Sound art is an artistic discipline in which sound is utilised as a medium. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art is interdisciplinary in nature, or takes on hybrid forms. Sound art can engage with a range of subjects such as acoustics, psychoacoustics, electronics, noise music, audio media, found or environmental sound, explorations of the human body, sculpture, film or video and an ever-expanding set of subjects that are part of the current discourse of contemporary art.
In Western art early examples include Luigi Russolo’s Intonarumori or noise intoners, and subsequent experiments by Dadaists, Surrealists, the Situationist International, and in Fluxus happenings. Because of the diversity of sound art, there is often debate about whether sound art falls within the domain of either the visual art or experimental music categories, or both. Other artistic lineages from which sound art emerges are conceptual art, minimalism, site-specific art, sound poetry, spoken word, avant-garde poetry, and experimental theatre.
