To Russolo, music was passé, for it was locked into a "tiny
circle" of instruments and sounds, "vainly striving to create
new varieties of timbre"(AN 25). Music was unable to advance
forward, to incorporate dissonant or otherwise "unmusical" sounds
because it failed to accept the technological transformation of life into
its musical aesthetic. The goal of The Art of Noises was to open
the concept of "music" to the very noises that music traditionally
excludes. As Russolo notes:
Sound, estranged from life, always musical, something in itself, an
occasional not a necessary element, has become for our ears what for the
eye is a too familiar sight. Noise instead, arriving confused and irregular
from the irregular confusion of life, is never revealed to us entirely and
always holds innumerable surprises. We are certain, then, that by selecting,
coordinating, and controlling all the noises, we will enrich mankind with
a new unsuspected pleasure of the senses. (AN 27)
Music, according to Russolo, is a fantastic world superimposed on the real
one, an inviolable and sacred world. It was created among primitive peoples
who attributed the noises of nature to the gods; as a result, the reproduction
of these sounds was considered sacred and reserved for priests, who used
it to enrich their rites with mystery (AN 23). Noise, on the other
hand, was born in the nineteenth century with the invention of machines
(AN 23). The loud and metallic sounds of machines changed how sound
was understood; the result was a separation between "natural"
and "machinic" sounds. As Attali remarks, "Every code of
music is rooted in the ideologies and technologies of its age, and at the
same time produces them."35 By focusing
on the reproduction of the sounds of motors, guns, explosions, and other
"mechanical" noises, Russolo attempted to bring musical aesthetics
in line with modern life, to merge metallic noise with the noises of nature,
human beings, and animals -- in order to reclaim the "mystery"
and sacredness of musical production. This is not to say that Futurist music
must only reproduce the sounds of machines,36
but rather musicians must recognize the changes brought about by machines
and their alteration of human perception. In a world of noise and speed,
music is noise, and musical syntax irregular, inconsistent, and confused.
Noise is generally defined in one of two ways: either as a disturbance that
disrupts or disables the flow of information, or as meaningless data that
cannot be retrieved. In other words, noise annoys. Russolo's chart, however,
follows a more recent definition of noise that is used in complexity and
chaos theory:37 namely, "that noise
is not always as disagreeable and annoying as you believe and say, and that
for him who understands it, noise represents instead an inexhaustible
source of sensations, from one moment to the next exquisite and profound,
grandiose and exaltant" (AN 41). For Russolo, the music of everyday
life was just that: both the sounds of automobiles and the whispering of
words you cannot make out. The musician, Russolo asserts, must "observe
all noises attentively"; learn their rhythms and their principal and
secondary pitches; "compare the various timbres of noises to the timbres
of sounds"; acquire a "passion" and "taste for noises,"
so that "the motors and machines of our industrial cities can one day
be given pitches, so that every workshop will become an intoxicating orchestra
of noises" (AN 29). Listen to the world; hear how it has changed,
and reproduce those changes accordingly.
Russolo's primary forum for expounding his musical ideas were his "noise
instruments," which he began constructing in 1913 "with the help
of Ugo Piatti" (AN 32). By 1915, Russolo had created 21 of these
instruments, most taking "the form of boxes of various sizes, usually
constructed on a rectangular base. At the front end, a trumpet serves to
collect and reinforce the noise-sound. Behind, there is a handle to produce
the motion that excites the noise" (AN 75-6). The instruments
[see figure below], as bulky and "machine-like" as the sounds
they produced, were played "by gripping the lever with the left hand
and turning the handle, or pressing the button, with the right" (AN
76). The pitch could be altered by adjusting the lever. The individual instruments,
although uniform in appearance, were named and categorized according to
their sound, its pitch, frequency, and intensity. These instrumental groups
-- like howlers, roarers, cracklers, rubbers, bursters, gurglers, hummers,
and whistlers -- attempted to reproduce the various "families of noise"
listed above, yet doing so in a specifically musical context. A "howler,"
for instance, is described as "the most musical of the noise instruments,"
for it can "hold a note as long as desired without change of bow."
Its sound resembles "the siren to some extent," as well as "the
sounds of the string bass, the cello, and the violin" (AN 78).
