Making It Heard: A History of Brazilian Sound Art

Description

From the mid-20th century to present, the Brazilian art, literature, and music scene have been witness to a wealth of creative approaches involving sound. This is the backdrop for Making It Heard: A History of Brazilian Sound Art, a volume that offers an overview of local artists working with performance, experimental vinyl production, sound installation, sculpture, mail art, field recording, and sound mapping. It criticizes universal approaches to art and music historiography that fail to recognize local idiosyncrasies, and creates a local rationale and discourse. Through this approach, Chaves and Iazzetta enable students, researchers, and artists to discover and acknowledge work produced outside of a standard Anglo-European framework.

Rui Chaves is a sound artist, performer, and researcher. He has presented his work in several institutions and events throughout the United Kingdom, Brazil, France, Canada, Portugal, and Germany. As a researcher, he is interested in developing accounts of contemporary sound artworks produced within the Global South. Fernando Iazzetta is a Brazilian composer, performer, and Professor of Music and Technology at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, as well as the director of NuSom-Research Centre on Sonology. As a researcher he is interested in the investigation of experimental forms of music and sound art.

Making it Heard is the result of an astounding collaboration of Brazilian sound artists and researchers that undertook a profound analysis and study of historical and contemporary practices of sound art. This volume conveys new ideas for listening and reveals new aesthetic forms due to the geopolitical and social context of Brazil's rich crossbreeding culture. * Manuel Rocha Iturbide, Composer and Sound Artist, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Mexico * I am very glad that a book like this is finally available! Thanks to Rui Chaves, Fernando Iazzetta, and all others involved, we now have a very comprehensive guide to the Brazilian sound art of this century. Dealing with a dense and assorted body of contemporary works, the essays in this book shed light on paradigmatic works and artists and discuss a significant variety of issues tackled by them. I am sure that, through this book, English-speaking readers will have a great opportunity to be introduced to an indispensable part of Brazil's artistic production. * Rodolfo Caesar, Composer and Writer, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil * Making It Heard is the first book in English that critically interrogates contemporary sound arts in Brazil and, as such, offers a serious window into sound arts practices outside the dominant European and North American canon. These essays, written by a younger generation of Brazilian artists, academics, and critics are a necessary and welcome addition to international sound art practice and scholarship. * Cathy Lane, Professor of Sound Arts, University of the Arts London, UK, and Director of CRiSAP (Creative Research in Sound Arts Practice) *