The Art of Noise: Response

Rosollo suggests we break down barriers with the Art of Noise; we stop discriminating between what is music and what is the sounds of our world. It's true: the industrial world, the electronic world have made our world in total a lot noisier. I find Rosollo's viewpoint interesting and indicative of Futurism and, in a more contemporary sense, experimental sound-based art. The amount of different noises in the world today is frankly overwhelming and makes good raw material for conceptualization.

However, one, noise isn't new. True, there is much to be explored nowadays, but "the eighteenth century ear" had much to hear. In that matter, so did ears that came much before that. Rosollo acknowledges that new developments in technology have made such noise art possible, but I take that to mean that he believes that there is now more to hear. I disagree; I think noise as art from before the industrial and technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries would be fascinating in itself. What I do think is that development in the ability to document and replicate the noises of our world have made it possible to create such art.

Two, although there is a vast library of sounds at our disposal today, the limitations that musical masters worked within were there for a reason. Certain musical formulas are pleasing to the human ear just as certain color combinations are pleasing to the eye, and we should take caution in using massive amounts of new raw material just because technology allows us to manipulate it. Rather, careful selection will allow for richer and more meaningful sound and music in the long run.