The Tacit Grooves of Sound Art. Aesthetic Artefacts as Analogue Archives

Abstract

From the perspective of sound studies and media history this article explores approaches to analogue archives coming from the fi elds of sound art and media art. The authors analyse works of art by two contemporary artists from Berlin and Aarhus focussing on archival practices of storing and retrieving: Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri and Morten Riis. What is actually (not merely metaphorically) ‘stored’, ‘inscribed’ or ‘archived’ in and subsequently ‘retrieved’, ‘read’ or even ‘decoded’ from a certain sound artwork? From this starting point the individual artistic practices, the research strategies and the new and surprising ways of archiving and retrieving as invented and refi ned by Papalexandri-Alexandri and Riis are described and analysed. The observed artistic practices, the authors argue, converge in the direction of sonic affordances inherent in the material instruments or storage media: These affordances are stored and retrieved, as they represent the tacit grooves of sound art.