CategoriesArtistic Disciplines
Music
Artworks made as sound, composition or musical performance, from Futurist noise machines and Fluxus scores to drone, noise and experimental music.
1 work · 10 related artists
About
Artists began treating sound as material early in the 20th century. The Futurist Luigi Russolo built noise-making machines in 1913, and Kurt Schwitters performed his wordless sound poem Ursonate through the 1920s and 1930s. After John Cage's 4′33″ (1952) framed ambient sound as music, the line between concert and artwork blurred.
Fluxus artists wrote short instructions as scores, and La Monte Young stretched sustained tones over hours in his drone works. Anthony Braxton composed with diagram-like graphic notation, and the percussionist Milford Graves treated rhythm as a study of the body. In the 1970s Genesis P-Orridge moved from performance art into the industrial band Throbbing Gristle, and later musicians such as Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth kept exhibiting as visual artists. Works in this area may be recordings, scores, instruments or events.
