曾德平 察顏觀色 當代藝術的精神性追求之一 藝術政治化，政治藝術化

2011年7月14日

5、6月間，造訪了威尼斯雙年展的最當時得令的當代藝術後，轉至翡冷翠和梵帝岡的文藝復興畫作、雕塑和教堂等古建築，再花了整整一星期在巴黎的現代藝術和當代藝術的殿堂龐比度中心和大皇宮等。一邊看展覽（原作），一邊讀當地出版的藝術書籍，包括 Durini的 Beuys Voice、Rothko 的The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art 和 Kiefer 在法蘭西學院的系列演講稿 Art Will Survive Its Ruins。目的是思考藝術的精神性追求的進程。結論突顯了當代藝術的蒼白。

藝術追求內在價值

回想上學期中，三位修讀藝術的同學帶同研究題目到訪，希望知道我的意見。她們要研究的是，西九是否年輕藝術家未來的出路。我心裏頓時嘀咕：「年輕人地思想果然先進，未畢業便曉得考慮出路，還正正經經的把對出路的想法構成研究的題目，實在認真。我自己呢？幾十年來，我只曉得死守『藝術家的（唯一）出路只有自己的藝術作品』的原則。我問自己，我是否落後了？這是否不同代的藝術家之間的代溝呢？」我堅守的（有可能落後）藝術原則源於我理解藝術為內在價值的追求、精神性的活動及思想自由的基地。這是終極的追求。這樣的追求很容易被定性為「為藝術而藝術」。「為藝術而藝術」原是十九世紀法國集詩人、小說家、戲劇家和藝評人於一身的特奧菲爾·戈蒂埃（Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier，1811－1872）採用的口號「l'art pour l'art」，原意是表示藝術本身存在着一種內在價值，跟任何指導性、實用性和道德上的功能沒有關係。目的旨在提醒，藝術家的本分是透過創作去追尋並豐富這種內在價值。因為是內在的，外界沒法干預，所以本質上創作的過程是自由的。假如我們以為創作自由是由他人或者制度（例如政府和社會政治制度）賦予的話，創作的方向已偏離了目標，原本想要達到的，永遠不會實現。

美學引入政治生活

當然，這個概念一直受到不同時代和不同文化背景的藝術家和評論家批評以至否定，認為「為藝術而藝術」的創作態度脫離了社會和群眾，流於自說自話的夢囈。然而，由於逃避納粹黨追捕而自殺的德國哲人班雅明提供了一個值得後世深思的例子。在其經典文章〈機械化再生產時代的藝術品〉的最後章節裏，他以意大利法西斯主義和未來主義藝術宣言為例，討論到法西斯主義為了保障自身利益，把美學引入政治生活中，目的是為當時愈來愈無產階級化的現代人和不斷形成的群眾提供自我表達的機會，而不致專注於群眾希望消除的既定資產體系。最後，當所有花在發展政治美學的工夫到達絕頂顛峰時，只會發生一件事情：戰爭！政治上的計算是，只有戰爭才能為大規模的群眾運動建立共同目標，同時尊重傳統的資產體系。從科技的角度而言，只有戰爭才能動員所有的科技資源而保持着既定的資產系統。他指出戰爭的毀滅性證明了社會的成熟度不足以把科技合併成為自己的組成部分，同時，科技的發展也未能適應社會的基本力量。例如，社會把人潮引進戰壕，而不是疏導河流；飛機被用來在城市上空投擲燃燒彈，而不是在田間散播種子。

談到法西斯主義和藝術的關係時，他以未來主義始創人馬里內蒂（F. T. Marinetti）的口號「讓藝術被創造，讓世界消滅」為例，挑釁地總結出，只要法西斯主義者期待戰爭能提供一種由科技改變了的感知而帶來的藝術喜悅的話，「為藝術而藝術」便功德圓滿了。最後，面對法西斯行使美學的政治處境及共產主義把藝術政治化來回應，班雅明輕嘆道，人類的疏離已達致以經驗自我毀滅為美感上的喜悅的程度了。

行文至此，我不禁自問，我是在危言聳聽嗎？這是藝術家參與政治運動的必然結果？

邁向理想主義行動

其實，班雅明洞悉了藝術偏離追求其內在價值的危機：成為政治或其他非藝術目的的工具。對藝術和藝術家都沒有好處。在這個人所共知的政治制度崩壞、價值觀虛無的今天，藝術的內在價值有變嗎？當然沒有。同意的話，藝術家可以立刻起來行動了。Action!

Mark Rothko指出，藝術是邁向理想主義的行動，更是一種社會行動。就算藝術家創造了一些只有自己才理解的東西，他已然為自己作為個體作出了貢獻，同時也貢獻了社會。因為當一個個體改善了自己適應世界的方法，社會自然得益。說到底，一個社會的好壞判準，端視乎每個個體的好壞的總和。沒有人說得準，一個單獨舉動的影響有多深廣遠。更沒有人有資格去判斷誰的個人需要較貼近社會。Rothko這樣的語調看似輕鬆包容，實際上，他不單止窮一生的精力作畫，他更在創作中研究和示範如何透過現代藝術把自己帶領到精神層面，體會藝術的內在價值。難怪他有這樣的豪言壯語：現代藝術家踏遍了人類所有的造型經驗。（The modern artist has traveled through all of man's plastic experience.）

故此，作為藝術家，我們要是搞清楚藝術的終極追求的話，自己和社會自然受益。反而，自身追求未明，亂花心力在外在的追逐上，難免徒勞無功。

Sonic Boom
Sound isn't just noise or music - it's the raw material for a growing number of audio artists, and montreal is building a strong international reputation for this form of creative expression
CAMERON SKENE, Freelance
Published: Saturday, January 13 2007

This is the latest instalment in the continuing series In Profile, which looks at a cross-section of art being produced on the island and the people who make it.

Diversity is a prominent feature of Montreal's current art scene. Previously dominated by the strong tradition of Quebec's modernist painters, the realm of artmaking has expanded beyond what is coyly called "the dirty arts" (painting, drawing and sculpture) to include photo and mixed-media, web-based installation, performance, sound, even smell.

