Site-Specific Sound Installations in the Urban Environment

Abstract

This paper examines urban site-specific sound installations, as an artistic expression that integrates other disciplines such as sociology and urbanism in the practice and theory of art. It also explores the impact these soundworks produce not only on the physical city but also on the role that citizens play in it. I propose a critical and theoretical approach to this field of sonic arts from the main topics that along time artists have been concerned for in their artwork: on the one hand the relationship between the artwork and the spectator, and on the other the analysis and reasoning of the space through the work of art. In considering site-specific sound installation from these two starting points, the echoes of the previous non-sonorous artistic tradition, especially that closest to its advent in the mid-sixties are noticeable. For this reason, together to their sonorous specificity, other arguments, such as their sociological, urban and phenomenological implications, are rather suggested in this discussion to come up to the expanded and renewed concept of total art integrated within the dynamics of the city.