Creativity and sound: The agony of the senses

Abstract

People create with sound, music providing the obvious example. The growing fields of sound design in film, video games, installation works, multimedia interactives and other audio environments provide further evidence of a vibrant sonic creativity (Bull 2000; Kahn and Whitehead 1992; LaBelle 2006; Schafer 1993). There is much to be said about the tools of creation in sound; their temporal and spatial aspects, issues of notation, technology and performance, and not least the longstanding relationship between music and architecture (Blesser and Salter 2006; Wittkower 1998). But in this chapter I will focus on the relationship between sound and vision, and what this troubled relationship says about creativity. I marshal evidence to the claim that creativity emerges at the thresholds (Coyne 2005), the boundaries between conditions, and as such belongs within the ludic realms of agon (Caillois 1961), the assembly for contest, the place of competition between the senses.