This fourth edition of the In Profile series, Sonic Boom, examines four artists who are working in what could be called a booming field in the art world: sound, also called audio art or sound installation. To some it is just noise, albeit with banks of computers, high-tech speakers and jumbles of tangled wires, and playing to esoteric-looking crowds at performances in barns or obscure festivals.
Jean-Pierre Aube: "For some artists working with technology, the more shiny it is, the more it looks professional. When we look at Star Trek, everything looks so smooth: it's like a bourgeois living room."View Larger Image View Larger Image
Jean-Pierre Aube: "For some artists working with technology, the more shiny it is, the more it looks professional. When we look at Star Trek, everything looks so smooth: it's like a bourgeois living room."
JOHN KENNEY, THE GAZETTE
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But sound work, unlike video or web-based work, draws on a long history dating from the early 20th century. Artists in movements like Dada and the Italian Futurists - one of whom, Luigi Russolo, wrote the seminal 1913 sound manifesto, The Art of Noises - made the observation that the sound landscape of the modern age is entirely new, marked with a technological urbanism: the clangs, yelps, squeals and groans of machines. The first noise performances by early sound artists were received in confused silence - one dissatisfied Futurist compared it to "showing the first steam engine to a herd of cows."

continued from e1

But technologies - and the public - seem to have caught up to the concept. Desktop studios and trips to Radio Shack have increased the access to recording and editing. And as everyone knows, anything an artist can get his hands on is fair game. Montreal, in particular, has a strong reputation internationally. With yearly festivals like Mutek and Elektra, support from and access to such art centres as Quartier Ephemere, and ambitious installations like the Silophone, a disused grain silo in the Old Port that in 2000 was turned into a kind of musical instrument, sound in the city is booming.

With the visual getting most of the aesthetic coin in museums and galleries, it is easy to forget the other senses - or dismiss them as devoid of content serious enough for aesthetic investigation. Yet artists are increasingly exploring sound, smell and taste as vehicles for content.

During a stint as a bicycle courier in this city, I ran the usual range of adjustments to the haste, pace and danger of a job that is carried out in a panicky sensory jumble. One adjustment was particularly telling: since you can't swivel your head all the time to look out for traffic, you put your head down, stare fixedly ahead and listen hard. Your eyes are for steering, but your ears are for navigation, and they become the predominant tool for self-preservation.

"We use (sound) like a radar - we think we know where we are with the space in front of our eyes, but if you ever have an ear problem, it's amazing ... blind people walk with a stick, tapping it. It's not to feel out things, it's setting up echoes."Steve Heimbecker is a thickset, methodical man in his 40s. He stares - as most sound artists necessarily do during interviews - into a computer screen, going through DVDs of his work. Heimbecker explores, among other things, the sculptural dimensions of sound. His work with what he calls "acoustic mapping" situates the observer in a multi-channel sound environment.

In The Acoustic Line as the Crow Listens, the artist plotted a mile through the landscape and recorded simultaneously at eight sites placed about 200 metres equidistant. For the resulting installation, speakers are placed together in a line that compresses the mile into 64 feet. The result is a time-warped stereo experience: environmental sounds that travel a mile, like a car horn, move and fade rapidly in a squished sonic environment, bending perception.

"So conceptually, if you walk really fast, you would be travelling faster than the speed of sound," the artist says.
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He fabricates most of his installations himself; his studio is a jumble of speaker boxes built to spec for his next show. His work travels widely to sound festivals and galleries in Europe and North America.

A Saskatchewan native recently transplanted to Montreal, Heimbecker is most known for his sound work with the Silophone and a 2003 installation titled Wind Array Cascade Machine, where a field of 64 wheat-like stalks of electronic sensors bent with the wind on the roof of the

Ex-Centris building on St. Laurent Blvd. The data stream from the rooftop sensors was transmitted to galleries in Toronto and Europe, where other installations, called Pods, translated the data into rows of upright LED readouts on poles, reinterpreting the wind as a field of oscillating lights in the gallery.

"I realized that the wave patterns of a wheat field caused by the wind were exactly how the sine wave works ... so it's a metaphorically perfect thing."

If music is, as American composer John Cage said, "organized sound," then Heimbecker displays how sound, transcribed by technology, can be made into an aesthetic replication of experience: not music, but something altogether new. Heimbecker's eyes light up at the elegant idea: "So the wind in Quebec was blowing in Toronto ..."

"I don't really work with data like Steve does. Steve is really more into programming, how data inputs and then outputs differently. It's totally another way of working ..."

Jean-Pierre Gauthier, preparing for his exhibition at the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal in February, is distracted and intense, with a furrowed brow, constantly looking elsewhere. A maker of sound-producing kinetic installations, Gauthier starts up a piece that's waiting to be shipped from his east-end studio: a piano with wires running from the keys to a swarm of more wires, switches and sensors stuffed into the seat.

The piece is activated by motion sensors. As the viewer moves, the piano twitches into action, plucked notes sputter here and there, initially startling me into thinking that I had stepped on something accidentally
'There are three microprocessors. I program the sequence. (The computer) chooses randomly the note ... Each sequence is tripped by motion sensors."

The effect is unsettling and twitchy at first. As you move, the volume of notes gains mass, cascading into a nervous symphony.

"I like it to be random, so at one point I lose control of the result. ... The composition gets free, like this one - I select the notes ... but the rest is out of my control. To me, the 'order' of this is about trying to get the work free from my control."
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Gauthier, represented by the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, was the 2004 winner of the Sobey Art Award, a $50,000 award given to Canadian artists under 40. Gauthier's noisy, kinetic installations have received lots of notice and justifiable acclaim.

Usually working with everyday objects like skis, mirrors or hammers, Gauthier fashions these into robotic instruments that sing: "Basically the objects are quite insignificant, they're quite normal - but the sound they can make is quite amazing," he says. "(They're) just amplified, no (added) effect. I use as much as possible the pure sound of the object, and (try) to find an object that has its own colour."

In his 2002 installation Echotriste, Gauthier combined mirrors with dangling industrial coils that scored the mirrors' surfaces to create ethereal sounds suggesting an eerie human chorus - home-made music that gives a nod to the Futurists themselves, who encouraged artists to create their own instruments.

"I loved electronics when I was a kid - I had a Radio Shack electronic kit. The work brought me to this. It was quite natural for me to do this."

