Brandon LaBelle

Last updated
Brandon LaBelle
Born
Brandon James LaBelle

(1969-10-23) October 23, 1969 (age 54)
Los Angeles, California, USA
EducationCalifornia Institute of the Arts (BFA, MFA)

Brandon LaBelle (born October 23, 1969) is an American artist and sound theorist whose work has influenced the field of sound studies. [1] [2] [3] LaBelle has served as Professor in New Media in the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design at the University of Bergen since 2011. [4] [5] [6] LaBelle is best known for his books Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art and Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life which are important texts in the sound studies canon. [7] [8] David Byrne, founding member and lead singer of American rock band Talking Heads, listed Acoustic Territories as one of his favorite books about music, including it in a collection of books Byrne curated for London's 2019 Meltdown Festival. [9]

Contents

Early life and education

Brandon LaBelle was born on October 23, 1969, in Los Angeles, California. He attended Palos Verdes High School. As a drummer, LaBelle took part in the Los Angeles punk rock scene in the 1980s and 90s where he developed "an experimental relation to noise." [10] He graduated with a BFA in 1992, followed by an MFA in 1998 from California Institute of the Arts. In 2005, he was awarded his PhD from the London Consortium. [11] [12]

Career

LaBelle's first exhibitions date from 1995, the year when he also published his first noteworthy papers and gave his first performances as a sound artist. [13] [11] [14] [10] In 2006, LaBelle published Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. In 2010, he published Acoustic Territories: Sound Culture and Everyday Life.

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Acoustics</span> Branch of physics involving mechanical waves

Acoustics is a branch of physics that deals with the study of mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound. A scientist who works in the field of acoustics is an acoustician while someone working in the field of acoustics technology may be called an acoustical engineer. The application of acoustics is present in almost all aspects of modern society with the most obvious being the audio and noise control industries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noise</span> Unwanted sound

Noise is unwanted sound considered unpleasant, loud, or disruptive to hearing. From a physics standpoint, there is no distinction between noise and desired sound, as both are vibrations through a medium, such as air or water. The difference arises when the brain receives and perceives a sound.

Noise music is a genre of music that is characterised by the expressive use of noise. This type of music tends to challenge the distinction that is made in conventional musical practices between musical and non-musical sound. Noise music includes a wide range of musical styles and sound-based creative practices that feature noise as a primary aspect.

Electroacoustic music is a genre of popular and Western art music in which composers use technology to manipulate the timbres of acoustic sounds, sometimes by using audio signal processing, such as reverb or harmonizing, on acoustical instruments. It originated around the middle of the 20th century, following the incorporation of electric sound production into compositional practice. The initial developments in electroacoustic music composition to fixed media during the 20th century are associated with the activities of the Groupe de recherches musicales at the ORTF in Paris, the home of musique concrète, the Studio for Electronic Music in Cologne, where the focus was on the composition of elektronische Musik, and the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center in New York City, where tape music, electronic music, and computer music were all explored. Practical electronic music instruments began to appear in the early 20th century.

A soundscape is the acoustic environment as perceived by humans, in context. The term was originally coined by Michael Southworth, and popularised by R. Murray Schafer. There is a varied history of the use of soundscape depending on discipline, ranging from urban design to wildlife ecology to computer science. An important distinction is to separate soundscape from the broader acoustic environment. The acoustic environment is the combination of all the acoustic resources, natural and artificial, within a given area as modified by the environment. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standardized these definitions in 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Luigi Russolo</span> Italian Futurist, artist, composer

Luigi Carlo Filippo Russolo was an Italian Futurist painter, composer, builder of experimental musical instruments, and the author of the manifesto The Art of Noises (1913). Russolo completed his secondary education at Seminary of Portograuro in 1901, after which he moved to Milan and began gaining interest in the arts. He is often regarded as one of the first noise music experimental composers with his performances of noise music concerts in 1913–14 and then again after World War I, notably in Paris in 1921. He designed and constructed a number of noise-generating devices called Intonarumori.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yasunao Tone</span>

Yasunao Tone is a multi-disciplinary artist born in Tokyo, Japan and working in New York City. He graduated from Chiba University in 1957 with a major in Japanese Literature. An important figure in postwar Japanese art during the sixties, he was active in many facets of the Tokyo art scene. He was a central member of Group Ongaku and was associated with a number of other Japanese art groups such as Neo-Dada Organizers, Hi-Red Center, and Team Random. Tone was also a member of Fluxus and one of the founding members of its Japanese branch. Many of his works were performed at Fluxus festivals or distributed by George Maciunas’s various Fluxus operations. Relocating to the United States in 1972, he has since gained a reputation as a musician, performer and writer working with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Senda Nengudi, Florian Hecker, and many others. Tone is also known as a pioneer of “Glitch” music due to his groundbreaking modifications of compact discs and CD players.

Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art as a practice "harnesses, describes, analyzes, performs, and interrogates the condition of sound and the process by which it operates."

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intonarumori</span> Experimental musical instruments built by Luigi Russolo

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The Theatre of Eternal Music was an avant-garde musical group formed by La Monte Young in New York City in 1962. The first group (1962–1964) of performers consisted of La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Angus MacLise, and Billy Name. From 1964 to 1966, Theatre of Eternal Music consisted of La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, John Cale (viola), and Tony Conrad (violin), with sometimes also Terry Riley (voice). Since 1966, Theatre of Eternal Music has seen many permutations and has included Garrett List, Jon Gibson, Jon Hassell, Rhys Chatham, Alex Dea, Terry Jennings, and many others, including some members of the various 1960s groups. The group's self-described "dream music" explored drones and pure harmonic intervals, employing sustained tones and electric amplification in lengthy, all-night performances.

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Group Ongaku was a Japanese noise music and sound art collective exploring musical improvisation, composed of six composers, including Takehisa Kosugi, Mieko Shiomi, Yasunao Tone. Ongaku in their group name means "music." The group began their activities in Tokyo in 1958, mainly as a students group at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. In 1960, they formalized the group by naming it Group Ongaku and continued until 1962. Their music freely crossed from orchestral to ethnic instruments, technology, and daily objects, melting sound production from devices associated with vastly different forms of sonic practices. In addition, they strategized to expand the musical experience in an attempt to merge the act of composition and that of performance. They shifted their focus from just creating sounds to deploying actions as music. From 1961 onwards, they came into contact with Fluxus coordinator George Maciunas and some members became affiliated with Fluxus. The Japanese Fluxus contingency, centering on them, expanded and Tone called this loose collection of people "Tokyo Fluxus."

References

  1. ↑ Ouzounian, Gascia (2014). "Sound Art." Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Online: Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-974710-8.
  2. ↑ Downey, Walker (2022-06-07). "For Eyes and Ears: New Sound Art Serves Different Senses with a Multimodal Approach". ARTnews. Retrieved 2022-11-16.
  3. ↑ Isacoff, Stuart (2013). "Environmental music." The Grove Dictionary of American Music. Oxford University Press. ISBN   978-0-19-531428-1.
  4. ↑ Fenech, Guiliana (2009). "The CounterText Interview: Brandon LaBelle". CounterText. Edinburgh University Press. 5 (3): 271–289. Retrieved November 16, 2022– via EBSCOHOST.
  5. ↑ "Brandon LaBelle". University of Bergen. Retrieved 2022-11-16.
  6. ↑ "Brandon LaBelle". MIT Press. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  7. ↑ Woloshyn, Alexa (December 21, 2018). "Book Review: Brandon LaBelle, Sonic Agency: Sound and Emergent Forms of Resistance. London: Goldsmiths Press, 2018. 224 pp. ISBN: 978-1-906-89751-2". Organised Sound. Cambridge University Press. 23 (3): 307–309. doi:10.1017/S1355771818000225. S2CID   70041483 – via Cambridge Core.
  8. ↑ "Open Syllabus: Brandon LaBelle". Open Syllabus Explorer. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  9. ↑ "David Byrne lists 224 music books in his personal library". faroutmagazine.co.uk. 2019-09-13. Retrieved 2022-11-16.
  10. 1 2 Kvalvaag, Hilde (March 5, 2019). "Art and resistance: The great hope of finding an opening to another world". University of Bergen Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  11. 1 2 Knudsen, Stephen. "The Acoustic Terrain of a Sound Artist: An Interview with Brandon LaBelle". Art Pulse Magazine. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  12. ↑ "MFA Fine Arts Lecture Series: Brandon LaBelle". Otis College of Art and Design.
  13. ↑ Couture, François. "Brandon LaBelle Biography by François Couture". AllMusic. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  14. ↑ Raimondo, Anna. "Becoming a Stranger". Norient. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
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