The development of environmentally- 18 focused field recording, soundscapes and Sound Art in Australia

Abstract

Over the past century, Sound Art—that is, music from the experimentalist tradition based on “noise”—has morphed from a celebration of sound-qua-sound to a focus on what sound means. From the Italian Futurists’ Intonarumori (or some 27 genera of Noise Machines) to John Cage’s “emptying-out” (of authorial intent) / “filling in”(of the unfettered, ambient sounds in-situ) gesture in his 4’33”: Tacit, for Solo Instrument of 1952, with—along the way— Australia’s own Percy Aldridge Grainger’s pioneering “Free Music” experiments begun in 1938, the focus was on sound displaced from Western, Classical music inheritance, revelling in abrading what that tradition held dear, with its conservative precept..