What stands out most in Russolo's assessment of his instrument is his desire
to correlate their sounds with other, more traditional instruments. Unlike
Marinetti and other Futurists, Russolo's aesthetic theory sought moderation
over revolution. As Tisdall and Bozzolla remark, Russolo "was arguing
for the acceptance of a new awareness of beauty in which the perception
of the primary sounds of nature was balanced with the excitement of city
noises."38 Russolo did not want to
annihilate music, but end the differentiation between music and noise --
a fact nowhere more evident than his belief that, "Since the musicality
of the noise instruments is incontestable and their intonation perfect,
it is logical and natural that they be joined to the conventional orchestra"
(AN 82). This approach is in stark contrast to the one offered by
Balilla Pratella in his "Manifesto of Futurist Musicians," written
in 1910. In this work, Pratella argues for a complete rejection of musical
tradition, including his design, "To convince young composers to desert
schools, conservatories and musical academies, and to consider free study
as the only means of regeneration" (F 37). Unlike Futurist rejections
of the past and the push toward a "free" aesthetic, Russolo's
approach is starkly moderate: he simply wants to expand musical boundaries,
not blow them apart.
To some extent, however, Russolo's work is, despite his emphasis upon tradition
and form, more disarming and disorienting to listeners than Marinetti's
threatening refutations of history and humanity. For Marinetti and for other
Futurists, there was no difference between their theoretical attitudes and
their artistic creations: both were designed to defamiliarize the art object
by creating a "machine aesthetic" wholly opposed to humanism and
romanticism.39 While Russolo's theoretical
approach adheres to Futurist ideology, his music (despite the alien appearance
of his instruments) is grounded in the very humanistic tradition Futurism
rejects. As a result, the music is uncanny, which is to say it elicits feelings
of both familiarity and fear. While Russolo's musical aesthetic largely
traditional, his music does not, for it insistently negates the difference
between noise, music, and sound -- and, by extension, human, animal, and
machine. Although no disc or cylinder recordings of his music survives,
several reproductions have been made using Russolo's notations and facimilies
of his instruments. One of these, "Risevglio di una Citta" ("Awakening
of a City"), can be called an exercise in noise instrumentation.40
It consists of a slowly building array of engine-like sounds, grunts, moans,
whitles, and drums, which suddenly fade then reappear at various intervals.
Like the title of the piece, the music paints an "awakening" of
a city as well as its arrival into the modern world. The piece begins with
a collage of instruments playing into one another, as the sound builds to
a crescendo, like an automobile driving up a steep hill; at the apex, the
sound dissolves into silence, which is then replaced by a single instrument
repeating the climb. In turn each instrument repeats the first segment,
rising in pitch before shutting down. My own response to the music is one
of familiarity; from Karlheintz Stockhausen to John Cage to SPK and Coil,
Russolo's attitudes as well as his music has been duplicated innumerably,
to the point that his noises are, if anything, quaint reminders of musical
history. For the audiences in 1913-14, however, the response was different;
as a correspondent for the London Pall Mall Gazette noted in his
review of an early performance:
At first a quiet even murmur was heard. The great city was asleep.
Now and again some giant hidden in one of those queer boxes snored protentiously;
and a new-born child cried. Then, the murmur was heard again, a faint noise
like breakers on the shore. Presently, a far-away noise rapidly grew into
a mighty roar. ...
A multitude of doors was next heard to open and shut with a bang, and a
procession of receding footsteps intimated that the great army of bread-winners
was going to work. Finally, all the noises of the street and factory merged
into a gigantic roar, and the music ceased.
I awoke as though from a dream and applauded.41
The merging of sounds -- the murmur of voices, children crying, waves crashing
against the shore, a roaring printing press, doors opening and shutting,
the continuous drone of factories and streets -- all come together, like
a "dream," in a single event that is at once entirely recognizable
and dangerously unsettling to a culture and a city where machines and noise
are essentially new. This "danger" is most pronounced at the first
public performance of his noise instruments in Milan on April 21, 1914,
which quickly turned into a battle between Russolo's Futurist friends (including
Marinetti) and "the professors of the Royal Conservatory of Milan and
some musicians," who opposed Futurist ideas in their entirety. "It
was," as Russolo remarks, "truly a memorable evening" (AN
33). The correspondent for the Parisian newspapers Le Temps records
a detailed account of the evening, including the 23 different noise instruments
on the stage, Russolo and his "pointed red goatee" holding a "high-held
baton," and
... an enormous crowd, overflowing boxes, orchestra and galleries.
In the most absolute silence, Marinetti requests, in vibrant intonation,
the good faith necessary to judge the great artistic discovery of Russolo.
