Inflamed Invisible: Collected Writings on Art and Sound, 1976-2018

by David Toop

In the 1970s David Toop became preoccupied with the possibility that
music was no longer bounded by formalities of audience: the clapping,
the booing, the short attention span, the demand for instant gratification.
Considering sound and listening as foundational practices in themselves
leads music into a thrilling new territory: stretched time, wilderness,
video monitors, singing sculptures, weather, meditations, vibration and
the interior resonance of objects, interspecies communications, instructional
texts, silent actions, and performance art.
Toop sought to document the originality and unfamiliarity of this
work from his perspective as a practitioner and writer. The challenge
was to do so without being drawn back into the domain of music while
still acknowledging the vitality and hybridity of twentieth-century musics
as they moved toward art galleries, museums, and site-specificity. Toop
focused on practitioners, whose stories are as compelling as the theoretical
and abstract implications of their works.
Inflamed Invisible collects more than four decades of David Toop’s
essays, reviews, interviews, and experimental texts, drawing us into the
company of artists and their concerns, not forgetting the quieter, unsung
voices. The volume is an offering, an exploration of strata of sound that
are the crossing points of sensory, intellectual, and philosophical preoccupations,
layers through which objects, thoughts and air itself come
alive as the inflamed invisible.

Genres: Music, Essays

362 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 17, 2019

About the author

David Toop is a musician, writer, and Professor of Audio Culture and Improvisation at the London College of Communication, University of the Arts London. He is the author of Ocean of Sound, Sinister Resonance, Into the Maelstrom, and other books.

Reviews

[Mark Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Short, well-written essays on experimental music, musicians and techniques from someone who was there.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably one of our best living writers on music and sound art, even if some of the writings in this collection are a little esoteric.

[Elisefur]

Read the Joachim Koester and Camille Norment essays