A History of Sound Art

A History of Sound Art from J Milo Taylor on Vimeo.

While the title, A History of Sound Art, anticipates that it will talk about its brief history, the experience felt more like sound art itself. I call it an experience because there are two components to this project; audio with a visible timestamp and a visual graphic. Given these two artifacts at first, I was lost at how they were related and the text's relevancy. However, while listening to the audio, I realized that the timestamps matched the graphic. Then it all clicked. The names below the timestamp in the graphic represented who was talking in the audio. The audio was well spaced to appreciate the context of their monologue while also allowing me to read each artist's descriptions on the graphic by playing "background" sound art music.

I feel like viewing sound art is similar to this experience I just had. The first reaction to sound art is usually confusion, followed by an epiphany and then appreciation. While I am not a fan of the individual sounds themselves, the simulated experience of appreciating sound art was mind-opening and was very interesting to have gone through.

An excerpt of A History of Sound Art