Seth Kim-Cohen is Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA.

• PrefaceAgainst AmbienceShallow Listenings: Sounds, Silences, Scenes, & SitesNothing That Is Not There And The Nothing That Is: Doug Aitken’s Sonic PavilionI Have Something To Say, But I’m Not Saying ItThat Jabbering Which Thinks It Sees: Robert Morris Sites His SourcesSound Today (Is No Longer A Function Of The Ear) or, Why Do I So Dislike Glee?The Conceptual Garage: Rock and Roll, ExpandedNo Depth: A Call for Shallow ListeningBurden Bangs JoyRock and Roll Lecture No. 1Anxious, Dismal, Giddy, Aggressive: Seth Kim-Cohen Interviewed by Mark Peter Wright for Ear RoomIndex

As an entreaty to sound artists and gallerists to think discursively about the artistic production of ambience, Kim-Cohen’s Against Ambience is a necessary and timely intervention. It should be read by anyone with a serious investment in the creation or presentation of ‘sound art’ or ‘environmental’ art installations. As aesthetic theory, the essay is at once discursively productive, cognitively stimulating, well organized, linguistically playful without indulgence, and frequently razor-sharp in its dissection of concepts ... The art world could use more ethical appeals such as Kim-Cohen’s, and his clarion call in Against Ambience justly deserves amplification.

Seth Kim-Cohen is Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA.

• PrefaceAgainst AmbienceShallow Listenings: Sounds, Silences, Scenes, & SitesNothing That Is Not There And The Nothing That Is: Doug Aitken’s Sonic PavilionI Have Something To Say, But I’m Not Saying ItThat Jabbering Which Thinks It Sees: Robert Morris Sites His SourcesSound Today (Is No Longer A Function Of The Ear) or, Why Do I So Dislike Glee?The Conceptual Garage: Rock and Roll, ExpandedNo Depth: A Call for Shallow ListeningBurden Bangs JoyRock and Roll Lecture No. 1Anxious, Dismal, Giddy, Aggressive: Seth Kim-Cohen Interviewed by Mark Peter Wright for Ear RoomIndex

As an entreaty to sound artists and gallerists to think discursively about the artistic production of ambience, Kim-Cohen’s Against Ambience is a necessary and timely intervention. It should be read by anyone with a serious investment in the creation or presentation of ‘sound art’ or ‘environmental’ art installations. As aesthetic theory, the essay is at once discursively productive, cognitively stimulating, well organized, linguistically playful without indulgence, and frequently razor-sharp in its dissection of concepts ... The art world could use more ethical appeals such as Kim-Cohen’s, and his clarion call in Against Ambience justly deserves amplification.

Seth Kim-Cohen is Assistant Professor of Art History, Theory and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, USA.

• PrefaceAgainst AmbienceShallow Listenings: Sounds, Silences, Scenes, & SitesNothing That Is Not There And The Nothing That Is: Doug Aitken’s Sonic PavilionI Have Something To Say, But I’m Not Saying ItThat Jabbering Which Thinks It Sees: Robert Morris Sites His SourcesSound Today (Is No Longer A Function Of The Ear) or, Why Do I So Dislike Glee?The Conceptual Garage: Rock and Roll, ExpandedNo Depth: A Call for Shallow ListeningBurden Bangs JoyRock and Roll Lecture No. 1Anxious, Dismal, Giddy, Aggressive: Seth Kim-Cohen Interviewed by Mark Peter Wright for Ear RoomIndex

As an entreaty to sound artists and gallerists to think discursively about the artistic production of ambience, Kim-Cohen’s Against Ambience is a necessary and timely intervention. It should be read by anyone with a serious investment in the creation or presentation of ‘sound art’ or ‘environmental’ art installations. As aesthetic theory, the essay is at once discursively productive, cognitively stimulating, well organized, linguistically playful without indulgence, and frequently razor-sharp in its dissection of concepts ... The art world could use more ethical appeals such as Kim-Cohen’s, and his clarion call in Against Ambience justly deserves amplification.