Hearing the Other. On the Aesthetics of the Real in Experimental Music and Sound Art

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Sabine Sanio
• Subject Area: Musicology ; History of Philosophy
• Term: from 2018 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 398231166

The conceptual innovations of Experimental Music and Sound Art since the middle of the 20th century are at the center of the research project at hand. Their radical demand to explore new material and media questions the traditional strategies of European art music. Together with modified concepts regarding performance setting, space and compositional materials, questions concerning the role of technical media in music production and perception become prominent. In the course of this evolution, everyday life and public space became places for artistic concepts and aesthetic experience. Today the avant-garde, often criticized as elitist, is exploring elementary and often very sensual phenomena. As a consequence, the concept of artwork loses its importance. Central points of focus are now phenomena of hearing which demand a concept of aesthetic experience. The research project responds to these developments and aims to analyze them utilizing a new theoretical perspective. For that we intend to establish a Musical Aesthetics of the Real. The starting point traces back to Lacans description of the psychological system by means of the Real, the Symbolic, and the Imaginary. Whereas in the arts symbolization and imagination stand for the position of production aesthetics, the Real that according to Lacan eludes symbolization as well as imagination refers to aesthetic experience. According to the theory, the various currents in the arts are distinguished by the Real, with which they set out to come to terms and which is discussed in aesthetic theory as the unutterable which cannot be said, or as the unrepresentable.In this project the musical concepts we aim to analyze expose the perspective of hearing. First, in this perspective, sound is the other which defies distinct identification and can be interpreted as a Real in music: a complex inter-modal phenomenon with acoustic as well as visual and haptic qualities which exceed the hearing perspective. Furthermore, the actual revaluation of space changes the performance situation and the reception process. Lastly, media-reflexive strategies take on a crucial role within the framework of an artistic survey of the Real, because they account for the audible as well as the inaudible as discursive disciplinings in media-technological dispositions. We intend to develop this new approach to listening in experimental music and sound art with reference to the aesthetics of the Real and the Event and map out the relations of Lacans concept to American pragmatism and German idealism.With these investigations we aim to break ground for better understanding of contemporary music and sound art. For this reason, our research project is interdisciplinarily conceived and reflects the viewpoints of musicology, media and performance studies as well as philosophy. The study is subdivided into the following topics: Musical Construction of the Real, Musical Media Reflexivity (Media Music), and Aesthetics of the Sonic Real.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Switzerland
• Partner Organisation: Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)
• Cooperation Partner: Professor Dr. Jörn Peter Hiekel