"Jean-Pierre (Gauthier) and (I) have the same background - we both did our master's at UQAM - a real visual art background. When I think about Pierre, he's a craftsman: He builds stuff."

Jean-Pierre Aube started as a photographer, but instead of visual images now captures sound. "There's not a big difference. ... I go around in the woods with my VLF receiver and bring something back with a technology device - the camera is a radio receiver for me (now)."

Aube is a tall, gregarious man who works out of his home in the north end. The interview is occasionally accented by the staccato wails of his new baby in the other room. Leaning back on a thrift-store couch, we watch a video projection of a performance piece he did at the Quartier Ephemere this past summer. A huge mass of giant speakers sits in the middle of a room. Titled Save the Waves, the system - built out of plywood, old computers and scrap material - showed that he is not averse to building stuff, either.

"A critic wrote that the exhibition isn't really about the object, it was more about the sound - which surprised me a little bit because those speakers weighed 3,000 pounds ..."

Aube often works with a VLF (very low frequency) receiver that he makes himself:
"It's basically (like) a hula hoop with 300 feet of cable, ... a simple radio receiver that allows you to grab all natural electromagnetic phenomena."

Very low frequency was inadvertently discovered in the 1800s when it became apparent that telegraph lines picked up signals from atmospheric phenomena like the aurora borealis. VLF receivers also pick up what Aube considers to be the frequency of modernity: "60 hertz is the soundtrack of domestic life, because 60 hertz is everywhere. Your fridge hums at 60 hertz."

Save the Waves is a reflection on Aube's difficulty with getting far enough away from the interference of 60hz electrical lines to record the aurora himself. In the piece, a series of receivers pick up all electromagnetic signals in and around the building, while a performer runs a hand-held receiver over various appliances: a fluorescent light, a sound board, the computers themselves. The effect is an eerie accidental modulation coming from the giant speakers, like a mass of chanting Buddhist monks, all produced by our own electromagnetic pollution.
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Aube, a darling of the electronic festival circuit, has shown his work in such far-flung places as Latvia, France, the Philippines and Germany. Sound art, like a lot of technology-based work, seems to have more of a receptive audience outside North America:

"Let me put it this way: (on this continent) I've never shown my work outside of Quebec, but I've shown 20 times in Europe in the past few years." He adds: "Montreal has a big scene. ... Mutek - it's huge and known all around the world."

"Sound is big nowadays."

Christof Migone agrees. But while the audience is growing for such work, he, like a lot of others, finds that more traditional museums and galleries are taking time to adjust to the medium: "Some galleries are starting (to show more sound work) ... but it's also not an ideal space ... they've done shows, but the result is a cacophony - they just don't take into account that it's a radically different medium."

Migone - tall, slight, and reticent - sits at the kitchen table in his modest Little Italy apartment. He displays a more multidisciplinary bent in his work, but sound is his base: After starting in radio at CKUT in the 1990s with his show Danger in Paradise, he pushed the envelope of experimentation with recording and broadcasting, and has written extensively on the subject of audio art.

"I think sound is something I keep returning to, I guess because I have a certain level of skill. Once I get an idea it often translates into sound, because I guess I can sort of see how it can materialize."

In his work Crackers, Migone solicited volunteer performers through radio and print ads, seeking individuals who were willing to make cracking sounds with various parts of their bodies. Some were more than willing, cracking necks, wrists, toes and jaws - and providing Migone with enough recording material for years. Crackers started as a sound installation in 1998, but was redone in performances and installations in Paris, Geneva and Los Angeles and as recently as this fall in Montreal at UQAM's gallery.
One of the recordings was a string of cracks from various parts of the body, edited closely together, bristling and alive with varying notes and textures: the music of wet popcorn, and strangely compelling to listen to.

"When presented in artists' talks or things like that, people have a dual reaction. Some kind of wince, and other people start cracking," he says. "What interests me is also the 'uncontrollable-ness' of that action. When you crack, it's a habit, it's a compulsion."

Some of his other work displays a penchant for recording obsessive-compulsive behaviours and bodily functions - like P, where the artist recorded 1,000 moments of urination while saying "P."
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"Crackers really helped me focus, and I did a fart record afterwards which kind of applied the same kind of restrictions and focus."

Creating with a blend of old-fashioned microphone recording and software editing, Migone keeps the technology simple to focus on the product and the idea.

"I try to downplay sound, in a sense, because (the work) gets pigeonholed. Most of the time it's not necessarily about the medium. I'm much more interested in the initial idea."

Steve Heimbecker agrees: "I think a lot of sound artists are really involved in the process as much or more than the outcome. ... Many of the ideas themselves are based on expanding technologies, (and) sometimes result in a piece that's interesting, sometimes not. ... The big discussion now is, 'What is the content?', because the technology's kind of flatlined - everything you can do with it has been imagined. "

But with the plethora of noise in our world, and since part of the artist's job description is to absorb and reflect human experience, the genre is constantly brushing up against the definition of music.

"(John) Cage thought everything was music," Migone says. "There's no such thing as silence - and he incorporated everything into music. And that's dangerous for sound art, because how does it carve out its own territory outside of (music)?"

montrealgazette.com

Sound Sights: To see more photos of the artists' works and link to more information about them on the Internet, go to Editor's Picks.

姚大鈞談《中國聲音藝術: 兩千五百年的聆聽》 （第一部分）

講座日期：2009年10月16日
地點：灣仔告士打道一號 香港演藝學院4樓 EDT Lab

姚大鈞, 聲音藝術家，唱片製作人，策展人，電台主持人，藝術史研究員。長年來透過電台節目、網站、及教學推動前衛音樂發展。曾策劃北京聲納、台北聲納、上海電子藝 術節河流體開幕式等大型新媒體及聲音藝術演出。九七年起組創「中國聲音小組」對中國各地市聲音現象進行研究、紀錄及創作。近年創作包括中國城市聲音裝置作 品系列，以不同的空間譬喻及聆聽方式探討中國各城市之聲音現象。在兩岸開創聲音藝術的系統教學，目前任教於中國美術學院新媒體藝術系。

公開講座：姚大鈞談《中國聲音藝術: 兩千五百年的聆聽》
(普通話主講, 英語補充)

