Reading sound: textual value devices in gallery sound

ABSTRACT

As sound practices continue to evolve in the gallery arts, conceptual texts create value for audiences who have been trained to see but who are still learning to listen. Based on 105 semi-structured interviews and four years of ethnographic observation, this paper finds that, contrary to the reliance on hearing in music or vision in the other gallery arts, gallery sound has had to rely, paradoxically, on reading audiences. After a look at models of cultural-economic valuation, this study finds that sound artists tend to rely on written language to value their works, and these textual value devices appear on a variety of interfaces. Artist statements are communicated through online platforms, handouts, didactic panels, and grant applications as instances of economic agencement – rendering the aesthetic economic – for works that otherwise might be mistaken for music or visual art. Respondents explained this reliance on text in terms of art world isomorphism, as a response to technical maladaptation, and as a tool for sensory learning. The resulting hierarchies of aesthetic value have implications for the relationship between sensory perception and conceptual understanding throughout the gallery arts and beyond.

KEYWORDS:

• Sound art
• gallery sound
• market devices
• economic agencement
• sensory perception
• conceptualism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant [#1519214].

Notes on contributors

Whitney Johnson

Whitney Johnson is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Sound and Liberal Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Following her 2009 master’s degree in cultural policy at the Harris School of Public Policy, she received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Chicago in 2018. Her current work considers contested values and gender embodiment in aesthetic sound. Through the sound practice Matchess, she uses arcane reproduction devices to intimate the sound of the unknown.