Sounding the dissolution from a Cosmic Space
(2025)
author(s): Giada Dalla Bonta
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Whereas the sonic experimentations at the dawn of the October Revolution have been extensively documented, little research has been conducted on practices at the intersection of sound and art during the USSR dissolution. This article explores the political significance of sonic practices –alongside their cultural, artistic, and sensory dimensions– in late Soviet Russia's unofficial art scene, examining the case study of the New Artists group in Leningrad and their shift from mocking avant-garde legacies to a more organically interdisciplinary approach, presumably initiating rave culture in the region. This shift, along with the re-appropriation of cosmism, is framed as a sonic fiction made of music, dance, art, queer inclusivity that aimed at transcending the Iron Curtain and extending conceptually to the Universe. In particular, the paper aims to highlight the decisive influence, often overshadowed by the figure of Novikov, of musicians Valeriy Alakhov and Igor’ Verichev (New Composers) in such evolution by informing the group's poetic strategies and compositions in accordance with their sonic thinking and imagery. The understanding of “togetherness” as constitutive element of late Soviet underground culture and of the hypernormalized official ideology’s de-territorialization (Yurchak 2006) also demonstrates, through J.-L. Nancy’s theory of communal bodies, the role of participatory and corporeal sonic experiences in creating sonic fictions from “interplanetary sounds” able to penetrate socio-cultural dynamics. The artists’ “ubiquitous” (vsyochestvo) principle of absolute synthesis of the arts is thus extended to the realm of sonic materiality, multisensoriality and sonic agency, articulating afresh its appellation of “new avantgarde” of the empire’s dissolution. This article delves into the New Artists' initial evolution before their transition into the more reactionary "New Academy" formation, as some artistic strategies, successfully subversive under Gorbachev, faltered in the post-Soviet landscape and strengthened reactionary forces now intertwined with the ruling power. A forthcoming publication in the Journal of Sonic Studies (Dalla Bontà: 2024) will delve into this subsequent phase during the 1990s, offering insights into the intricate dynamics driving this seemingly contradictory development in the group and in certain figures in the Russian underground scene.
Sound Intuition
(2025)
author(s): Henrik Frisk
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
This paper introduces the method of intuition as it is presented by French philosopher Henri Bergson in the book An Introduction to Metaphysics (Bergson 1912). Its usefulness as a tool to observe relevant information in artistic practice in sound is further discussed in relation to a series of works by the author. Exploring this complex field the author makes a preliminary conclusion that sound is not a thing, and it is not limited to what we listen to. It is a system of interrelated threads, the meaning of which is much larger than the actual sound itself.
Een geluidsbelevingsonderzoek naar de radarpost in Wier
(2025)
author(s): Marcel Cobussen
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Tussen oktober 2023 en juni 2024 hebben Marcel Cobussen (Universiteit Leiden) en Tjeerd Andringa (SoundAppraisal) in opdracht van het Ministerie van Defensie een geluidsbelevingsonderzoek gedaan naar de radarpost in Wier.
Geluid en geluidsbeleving in Vlietland
(2025)
author(s): Marcel Cobussen
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
Van september tot en met december 2024 heeft Marcel Cobussen (Universiteit Leiden), gedeeltelijk in samenwerking met enkele collega’s en in opdracht van de Provincie Zuid-Holland een geluids(belevings)onderzoek gedaan naar de actuele en mogelijk toekomstige geluidsomgeving in Vlietland, met nadruk op tracédelen 1 en 2.
Sonic Citizenship: About the Messy and Fragile Negotiations With and Through Sound
(2024)
author(s): Marie Koldkjær Højlund, Anette Vandsø and Morten Breinbjerg
published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
In this article we propose the concept of "sonic citizenship" as a framework for the multitude of ways in which we, in the rhythms of our everyday lives, form the aural background of each other, and how citizenship is practiced, negotiated, and maintained through everyday sonic activities. With examples of messy, fragile, and difficult interactions with sound from the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, we argue that the effort of tuning the soundscapes of the world needs to be complemented by an attuning approach that focuses on the negotiations we are constantly involved with in our everyday lives. The soundscape approach in the tradition of R. Murray Schafer implies that the soundscape is there as a landscape that we can uncover and tune. Conversely, the attuning approach of sonic citizenship understands soundscapes as relationships and dynamic configurations to which we must continuously attune, and which are themselves reconfigured via breaks in habitual attunements.
, Vincent Meelberg