We have eyes as well as ears: experimental music and the visual arts

Abstract

This chapter deals with the relationship, influence, and reciprocal nature, of the visual arts and experimental music. While it connects with contemporary practices, it also attempts to trace certain historical threads back to Cage, the abstract expressionist painters and the discourses evolving from these. It looks at dominant ideas emanating from modernist notions – firstly formalist and media specific ideas and then conceptual and environmental influences. It argues that visual art’s evolving open space of discourse has allowed a platform for experimental music that traditional musical contexts have denied.