Sound-based Brutalism: An emergent aesthetic

Abstract

Cold, stripped-down, monochrome, pixelated, iterative, quantised, grid, pulse, glitch, noise: taken together, these words imply a growing aesthetic connection within a body of experimental and independent (or non-academic) sound-based artworks produced in the past few decades. Although realised in different mediums and belonging to different artistic categories, such works are connected through a certain aesthetic sensibility. Nevertheless, since the majority of these works have thus far received little scholarly attention, a framing discussion of the aesthetic principles and features that link them is overdue. This article examines this emergent phenomenon, accounting for the particular aesthetic features that connect such sound-based artworks, arguing for a more specific terminology to adequately account for this aesthetic across the various practices in which it is observed. Rejecting ‘minimalist’ as a descriptor, this article calls for an aesthetic frame of reference derived through Brutalism, understood as a crystallisation of key features of modernism and its various movements. The first author’s work is presented as a conscious effort to create sound art redolent of Brutalism, locating this work in the context of the revival of Brutalism in recent years, which, as will be argued, can be expanded to works from a wide range of contemporary artists and musicians.

Audiovisual Materialism

“…The main goal of this article has been to address the question of corporeal materiality within the audiovisual domain. In doing so, I set out to present and assess the ways in which previously constructed frameworksfor example, brutalist (Zareei et al 2016), object-based (Rose 2013) or electromechanical (Pigott 2017)intersect, or can be differentiated. As stated in the following section, drawing strict lines and borders proposes numerous challenges.…”

Re-hearing the Past in the Age of Digital Re-Production A Sonification of Media Artefacts

“…Revealing the object's materiality represents the material's own inherent qualities and functions and, as such, are "not articulated by a governing musical 'discourse'." [74] Coined by sound artist and researcher Mo Zareei, sound-based brutalism is a shared set of aesthetic principles encompassing a diverse range of audiovisual works connected through common elements: a radically stripped down focus on basic sound-generating mechanisms and material, and their presentation through grid-based structures and repetition. [74] A visibly present object to explicitly connect the sound to the sound source and the iterative use of individual sound types are aesthetic elements used by a number of artists in their creative output.…”

“…[74] Coined by sound artist and researcher Mo Zareei, sound-based brutalism is a shared set of aesthetic principles encompassing a diverse range of audiovisual works connected through common elements: a radically stripped down focus on basic sound-generating mechanisms and material, and their presentation through grid-based structures and repetition. [74] A visibly present object to explicitly connect the sound to the sound source and the iterative use of individual sound types are aesthetic elements used by a number of artists in their creative output. No longer hidden in the background or listened to as sound "divorced from the context of visual meanings", works in this vein are foregrounding the sound-producing object reduced to its raw material form as a key aesthetic element.…”

“…Within the limitation of pitch and timbre and the simplicity of texture and structure, the sonic output is manifested by "repetitive modules, static harmonies, drones, and silences. "[74] Such a reductionist approach draws from elements of audiovisual materialism described in section 2.4. While Click::REVU's program logic instantiates a form of gestural repetition through the fixed timing of the software looping functions, the work's sonic periodicity is effected by the irregular rhythmic qualities inherent in the CIS mechanism and the variable interpretation of shades of light and dark.…”