His words, resolute and full of quiet menace, are loudly applauded. But
after a few bars of the first network-of-noises, Awakening of a City,
the pastists, who had been content for a while, try to stop the performance
at any cost. The uproar becomes deafening. The futurists restrain themselves
for an hour. ...
At the beginning of the third piece, an extraordinary thing happens: Marinetti,
Boccioni, Armando Mazzi, and Piatti vanish from the stage, emerge from the
empty orchestra pit, run across it, and hurl themselves among the seats,
assaulting the many pastists, now drunk with the rage of tradition and imbecility,
with blows, slaps, and cudgels.42
In what may be the first recorded example of stage diving, the Futurist
"mosh pit" continued throughout the remainder of the performance,
spilling out "in[to] the streets, in the corridors, all behind the
spectators" (AN 34). At the time, Russolo was enraged by the
audience's performance, and essentially saw the event as a failure; in retrospect,
however, the noise of the audience and its inability or unwillingness
to listen to musical noise is entirely familiar. Avant-Garde artists from
John Cage to Philip Glass to Brian Eno promoted such disruptions, encouraging
their audiences to talk during performances, move about the building, and
essentially treat the music as background to the sounds of everyday life.
As the liner notes to Eno's Discreet Music album assert: "I
was trying to make a piece that could be listened to and yet could be ignored...perhaps
in the spirit of Satie who wanted to make music that could 'mingle with
the sound of the knives and forks at dinner.'"43
Like Russolo, then, these artists attempted to bring everyday life into
the musical performance; unlike Russolo, they attempted to do it by merging
the sounds and noises of life with the musical piece, so that neither was
foregrounded over the other. Similarly, rock and roll's shares a long fascination
with audience noise, from the screams of Elvis and Beatles fans that were
so loud even the musicians could not hear, to bands like The Sex Pistols,
Nirvana, and Nine Inch Nails who encourage their audiences into the riots
Russolo condemned.
It is not an exaggeration to say that modern music revolves around the staging
of noise, both within the musical composition and through the interaction
between performer and audience. It is much less clear, however, why such
responses have continued throughout the century; why, in fact, music and
noise today are so intertwined. While there are innumerable answers to this
question, one of the most interesting and certainly the most pertinent to
the subject of Futurism is the relationship between noise and war. As Attali
remarks, "it is not by coincidence that Russolo wrote his Arte Dei
Rumori in 1913; that noise entered music ... just before the outbursts
and wars of the twentieth century, before the rise of social noise."44
To Futurists, modern warfare was the ultimate site of humanity's mechanical
transformation. War bombarded the senses with an overload of gunshots, explosions,
mud, blood, death, speed, and noise. Technological advancements speeded
up warfare while separating the action from its participants. Although armies
could kill faster and more precisely, the distances between armies became
greater, thereby making it harder to locate and overcome the enemy. Consequently,
combat was centered less upon engaging the enemy as hiding from them. As
Robert Michaels notes:
Modern combat is played out almost entirely invisibly; the new day
of fighting demands of the soldier that he...withdraw from the sight of
the opponent. He can not fight upright on the earth but must crawl into
and under it; at sea he fights most securely when he is concealed under
the surface of the water, and in the air when he flies so high that he no
longer offers a target.45
Combat centered around invisibility; for this reason, hearing overtook sight
as the primary sense, for it was much easier to hear an enemy approaching
than see the bullets fly into your face. Sound overwhelmed all other senses,
for its parameters (unlike those of sight) were never closed down, but rather
accentuated by the barrage of machine and military noises surrounding each
battle. Futurists saw this barrage of noise as essentially beneficial; as
Russolo remarks, "In modern warfare, mechanical and metallic, the element
of sight is almost zero. The sense, the significance, and the expressiveness
of noises, however, are infinite" (AN 49). War noises heightened
the human body's ability to perceive and process the world around us, providing
a tableau for the reimagination of music. Not everyone shared these sentiments,
however. In fact, excessive noise is partly responsible for the development,
during World War I, of the condition originally defined by medical officers
as "shell shock."46 Shell shock
can be traced to the Battle of the Marne in 1914, where a rumor quickly
spread that "dead men had been found standing in the trenches, apparently
in possession of their faculties. Every normal attitude of life was imitated
by these dead men; their bodies were found posed in all manner of positions,
and the illusion was so complete that often the living would speak to the
dead before they realized the true state of affairs."47
Originally thought to be the result of undetected physical injuries, shell
shock was quickly rediagnosed as a mental and neurological disorder suffered
under combat conditions involving "heavy gunfire or ... the bursting
