New Sonic Materialisms
What, then, can we learn about sound’s materiality from the sonic materialisms proposed by Cox, Voegelin, and Cobussen? Referencing the work of a number of sound artists, Cox writes, “the most significant sound art work of the past half-century […] has explored the materiality of sound: its texture and temporal flow, its palpable effect on, and affection by the materials through and against which it is transmitted” (Cox 2011: 148-149, emphasis in original). Voegelin contributes to this discussion of sonic materiality by describing sound as possessing an “ephemeral materiality” (Voegelin 2019: 560) and emphasizing “the invisible mobility of its materiality” (Voegelin 2019: 562). Additionally, reflecting on the experience of listening to the multiplicity of sounds heard when sitting at the window of her apartment, Voegelin refers to sound’s “complex materiality” (Voegelin 2019: 563). In addition to direct references to materiality, ideas of flow and flux are central to Cox’s thinking on sound. Thus, he proposes that written music commodifies “the inherently transitory nature of sound and the fluid matter of music” (Cox 2011: 154). Referring to the work of composer John Cage, Cox argues:
sound is an anonymous flux akin to the flow of minerals, biomass, and language […]. Making no discrimination on the basis of the sources of these sounds (inorganic, biological, human, technological), Cage conceives this flux as a ceaseless production of heterogeneous sonic matter, the components of which move at different speeds and with different intensities, and involve complex relations of simultaneity, interference, conflict, concord, and parallelism. (Cox 2011: 155)
What might also be noted is that, within the overriding concept of flow, Cox identifies various forms of relationality between the sounds: interference, conflict, concord and parallelism. As I argue later, we might think of these as part of the texture and flow of sound that Cox proposes as constituting its materiality.[3] Developing his discussion of flow and flux, Cox draws on the work of Gilles Deleuze and the idea that the flux of sound lies beyond the individual, quoting Deleuze’s proposition, “a musician is someone who appropriates something from this flow” (Deleuze and Stivale 1998: 78). In some ways echoing these notions of flux and flow, Voegelin proposes that a materialist sensibility to sound “generates a world of fleeting things and coincidences that demonstrate that nothing can be anchored, and everything remains fluid and uncertain” (Voegelin 2019: 561).
In addition to flux and flow, Cox also foregrounds temporality and duration as fundamental aspects of sound. He writes, “sounds are peculiarly temporal and durational, tied to the qualities they exhibit over time,” continuing, “If sounds are particulars or individuals, then they are so not as static objects but as temporal events” (Cox 2011: 156, emphasis in original). As events, the ways in which sounds emerge and take shape over time are characterized by Cox through reference to Nietzsche’s idea of “becoming.” He writes, “For Nietzsche, matter is creative and transformative without external agency, a ceaseless becoming and overcoming that temporarily congeals into forms and beings only to dissolve them back into the natural flux” (Cox 2011: 151-52). Cox then proposes, “sound and the sonic arts are firmly rooted in the material world and the powers, forces, intensities, and becomings of which it is composed” (Cox 2011: 157). Here, Cox communicates a sense of the ebb and flow of sound in flux and its transitory, fleeting, ephemeral qualities.
In addition to considering the temporal aspects of sonic materialism, Voegelin refers to sound’s spatial qualities and capacities. Thus, she writes, “The sound as material is an event, an expansion in time and space, that generates an environment” (Voegelin 2019: 563). Here Voegelin proposes that sounds “have a spatiotemporal thickness beyond the visual material from which they seem to emerge and to which they are expediently but rather incorrectly attributed” (Voegelin 2019: 563). This discussion also makes reference to the “ephemeral thickness” of vibrations and positions sound in relation to “the vibrational texture of the world” (Voegelin 2019: 574). The notion of materiality is more directly referenced in Voegelin’s description of listening to a piece by sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda in the space of her apartment, the sound reverberating in a tiled fireplace as “mobile materiality” (Voegelin 2019: 564).
The sonic materialism proposed by Cobussen builds on the work of Cox and Voegelin, focusing on sound’s relational aspects, the ways in which sonic materialism creates knowledge, how it might lead to a reconceptualization of listening, and how – in what Cobussen terms auditory ontoepistemology – sonic materialism “investigates, stimulates, and advocates alternative ways of encountering and knowing the world” (Cobussen 2022: 22). In addition, one of the key moves that Cobussen makes in his article is to position creative practice in sound art and music as a form of sonic materialism, proposing, “Sound art and music always already traverse the material, the social, and the discursive; Sonic Materialism materializes in those art works, and thereby becomes a sounding Sonic Materialism which does the work of compensating for the silent, silencing, and silenced visual and discursive forces” (Cobussen 2022: 23, emphasis in original).
However, in terms of potential ways of thinking about the materiality of sound, there are two particular aspects of Cobussen’s article that I would like to draw attention to. Writing about ways of thinking about the sounds of the environment, Cobussen proposes, “I could reflect on these sounds through musical concepts such as harmony, melody, and rhythm, but I also learned from, for example, Edgard Varèse, to think about (musical) sounds in terms of timbre, density, frequency, vibration, and resonance” (Cobussen 2022: 12). Here we might observe some resonance with Cox and Voegelin’s sonic materialisms, through reference to density and vibration. Further, both Cox and Voegelin make repeated reference to texture, which we might align in some respects with the notions of timbre and density offered by Cobussen. The second aspect of Cobussen’s sonic materialism that we might draw upon when thinking about sound’s materiality is his problematization of what he refers to as “preexisting sounds,” arguing that “[s]ounds are co-constituted in and through their interactions with other, material-discursive actants” (Cobussen 2022: 19). Thus, Cobussen proposes, “sound somehow furnishes proof that matter doesn’t refer to a fixed property of independently existing objects; instead, it refers to interactions in their ongoing materialization” (Cobussen 2022: 19, emphasis in original).
Pulling together these threads from my reading of Cox, Voegelin, and Cobussen’s sonic materialisms, it can be argued that sound’s material dimension might be conceptualized in terms of texture (density, complexity, timbre, thickness), temporal flow and flux (ephemerality, becoming), and spatiality. Furthermore, notions of relationality run through all three accounts of sonic materialism, echoing the New Materialist notions of entanglement and co-constitution proposed by Karen Barad’s concept of intra-action (Barad 2007: 33). Finally, we might also think about sonic materiality in terms of what Cox identifies as “the materials through and against which [sound] is transmitted,” returning us to both the material source of the sound and the environment in which a sound event takes place.