Sonorous assemblages. Speculating a metallurgical aesthetic of airport media art

Abstract

ABSTRACTAs airport terminals continue to expand, the level of noise steadily increases, and yet when we think of an airport lounge, we tend to recall an image rather than a sound. Simultaneously, modern airport terminal design incorporates sound media artworks that appear to be adding to the existing cacophonic soundscape. Understanding that sound plays a formative—albeit often nonconscious—role in the shaping of our sense perception of (airport) space, in this article—resorting to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s radical empiricism—I speculate an immanent and metallurgical approach towards airport sound art, which puts forth aesthetic experience as essentially entangled with airport space and the sensorium. Engaging with two of an American artist, Christopher Janney’s airport sound and visual installations, the article posits sonorous assemblages to explore a sonic aesthetic of airport experience. In probing the boundaries of routinized perception, it thus forays into an extraperceptual dimension of spatial aesthetics.

Keywords

• Aesthetic experience, airport, Christopher Janney
• Gilles Deleuze
• sense perception
• sound art