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Sound art is an artistic activity in which sound is utilized as a primary medium or material. Like many genres of contemporary art, sound art may be interdisciplinary in nature, or be used in hybrid forms. According to Brandon LaBelle, sound art as a practice "harnesses, describes, analyzes, performs, and interrogates the condition of sound and the process by which it operates." In Western art, early examples include Luigi Russolo's Intonarumori or noise intoners (1913), and subsequent experiments by dadaists, surrealists, the Situationist International, and in Fluxus events and other Happenings. Because of the diversity of sound art, there is often debate about whether sound art falls within the domains of visual art or experimental music, or both. Other artistic lineages from which sound art emerges are conceptual art, minimalism, site-specific art, sound poetry, electro-acoustic music, spoken word, avant-garde poetry, sound scenography, and experimental theatre. According to Bernhard Gál's research, the first published use of the term was found in Something Else Press on the cover of their 1974 Yearbook. The first use as the title of an exhibition at a major museum was 1979's "Sound Art" at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), featuring Maggi Payne, Connie Beckley, and Julia Heyward. The curator, Barbara London defined sound art as, "more closely allied to art than to music, and are usually presented in the museum, gallery, or alternative space." Commenting on an exhibition called "Sound/Art" at The Sculpture Center in New York City in 1984 art historian Don Goddard noted: "It may be that sound art adheres to curator Hellermann's perception that 'hearing is another form of seeing,' that sound has meaning only when its connection with an image is understood...The conjunction of sound and image insists on the engagement of the viewer, forcing participation in real space and concrete, responsive thought, rather than illusionary space and thought." Sound installation is an intermedia and time-based art form.

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