謝謝大家在禮拜五的晚上抽空來這邊，我首先要抱歉因為我本來是來演出的，明天晚上和後天晚上要演出，今天晚上需要綵排，他們那邊已經開始綵排了，我是偷偷溜出來的，在這邊跟大家談完以後我必須趕回去，在8 點半要離開這裏，所以時間非常短，我希望把演講的部分儘量縮短，可以讓我們有更多的時間交流。因為我覺得跟大家交流是我比較有興趣的，而不是個人的演說，我希望不要把這次談話變成一個演講，一個很規矩的演講模式，因為我真的沒有寫好一個稿子， 但是我有一些材料希望跟大家分享。如果大家在我講的過程中有任何的疑問或想法，或有不清楚的地方，可以隨時舉手發問，就是希望大家不要把這作為正式的演講，因為我沒有寫好一篇演講稿。我們現開始進入主題——“中國人的聽音”，這個課題是非常有意思的，也是我個人研究了很多年的，但是這個主題並沒有人花太多功夫去研究，尤其是沒有從宏觀的角度去研究，也就是說，很多人研究古代的樂論，文獻，聽覺（跟音樂有關的文獻有大量的史料，注釋及學術論文），但是沒有人從它真正的本體，把它作為一個聽聲音的文獻或者說從聽聲音這件事情本身去研究文獻。我們都知道很多古代文獻，比如說《禮記》，《樂記》以及歐陽修的《秋聲賦》，這些都是我們耳熟能詳的東西，但是我們都從非常傳統的角度去看它，對於歐陽修的《秋聲賦》，我們一直把它當成文學作品，甚至是我們在中學需要背誦的一篇古文，而沒有從它的內容去看它到底是怎麼回事，所以今天我希望從一種新的角度來看大家可能已經接觸過的一些材料，從新的角度把它背後的真正意思揭開來，這些材料與西方接觸衝擊後產生的新的意義，這是我們主要的研究對象。

我現在換到另外一張畫，這張畫可能大家也看過，這是很有名的南宋的一幅畫。這幅畫現在在臺北的故宮博物院，它是古代非常著名的山水畫家馬遠的兒子馬嶺畫的《靜聽松風》(Quietly Listening to the Sounds of Pine-trees)。這幅畫非常有名，但一般我們研究它多半是從畫風，或畫的主題及對象，比如這個人的身份是什麼，我們關注它的構圖，一些美術史的關注，但這張畫經過我們今天晚上的討論以後， 大家會對它有不同的看法，有一種新的角度去分析它。

我們要從古代說起，古代的很多東西是我們熟悉的，我們熟悉它們的方式是用音樂、哲學、文學古文去認識它們，或是一種古畫的方式去認識它們。但是貫穿所有這些不同領域、不同媒體、媒材的各種不管是藝術或是文獻資料背後是一個很重要的事情——聆聽。聆聽在我看來非常拗口，小時候我們不會自己講或者聽到聆聽這個詞，因為聽就是聽，現在要把這個問題提高到一個理論的學術層面，所以我們用聆聽這個詞，但實際上它是很拗口的。中文裡面關於聽或是關於聲音的字眼是非常有限的，而且相當含混，比如說我們談聲音，噪音，音樂，這裏面都有音或者聲這個字，互相摻雜，混在一起，混淆不清的，這個時候我們可以看古代的樂論，其實就比我們現在的現代漢語的說法更清楚，比如說古代的樂論我們看一段，“To illustrate my point about the confusion of the terms for sounds, music and noise, in contemporary spoken Chinese, if we can compare to classical Chinese, it was clearly delineated that there are three kinds of things we are talking about listening and objects of listening. The first is sound, which is similar to what we have today referring to all kinds of things that is audible. So the first one is ‘Sheng’, and the next is ‘Yin’ or equivalent to musical notes. And the highest level is the musical work ‘Yue’. ”所以「聲」、「音」、「樂」三個是分的很清楚的，很多古代的東西從現代的角度看，或現代的東西從古代的角度看，會有很多的衝撞，在衝撞後產生新的意義，新的認識，新的瞭解。比較古雅的方法是相互發明，這裏說的發明不是發明家的發明，而是說互相得到引證，互相刺激，互相有新的東西產生出來。我最有興趣的是把古代和現代的放在一起對比，然後有一種新的意思我們可以看得出來。這是我個人覺得最有意思的事情，也是我們現在討論聽覺為什麼把最老的和最新的放在一起的原因，所以聽覺這件事情是沒有人研究過的，應該說在近代沒有人研究過。所以我們看羅蘭巴特在1976年寫的一篇文章裏面有一句話 “Listening does not figure in the encyclopedias of the past, it belongs to no knowledge discipline”，就是說聽聲音這件事情不屬於過去的任何一個學門，它不是被承認的一個學科。雖然我們都在聽音樂、做音樂、寫音樂，都在享受音樂、散播音樂，但是我們沒有研究聽覺這件事情或是聽這個動作。所以很有意思的是在西方傳統裏是羅蘭巴特這些，或是更早幾十年的法國具象音樂學派(Music Concrete)才把聽覺這件事情提高到一個很高層次，因為過去西方古希臘的音樂文獻或是早期關於和聲或律法的文獻裏面，主要對象是音樂而不是聲音，到了20世紀中期(the birth of Music Concrete)具象音樂產生，70年代結構主義學者羅蘭巴特才開始用厚澀的方法看聽覺這件事情，這個研究是非常新穎的，尤其在中文世界裏是很少人討論的，但是中國有雄厚的古代聽音文獻，所以中西方兩個碰撞在一起是很有意思的。

提問： 「聆」和「聽」是不一樣的，「聆」是比較專心的，在你們研究中，兩者有甚麼分別？

答：其實中文字裏關於聽的有：「聆」、「聽」、「聞」是有區別的，比如說「聽而不聞」，「聽」應該是最廣義的，「聞」是比較專注在一個對象上的，而「聆」我覺得是更加專注的，我沒有研究過，但我認為是有差別的。但是現代中文常常需要兩個字來組成雙音節，比如「聲音」 ,我們知道「聲」和「音」其實是不一樣的，但是放在一起，成了漢語，就混淆了它們的區別。「聆聽」也是，「聆」跟「聽」是不一樣的，當它們成了一個複合詞的時候，便失去了一個區分。

