Get Creative with Sound

Our artistic drives and instincts often extend past paint, canvas, paper, and charcoal. As artists, it is our job to expose ourselves to all forms of creative expression in order to expand our creative lives. Challenge your creativity by taking on an artistic experiment that stimulates more than your vision sense: let's add a new sensory dimension by exploring sound in art.

Adding a second sensory layer to your visual art can cross the invisible line between art and audience. Sound encourages your audience to become a part of what you have created; it encourages an audience to interact with a piece, to discover it more fully.

Acoustic Sound
Artistic experiments in sound can be more than just music. Wind chimes, whistles, strings, drums, and other objects can be designed, created, and incorporated into your existing art endeavors. Don't be intimidated with the prospect of creating a sound-based art piece. You can stay as low tech as you want by venturing into acoustic-style sound creations, like the aforementioned sound makers above, and make your own sounds. We like the idea of a rainstick made from a portfolio tube and dried seeds or beans, or a drum fashioned from an old five gallon bucket. Bells are excellent "tools" for adding sound to your artwork; don't be shy when it comes to experimenting.

Ambient Sound
Leaves rustling. Baseball cards snapping on the spokes of a bicycle. The sound of car motors revving. Ambient sound is what we consider the sounds of the world around us. The humming of bees is a lovely ambient sound, just as the sound of rain on a roof. Or maybe the sound of water dripping slowly from a faucet is more appealing to you. Ambient sounds can even encompass things like footsteps crunching in gravel, or the crackle of a drive-thru window microphone; they don't have to occur from nature. City sounds are ambient sounds, too, and have life of their own.

Recorded Sound
Wade into the electronic world of recording sounds. Smart phones and tablets come with a large variety of recording applications that make sound capture easier than ever, and you can always count on fairly inexpensive handheld recording devices if you aren't as technologically inclined. Record sounds you like, and use them as a soundtrack for viewing your visual pieces. Incorporate recorded sound into your artwork, and suddenly you are an installation artist. Loop different sounds, or layer them atop one another to create a tapestry of expression.