Varieties of Audio Mimesis

This investigation of the metaphoric relationship between music and landscape is also a study of the poetics of onomatopoeia and a theory of sound in the arts. The history of European musicology is perennially revised around the debate about whether music is a representational or an abstract art. This discussion may be extended to all of the sound arts, and to language itself. Thus the phenomenon of onomatopoeia is emblematic of what might be seen as the ontological aporia of sound art: mimesis is simultaneously a loss and a gain, placing representation on uneven ground where the signified loses structural integrity and existential verifiability, while the signifier gains in complexity and ambiguity. Through literary, performative and sonic analysis, this book investigates audiophonic representation, proposes a unified field theory of the sound arts; offers descriptive possibilities for audio productions; and looks at audio mimesis in relation to gardens and landscape.