of a shell in the neighborhood of the affected man."48
Often the individual lost either their memory, their sense of hearing or
their sight; such conditions were "not in any way connected with the
sense organs," however, so that "the deaf man was often aware
that words were being spoken, though he could extract from these words no
meaning."49
Shell shock was unique to the medical doctors and psychologists of World
War I: it was a mental disorder that caused no discernible injuries but
altered the patient's ability to perceive and communicate. In other words,
the cause of shell shock was not located within the body, but within the
machines that generate the reality of modern war. Among the 589 cases examined
by doctors during World War I,50 nearly
every one involved the patient's encounter with exploding shells, grenades,
or mines. Although, in certain cases the blasts caused some damage to the
sense organs that could not be repaired, by and large shell shock was brought
about by the sight or sound of exploding metal. "A soldier," for
instance, "was in a mine explosion. ... After regaining consciousness
he was a deaf-mute and for seven months he did not speak. His mutism did
not bother him, as he thought he had always been mute. He had always been
able to write. He could not remember what had interfered with his speech
or tell whether he could think the words which he could not utter."51
Mines and machines redefined perception, silencing human bodies that must
then make sense of a fragmented reality. As one soldier wrote: "I hear
and understand all you are talking about, and I know what I wish to reply,
but I am unable to utter the words."52
The machines of war silence the human voice. Writing remains, but its symbols
too are ground into noise, so that one is not able to understand the very
words one just spoke. Like a machine, then, the human body functions as
a programmable object, capable of being shut down intermittently by various
external forces. Language is no longer alone; noise itself can communicate
information, or overload the circuitry.
In a world where machines push language further and further into the realm
of noise, Futurism's attempts to capture and control this transformation
by reenvisioning human reality through machines seems remarkably consistent
for a century that devoted to building (among other things) bombs, highways,
and airplanes -- not to mention creating a globalized communications network
so large, so powerful, and so popular that it has created its own (virtual)
reality. Futurism's wireless imagination, in other words, was soon replaced
by "the wireless body,"
... drifting around in the debris of technotopia: encrypted flesh
in a sea of data. The perfect evolutionary successor to twentieth-century
flesh, the wireless body fuses the speed of virtualized exchange into its
cellular structure. DNA-coated data is inserted directly through spinal
taps into dedicated flesh for better navigation through the treacherous
shoals of the electronic galaxy. Not a body without memory or feelings,
but the opposite. The wireless body is the battleground of the major political
and ethical conflicts of late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century
experience.53
Like Marinetti's wireless metaphor, Kroker and Weinstein envision a future/present
in which human bodies have melted away, replaced by virtualized data. Each
reading predicts a hyper-sensitization resulting from the mechanization
of human flesh; the body's ability to touch, hear, and remember expands,
opening new avenues of understanding that transcend spatial and temporal
limitations. What separates these two readings, however, is the same thing
that separates 1909 from 1994: namely, an historical context in which to
read the effects produced by technology's transformation of reality. For
Marinetti, the control of machines was designed to liberate the imagination,
to free human beings from the labors of everyday life. The idea of power,
of control, was not to subjugate others, but to radicalize social order
by realigning it with a new aesthetic. In doing so, however, Futurism is
not offering a fragmented or chaotic picture of life. On the contrary, their
ideology (from their insistence upon destroying all traces of the past to
limiting Futurist language to nouns, mathmatical symbols, and noise) is
"a process of totalization and articulation,"54
in which their aim is to "rethink the machine as a form of 'translation'
-- a translation of one set of realities (political life) into another (aesthetic
order)."55
This is, in fact, the very legacy which Kroker and Weinstein inherit: a
technoculture in which consumption functions as ideology. As Attali notes,
"the triumph of capitalism, whether private or State, is not that it
was able to trap the desire to be different in the commodity, but rather
that it went far beyond that, making people accept identity in mass production
as a collective refuge from powerlessness and isolation."56
To drink Coke, to listen to Nirvana, to watch NBC: Futurism's fascination
with noise and the complexity of life is redefined in capitalist culture
as an aesthetics of choice. The choices in question, although we identify
with them in increasingly personal ways, nevertheless represent a closing
down of subjective emotions or beliefs. We can choose anything we want,
but our choices are reflected back at us from every direction, until we
are merely echoes of other people's tastes.