我們從古代的一些裝置來看古代人怎麼對付「聽」這件事情，把「聽」具體化、形象化。請看這個照片是編鐘，距今二千五百年左右的一件東西。仔細看的話，這個東西其實是非常可怕的、非常嚇人的。我們平常接觸到它時直覺得認為它是一個考古的、出土的文物，不會把它當作一個聲音的儀器或是作品來看，但是你看它的複雜程度，不只是製作它本身相當複雜，是高度的科學技術和知識，在當時是高科技的。同時在看不到的那一部分，它背後藏著是非常可怕的、非常早熟的調律的知識。我們知道，這一套鐘，它是十二音的，在西方當時是沒有這麼完備的十二音的調律方式。所以中國古代人花了很大心血，在很多的心力放在聽覺這件事情，不只是音樂，它的重要性超過了音樂，在「聽」本身。

剛才我們提到了這個十二音的調律，調律是一個非常值得注意的現象，因為調律也就是tuning，它在西方是被當作樂理、聲響學的一部分，而在中國，調律絕對不只限於樂理或音樂上的意義，它是政治層面的一個重要區塊，翻開中國政史，古有廿五史，每個政史裏都有一個章節叫律治，在這個章節裏談的不是音樂。而實際上中國音樂經過這麼多時代，它的變化其實也不是那麼大，所以沒有那麼多可以談的。律治這個章節裏談的是調律的方式，調律是不是調得對，和諧不和諧會影響一個朝代或推翻前一個朝代的新政權的執政的合法性成功與否，影響到政治上的結果。所以調律被賦予了很高的政治含義，更廣來看，不只是政治，而且是中國人宇宙觀的一部分，tuning is a part of Chinese cosmological system, that is way beyond just political content，音樂、調律、天文、星相在古人看來是一體的。我們都知道五行這些算命，在古代是holistic，是一體的，它不是個別的。所以音樂這個調律跟其他的各種屬性要了解的話，我們就要現在看一個律法圖，每個音階上的音跟每個月份、方向都聯繫在一起。它是非常完整的，一個整體性的宇宙觀。剛才看的這個東西是祭祀用的禮器，同時也可以演奏的，也是一種樂器。但是如果把它放在今天看，把它放在一個展覽空間，它是一個很了不起的，是非常嚇人的裝置藝術。可以在雙年展、三年展馬上一炮而紅，因為它的造型非常可觀，背後技術很強，還可以發出聲音，它是一個聲音裝置藝術。但是我們要作一個區別，在古代，它先是主要作為樂器，之後再變成禮器，比如說在陪葬的時候，它就作為一種禮器。

聲音裝置藝術在藝術史、美學史上是一個很重要的轉捩點。我覺得聲音裝置的出現和流行普及及被炒作是人類幾千年音樂傳統的最終的終結。它比日本的噪音理論更早，這被視作是反音樂的發展，跟音樂本體的定義是完全相反的，它們做出來的不是音樂，是反音樂。但是如果退後一步更宏觀來看，不管是John Cage還是日本秋田倉美的極端暴力噪音理論，他們討論的題材還是聽覺。不管是聽得舒服還是不舒服、聽起來是暴力還是協和的，有節奏還是沒有節奏的，討論的還是聽，所言它們都是聽覺、音樂藝術廣義上延伸。為什麼說今天的聲音裝置藝術是人類音樂文化的終結，因為它開始讓人不再聽了，如放在美術館或是雙年展裏的一件裝置藝術，你多半的注意力會放在它視覺的構成，它的造型和它的實體，而可能對它的聲音並不那麼感興趣。這個影響是很了不起的，做得很好的一件裝置藝術。我們今天看大多數的市面上流行的裝置藝術作品，它們聲音的結果其實是我們不關注的。我覺得作為一件聲音的作品或是音樂作品，它唯一能夠作為判斷的標準就是我們願不願把我們生命裏的時間奉獻給這個作品，比如一個交響曲三十、四十分鐘，我們願不願意用四十分鐘的時間去聽一首現場的交響曲或家裏的唱片。如果真的是好的作品，我會不只一次甚至好多次反覆地花四十分鐘去聽。但是現在的聲音裝置藝術，我們可以做一個旁觀者來看聲音裝置藝術跟觀眾之間的互動情況怎樣，我們觀察到很多觀眾走到這個聲音裝置前面，看一看它的牌子，是誰做的、年份是多少、它背後的技術是什麼、是什麼樣的感應器、什麼樣的互動、用到什麼軟體硬體，瞭解以後，大概看一看，可能就走到下一個作品。所以我認為聲音裝置藝術已經變成一個反音樂(anti-music)，因為我們不再聽了，我們只是把它當成一個造型藝術來評價來衡量它的價值，而它的聲音那部分，只不過是把它成為一個能夠發聲的裝置藝術。(It’s an installation with sound instead of a sound installation.)

我們看古代人聽音的廣度，隨便舉一些例子，這個東西可能大家不太注意到，在墨子的時代，2500年的時候就有完整文字記錄的文獻可以證明的一件中國人的發明——「地聽」跟「甕聽」。這是宋代軍事百科全書裏《五金總要》的一個插圖，這個插圖非常簡陋，但是我們可以看到地聽的構造，它實際上就是一個大的甕、大的瓦罐。我把這把個放在一起，這是出自《中國聲學史》這一部很重要的教科書裡面的，放在一起就發現這個瓦罐實際上就是一個 tempo resonated。中國古代人當然沒有一個resonated的概念，但他們知道這個東西的特性。「地聽」（geophone）是在古代被當作戰爭防備的武器，它不是用來攻擊的武器，而是防備的時候需要用的一個設備。先在地上挖一個大洞，把大的瓦罐埋在裏面，再派一個人坐到裏面去聽。因為在古代攻城的時候會有挖地道，要想知道敵人挖地道的進度和方向，必須通過地聽的裝置來探測。所以它是防衛的時候一個重要的軍時設備。這個很有意思，我們從今天的角度來看，它是一個非常早的發明。現在我們多半用geophone來聽埋在地下的油管是不是漏油，越戰時美軍用來geophone監聽地下越共挖地道。中國人是很早就應用geophone。

剛才提到我喜歡新的跟舊的結合、衝擊，我也曾經為南京這個城市做的一個作品叫《地聽南京》。希望用地聽這個模式建構一個空間，在裡面可以聽到四方有不同的聲音傳過來，模擬從前地聽的概念。我們當然不可能在畫廊挖一個地洞，所以做了一個地地面上的空間。

