Labelle-xxxx-Speaking Volumes.pdf - An International Archive of ...

of intervention through its ability to interrupt and thus mutate the givenfield of existing sound. In contrast to other media, and sensorialexperience, sound seems to intensify the level by which its publicpresence may spark disdain and annoyance, alongside pleasures. Tomake an addition to that field of sound is to play not only with thevolume and air pressure, but also people's nerves. Entering the publicrealm with sound art would seem to demand, as part of a work'sintention and scope, a self-conscious instrumentalizing of sound'sinherent force to intervene.As the artist Simon Leung has suggested, the very nature of being anindividual entails a level of intervention. Most exemplified throughspeech, Leung understands intervention first and foremost as anethical demand, whereby the voice announces the subject onto thefield of the social. To speak then is to intervene upon, through anappropriation of language, the existing scenario. Such speakingrequires both a belief in the possibility of speech itself - that the voicemay carry individual intention toward another - and a necessaryviolation of existing conditions, for speech cuts into the realm ofconversation while contributing to its evolution. Thus, the ethics of thevoice requires an acceptance, on the part of the speaker and thelistener, of the very nature of an interventionist movement. To overlaythis sensitivity onto the realm of public art, and in particular sound artin public spaces, is to suggest that the one who makes and the onewho receives are bound to a conversation produced by the intensitiesof such ethics.