphabet: Arbitrary and aleatory organizationKey works by Gilius van Bergeijk; Erik Carlson; Jasna Veličković; Cathy Berberian; Luis Andriessen; Alvin Lucier; Luiz Henrique Yudo; Mieko Shiomi2. Birds: Nonhuman composersKey works by Ezra Pound; Pamela Z; Cassandra Miller3. Chess: Sonification of chessboardsKey works by John Cage; Atanas Bozdarov; Rodney Waschka; OPO; Francesco Ardan Dal Rì and Raul Masu; Michael Horgan; John White; Murielle Lucie-Clément4. Data: Sonification of dataKey works by George Brecht; Alexander Chen; Johannes Kreidler; Edith Viau; Cassie Thornton; Marko Ciciliani; Tae Hong Park; David Pocknee5. Errata: Chance and readymadesKey works by Marcel Duchamp6. Forgery: AppropriationKey works by Vito Acconci; Mekhitar Garabedian; Jane Pollard; Rosemary Brown; Mostly Other People Do the Killing7. Glue: Collage and appropriationKey works by Jim Hodges; Jennifer Walshe; Christopher Hobbs; Milan Knížák; Yasunao Tone; Maria Chavez; Nicolas Collins; Peter Ablinger; Lukas Foss; Rodney Graham; Katie Paterson; Todd Levin; Mauricio Kagel; Christian Marclay8. Helix: Sonification of geometryKey works by Cildo Meireles9. IPA: Deskilling and translations of speechKey works by Nate Wooley10. Jeux de Dés: Chance and gamesKey works by Robert Xavier Rodríguez; Tom Johnson; Hanne Darboven; Robert Ashley; Zexuan Qiao; Dave Soldier, Vitaly Komar, and Alexander Melamid; Percy Grainger11. Kittens: Appropriation and deskillingKey works by Cory Arcangel12. Long: Computational durationsKey works by James Whitehead (jliat); Roc Jiménez de Cisneros and Stephen Sharp; David Pocknee; Cassandra Miller; Rodney Graham; Richard Beaudoin; Bethany Collins; Seth Kim Cohen; Leif Inge; Joanna Bailie; John Cage; Jem Finer; Ian Melish; Erik Satie; La Monte Young13. Mute: Appropriation and erasureKey works by Samson Young; Weronika Trojanska; Luke Nickel14. Nature: Nonhuman composers, deskilled performances, systemsKey works by Raven Chacon; Dave Soldier; Sun Ra; Paul Panhuysen; Alvin Lucier; Nigel Helyer; Devin Maxwell15. Organs: AppropriationKey works by Eva-Maria Houben16. Portraits: Sonification, appropriation, erasureKey works by Clarence Barlow17. Q&A: Chance and gamesKey works by Ben Patterson18. Rocks: ChanceKey works by Mineko Grimmer19. Speech: Sonification of soundsKey works by Peter Ablinger; Jacob ter Veldhuis; Florent Ghys20. Tenebrae: Chance and systemsKey works by Toshi Ichiyanagi; György Ligeti; Yoko Ono21. Ut Pictura Musica: Sonification of imagesKey works by Philip Corner; Alvin Lucier; Charles Gaines; Sylvain Chauveau; Luiz Henrique Yudo22. Vaginas: Yep.Key works by Nam June Paik; Lauren Lesko; Miya Masaoka23. Weave: Sonification and readymadesKey works by Stine Janvin and Cory Arcangel; Christopher Hobbs; John White; Brian Eno24. Xylorimba: Appropriation and erasureKey works by Lance Massey; James Hoff25: Y-Intercept: SystemsKey works by Steve Reich26. Zone: SystemsKey works by La Monte Young and Tao G. Vrhovec SambolecAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

Mer från samma författare

Conceptualisms

Joe Amato, David Antin, John Ashbery, Susan Bee, Caroline Bergvall, Kate Bernheimer, Charles Bernstein, Ralph M. Berry, Alan Bigelow, Christian Bök, Kyle Boltin, Amaranth Borsuk, Jenny Boully, Brad Bouse, Mez Breeze, Blake Butler, David Buuck, Douglas Cape, J.R. Carpenter, John Cayley, David Clark, Robert Coover, Roderick Coover, Lucy Corin, Mark Z. Danielewski, Lydia Davis, Debra Di Blasi, Lesley Dill, Johanna Drucker, Rikki Ducornet, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Craig Dworkin, Brian Evenson, Percival Everett, Kass Fleisher, Jonathan Safran Foer, William Gass, Valeriy Gerlovin, Rimma Gerlovina, Noah Eli Gordon, Tim Gutherie, Carla Harryman, Nicola Harwood, Lyn Hejinian, Lily Hoang, Susan Howe, Jason Huff, Matt Huynh, Shelley Jackson, David Jhave Johnston, Eduardo Kac, Bhanu Kapil, Douglas Kearney, Hank Lazer, Nam Le, Stacey Levine, Thomas Loh, Nathaniel Mackey, Ben Marcus, Michael Martone, Carole Maso, Harry Mathews, Steve McCaffery, Richard McGuire, Michael Mejia, David Melnick, Nick Montfort, Harryette Mullen, R. Henry Nigl, Lance Olsen, Patrik Ouredník, Bob Perelman, Giles Perring, Tom Phillips, Vanessa Place, Salvador Plascencia, Niels Plenge, Claudia Rankine, Graham Rawle, Scott Rettberg, Frank Rogaczewski, George Saunders, Leslie Scalapino, Davis Schneiderman, Lee Siegel, Matt Smith, Steven Ross Smith, Anna Joy Springer, Stephanie Strickland, Cole Swensen, Illya Szilak, Nick Thurston, Lynne Tillman, Cyril Tsiboulski, Deb Olin Unferth, Fred Wah, David Foster Wallace, Bessie Wapp, Joshua Marie Wilkinson, Lidia Yuknavitch, Jin Zhang, High Muck a Muck Collective, Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Steve Tomasula