Reading Images: Multimodality, Representation and New Media © 2004 Gunther Kress

Image: Roman Duszek © 2003

Conference presentation Video

Keywords


Multimodality, literacy, representation, design, media affordances

Abstract


In this paper I wish to point to what I see as the central issues in the linked shifts in representation and dissemination: that is, from the constellation of mode of writing and medium of book / page, to the constellation of mode of image and medium of screen. In particular I will draw attention to consequent shifts in authority, in changes in forms of reading, shifts in shapes of knowledge and in forms of human engagement with the social and natural world.
Paper


Readers of this journal are experts in design. What I can offer is a particular take on certain issues in design from the perspective of (Social) Semiotics, and more specifically, from the perspective of multimodality, which deals with all the means we have for making meanings – the modes of representation - and considers their specific way of configuring the world. To make this concrete, here is a small example. Say I am designing a biology text-book. The subject matter is ‘plant-cells’. If I use words, I will have to say “Every cell has a nucleus”. If I use an image, I will need to place a large dot somewhere in the circle which indicates the cell to represent the nucleus (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Cell and nucleus





To reflect on this: in writing or speaking I have to use a sentence in which two entities – cell and nucleus – are related by a verb, have, indicating a possessive relation: the cell has something (much like: “I have a car, a house, two kids, etc”). I could use a different verb: “In every cell there is a nucleus”. The meaning is now quite different: about existence, there is and location, in. If I draw, I have to place a large dot representing the nucleus somewhere in a circle which represents the cell. Wherever I place it, someone looking at the image is entitled to assume that the nucleus actually is where I have placed it in the circle/cell – whether I intended to or not, or whether it actually belongs there or not. Each mode forces me into making certain kinds of commitments about meaning, intended or not. The choice of mode has profound effects on meaning, and textbook designers, for instance, need to be aware of such meaning effects of different modes.

Meanings are always disseminated through particular media: the medium of the book; or the medium of the CD-ROM, involving still and moving images, speech, writing, cartoon-like characters in comic strips, music, and so on. It might be the medium of the teacher’s body, involving speech, movement and gesture. All media offer specific possibilities to the designer, and to the reader/user in their reading and / or use.

The approach from Social Semiotics not only draws attention to the many kinds of meanings which are at issue in design, but the “social” in “Social Semiotics” draws attention to the fact that meanings always relate to specific societies and their cultures, and to the meanings of the members of those cultures. Semiotics takes the sign - a fusion of a form and a meaning – as its basic unit. In making signs we –embedded in our cultures - select forms in such a way that they expresses the meanings that we ‘have’ always ‘aptly’; hence signs always express, through their form, the meanings that the makers of signs have wished to make.

Take a simple example. I am in an American airport, looking for something to eat. I see a sign Bar and Grille, outlined in lurid red neon lights. Being hungry, I am attracted by “Grille”; I am aware that I am particularly drawn by the “e” on “Grille”. As a semiotician – even a hungry one – I wonder about this ”e”, in part because just the night before I have had a discussion with a colleague about how signs work. I order a brisket sandwich and think about this sign. What the “e” tells me is something about tradition and ‘Englishness’; it relates to many other signs I have seen where the “e” has had similar meanings, as in “Ye olde gifte shoppe”. And, even though I know it is a marketing gimmick, I want to be seduced by its meanings. Of course all the other parts of the sign also mean: the ‘Grill’ – with or without the “e” - speaks of barbeques, of the outdoors, of freshly cooked food. For the sauce I had the choice of mild, medium and make my day (- which I chose; and it did). “Bar” has its specific meanings for Americans reading the sign; and the lurid red neon sign of course ‘means’ to attract my attention, and maybe offer whatever promises ‘lurid red’, in the context of “Bar”, might hold.

All these are social meanings, specific to a particular culture. At the same time they are chosen, put together for their potential to mean, by the deliberate action of the designer. The sign - a complex message of words, of letters, of colour and font-types with all their cultural resonances - reflects the interests of its designer as much as the designer’s imagined sense of those who will see and read the sign. The sign is based on a specific rhetorical purpose, and intent to persuade with all means possible those who pass by and notice it.
Modes and their affordances: the materiality of modes
The kinds of meanings made by the letter “e”, by the word “Grille”, and by the colour “red” are different kinds of meanings. Not only do they mean different things, they mean differently. You can’t look up the meaning of “e”, nor the meaning of “lurid red”. What “e” does is not so much refer to some object, such as a Grill, or a Bar, but rather to evoke by cultural associations. It has a history of use in particular places (in ‘marketing speak’ for instance), and it is knowing its provenance that gives it its meaning. “e” puts me in the world of ‘Olde England’ with all its mythic associations. In one sense, colours work similarly: I have encountered the colour ‘red’ in many instances, as in “red light district”, as a colour of lipsticks: so in this context it is eroticized. Words have their histories, but they also refer; they name things (as nouns) or actions (as verbs) or attributes (as adjectives) or as relations of location (as prepositions), and so on.

One of the present tasks of a social semiotic approach to multimodality is to describe the potentials and limitations for meaning which inhere in different modes. For that, it is essential to consider the materiality of modes. Speech uses the material of (human) sound; writing uses the material of graphic substance. There are things you can do with sound that you cannot do with graphic substance, either easily or at all; not even imitate all that successfully graphically. The up and down of the voice, which produces the melody of (English) speech, makes many meanings, from straightforward questions to highly modulated ones: imagine saying, in a tone of incredulity, ”you did what?”; to many varying forms of emotion and affect. Even highly experienced writers find it impossible to reproduce these meanings in writing and need to take recourse to devices such as “… she said incredulously”. Maybe the major shift in the new landscape of communication in this respect lies in the increasing use of image, even in situations where previously writing would have been used. Consequently an urgent task is understanding the different affordances of writing and image.

