Gallery Sound

Increasingly, sound is deliberately placed into art exhibitions – from video art to installation, from performance to sound art. Sound is also incidentally present in the architectural environment, in the ambience of the space and the noise generated by the audience. To date there has been minimal scholarship directed towards the intricacies of sound within the bounds of the purportedly visual art gallery. The book aims to address this gap in knowledge through the examination of historical and contemporary sound in gallery environments. This will include the deliberate inclusion of sound in art gallery programs (including music) and incidental sounds within the confines of the galleries. Sound Art, a marginal practice currently moving towards the edges of the mainstream, will be discussed in terms of activating gallery space with sound. The gallery spaces that will be examined range from institutional spaces such as art museums and art centers to artist-run galleries and alternative spaces such as warehouses.

Gallery Sound argues for the importance of sound within the architecture of the art space. From video art to floor talks, from performance to cash registers, sound fills the exhibition environment. Yet sound is a phenomenon that inevitably confounds boundaries, forever bleeding through walls and encroaching into spaces not its own. This book will listen to the deliberate inclusion of sound within the sound arts, as well as the incidental sounds that while generally unwanted have been mined for creative outputs.