In alphabetic cultures writing tends to start, in words, grammar and syntax, as the transcription of speech. It quickly develops its own structures and forms (syntax, punctuation, layout, for instance), so that written English is now very different to spoken English; yet writing does ‘lean on’ speech. Speech happens in time: one sound, one word, one sentence follows another. The ‘logic’ of temporal sequence is the major principle of ordering of languages such as English. Speech and writing are organized by the logic and the ordering principle of sequence in time. This underlies the syntax of English, which is enormously more complex than mere sequence, but is there nonetheless. If I have two simple sentences, such as:

The mists dissolved and the sun rose. It matters in what sequence I place them.
The sun rose and the mists dissolved is very different in meaning from
The mists dissolved and the sun rose.

The one tells us how weather works; the other puts us in the magical, mysterious world of Lord of the Rings maybe. Sequence implies causality: the sentence which comes first seems to be causally prior to that which comes after. But notice that that is so whether I want that meaning or not: I cannot but order them in some way. If I have two friends, Amanda and Josh, and they have jus got married, I might want to say either Amanda married Josh or Josh married Amanda; the two are different in causal terms – who was responsible for what. They are also different in terms of affective ‘proximity’: I may be closer to Amanda than to Josh, and so I place that person’s name first.

In speech as in writing we use words. Yet only that for which there is a word can be brought into communication: no word, no communication about it. In image, if there is something that we wish to depict, we can depict whatever we want. We don’t ask: ”Is there an appropriate image we can use?” Contrary to common sense assumptions about language, words are vague. You have no doubt fully understood the sentences about Josh and Amanda, yet you know very little about either of them: how tall Josh is, what age Amanda, what colour hair they have, and so on. If you saw a photo of them, or even a drawing, much of this would be clear. Words are (relatively) vague, often nearly empty of meanings; by contrast images are full, ‘plain’ with meaning. With image the placement of the depicted entities relative to one another in the image-space is the principle used for making meaning. Take the two images below, drawn by the then four year-old Georgia.

Figure 2a, 2b. Georgia at the side of her mother, and Georgia between her parents







The difference in meaning depends on the relation of the depicted entities to each other in the frame of the picture-space: the resultant difference in Georgia’s sense of herself and her family is an effect of these spatial relations. In drawing the materiality of sound is not available for making, to indicate just how ‘being’ Georgia’s parents seem to her, instead the affordance of space is used – making things taller or shorter, broader or thinner. In fact, Georgia was quite a bit taller than she drew herself here; and her father was quite a bit shorter than her mother. Size here shows the metaphoric use of vertical extension: Georgia sees her parents as affectively /psychically much taller than they actually were; and she makes her father seem as tall as her mother by ‘lifting him off the ground’ somewhat. That leaves aside the meanings of colour.

One further point needs to be mentioned here; it follows from the distinct ordering principles of the two modes. The written text – as indeed the spoken – forces the reader (and the listener) to stick to its order: the elements have to be read in the sequence in which they occur. That is not the case, or far less so, with the image text. Yes, the elements are there in certain spatial relations, but how the reader reconstitutes them is largely up to the reader. The order of the written text is fixed; the order of the image text is (relatively) open.

Media and their interrelation with modes
Modes and media exist in culturally and historically shaped ‘constellations’. The one that has dominated the alphabetic cultures of the ‘West’ over the last 300 years or so is that of mode of writing with medium of book and page. Writing as mode and book as medium have shaped western imagination, forms of knowledge, practices of reading; the technology of writing has shaped the book, and the technology of the book has shaped how writing has developed. The traditional book represented the work of the author, who had laboured to produce a text, which in its ordering represented a ‘body of knowledge’ or the shape of the world – whether fictional or actual. Chapters in the book were coherent and complete in themselves; paragraphs had their logic; and sentences derived their form and purpose from the organization of the paragraph and the larger text.

In that world the reader’s task was to attempt to follow the pre-given ordering of the written text, embodying the authority of the author, working assiduously to reproduce the meaning which the author had intended for the reader. In that world, authors could confidently speak and act on behalf of the reader, as did the author of the example in Figure 3, The Boy Electrician: “The prime instinct of almost any boy is to make and to create… At seven he will wire the whole house with his telephone system made from empty tins connected with varying lengths of string. His older brother will improve on that by purchasing a crystal, a telephone receiver, and a few pieces of insulated copper wire…” (p 5)
Figure 3. Spread from “The Boy Electrician”



Certain texts – novels for instance – encourage the reader to engage in the semiotic work of imagination, following the given order of words on the line but filling the relatively ‘empty’ words with the reader’s meaning. Contemporary texts - whether information books of all kinds, web-pages, the screens of CD ROMs, and so on - in their increasingly often image-like textual organization, ask the reader to perform different semiotic work, namely to design the order of the text for themselves. Consequently two phenomena are now becoming noticeable, as in Figure 4, which had been present but never noticed before: the entry point of the ‘page’ and its reading path.
Figure 4. Home page of the University of London Institute of Education (www.ioe.ac.uk)

The page of The Boy Electrician has one entry point, at the top left of the page; it had long become naturalized and therefore was no longer visible. Nor was the reading path: it asked the reader to follow the lines, in the order in which the culture had determined. The page/screen in Figure 4 has, by contrast, about 13 entry points. The reader interest determines where he or she wishes to enter the page. The same applies to the ‘reading path’ which the reader (now usually called a ‘visitor’) wishes to construct: it too is determined by the reader’s interest.

For design this is a crucial factor, and a profound change. The designer of such ‘pages’ / sites is no longer the ‘author’ of an authoritative text, but is a provider of material arranged in relation to the assumed characteristics of the imagined audience. The power of the designer is to assemble materials which can become ‘information’ for the visitor, in arrangements which might correspond to the interests of the visitor. For the visitor however “Information is material which is selected by individuals to be transformed by them into knowledge to solve a problem in their life world” (Boeck, 2002)

Making texts and reading texts
In the conception outlined here, the processes of making texts and reading texts are both are processes of design; and both are in important sense inversions of the social and semiotic arrangements of the era of the dominance of the constellation of writing and book. It has now been overtaken by the new constellation of image and screen. The (at least mythically) dominant media are now those of the screen - whether of the Gameboy, the mobile telephone, the PC, or still the TV and video. The book and its page had been the site of writing and the logic of writing had shaped the order of the page and the book; the screen is the site of the image and the logic of the image is shaping the order and the arrangements of the screen.

Writing can appear on the screen; but when it does it is subordinated to the logic of the image; just as image could appear on the page, though subordinated to the logic of writing. The logic image will more and more shape the appearance and the uses of writing, a process which is already apparent in many instances of public communication. In the former arrangement, the figure of the author and the mode of writing dominated; in the new arrangements the designer and the mode of image dominate; the story-board is an apt metaphor for this change - image led, and very often the product of a design-team.
Design as choice in context
In the multimodal landscape of communication, choice and therefore design become central issues. If I have a number of ways of expressing and shaping my message, then the questions that confront me are: which mode is best, most apt, for the content / meaning I wish to communicate? Which mode most appeals to the audience whom I intend to address? Which mode most corresponds to my own interest at this point in shaping the message for communication? Which medium is preferred by my audience? Or by me? How am I positioning myself if I choose this medium or this mode rather than those others? All of these call for choices to be made, resting on my assessment of the environment in which communication takes place, in all its complexity, in its widest sense, in which a commodity – the smell of my shampoo, the packaging of the bag of flour, the shape of the bottle of soft-drink – are all ‘messages’ to interpret. The question of choice is illustrated by the contrast of say, Figure 3 with Figure 4, or of Figure 3 with Figure 5.
Figure 5. Visual geography-tectonics

The page in Figure 3 is the realization of choices – of stylistic choices in relation to writing, choices of font (though for any one publishing house there might not have been choice), the framings of the text through syntax (marked by punctuation) and in text (marked by paragraphing, for instance), and by layout in spacings, as well as the frame around the ‘densely printed page’ (Reading Images, 1996). However, these choices had nearly faded into invisibility through the two aspects of habituation and convention. By contrast, the page in Figure 5 shows a plethora of choices made and realized through the modes of writing, layout, colour, and image.

Design is a prospective enterprise. The question it asks is: “what, in this environment, with this kind of audience, with these resources that are available for implementing my design, given these social, economic, ‘political’ constraints, and with my interests now at this moment, is the best way of shaping that which I wish to make, whether as ‘message’ or as any object (of design)?” Here, briefly, are two examples, showing choices made and interests expressed. Figure 6 is the result of the request of the teacher of a class of six year-olds to “make me a drawing and write me a story of our trip to the British museum.”
Figure 6. Notes from a trip to the British Museum

The different ‘take’ on the representation of the day in writing and drawing is startling (all the images and stories showed this contrast): salient object-entities in spatial relation in the visually represented world, contrasted with salient events/actions in temporal relations. We might dismiss this as childish representation. Or we might say that these six-year olds are using the two modes of writing and image in line with their inherent affordances – the (transformed) recollection of the visually encountered world through the spatially organized mode; and the (transformed) recollection of the actionally experienced world through the temporally organized mode. If we take that approach we see that the children have made apt use of the affordances of each mode. The facts of the representational world are certainly moving in the same direction.

In the next example two modes co-exist in one integrated textual object, the question is the same one: what are the principles for the use the modes (the question of “principled use” can and needs to be asked of all my examples). At the end of four lessons on ‘plant cells’, the teacher had asked the 14 year old students, working in groups of four, to prepare a slide of the epidermis of an onion, look at it through a microscope, and then “write what you did” and “draw what you saw”.
Figure 7a, 7b. Eye-piece of the microscope, and Cells as a “brick wall”

The teacher had given two additional instructions: ”put your writing at the top of the page, and the drawing at the bottom”, and “use only black pencils in your drawing”. Apart from the different responses to this instruction (7 b used colour pencils) there is the startling difference in what each “saw” and what each wrote. One written text is a recount, the other a procedure. The recount, generically speaking, says: “this is what happened”; the procedure, generically speaking, says: “this is what ought to happen”. The drawings differ equally profoundly. One declares “this is what theory tells us is the case” (on a worksheet there had been a comment “what you should see is something like a brick wall; each cell is a brick”); the other declares “this is what I actually observed and recorded”. The first is the "truth" of theory; the second is the "truth" of the empirical, reliably recorded.

The question of design is in the center here. The matter at issue is of course ‘plant cells’; but maybe even more than that it is: ”what is it to be scientific?” In each case the answer is broadly the same (though differently realized modally): “to be scientific is to adhere to the "truth" of theory”. In Figure 7 a, the student lodges the "truth" of the facts of the empirical world in the drawing, and the "truth" of theory through the replicability of scientific practice in the written text. In Figure 7 b, the student lodges the "truth" of scientific theory in the drawing, and the "truth" of actual practice in the written. In each case event-like representation uses the mode of writing; and the representation of object-entities is lodged in drawing.
Design as a part of rhetoric of communication
The contemporary social world is marked by increasing fragmentation and individuation (Beck, 1986); in stark contrast to the world of the 19th and early 20th century, the world of stable structures and of individual integration and definition in those structures. Strong frames, and integration into strong frames had their analogues in communication through stable genres, and through stable modal ‘choices’. In periods of stability the question of effective communication is answered by the idea of convention and of competent action in relation to those conventions. In periods of fragmentation and individuation communication is fraught: each environment of communication asks that social and ‘political’ relations, tastes, needs and desires be newly assessed. The question of rhetoric – how to make my communication most effective in relation to this audience, here and now - has moved newly, urgently into the center. Rhetoric has become a major issue for design.
Bibliography Kress, G.R. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: RoutledgeFalmer
Kress, G.R. and van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: the grammar of graphic design. London: Routledge
Kress, G.R. and Van Leeuwen, T. (2002). Multimodal Discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Edward Arnold
Jewitt, C. and G.R. Kress (eds) (2003). Multimodal Literacie. New York: Peter Lang
Burn, A. and Parker, D. (2003). Analysing media texts. London: Continuum
Gunther Kress

Gunther Kress is professor of Education/English at the Institute of Education, University of London. He has a specific interest in the interrelations in contemporary texts of different modes of communication - writing, image, speech, music - and their effects on forms of learning and knowing. He is interested in the changes - and their effects and consequences - brought by the shift in the major media of communication from the page to the screen. Some of his recent publications are: Reading Images: the grammar of graphic design; Before Writing: rethinking the paths to literacy; (both published by Routledge); Multimodal teaching and learning: the rhetorics of the Science Classroom (Continuum); Multimodal Discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication (Edward Arnold); and Literacy in the New Media Age (Routledge).
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