Maryanne Amacher: Selected Writings and Interviews

Maryanne Amacher (1938 – 2009) was a composer of large-scale, fixed-duration sound installations, and a highly original thinker in the areas of perception, sound spatialization, creative intelligence, and aural architecture. She is regarded as a pioneer of what has come to be called “sound art,” although her thought and creative practice consistently challenged key assumptions about the capacities and limitations of that genre. Often considered in light of post-Cagean art practices, her work anticipated some of the most important developments in network culture, media arts, acoustic ecology, and sound studies.

The life and work of Maryanne Amacher are as vast as they are little known. In this volume, Amy Cimini and Bill Dietz offer a heterodox and idiosyncratic selection of largely unpublished documents spanning the breadth of the papers included in the Amacher Collection. The chronologically grouped documents, ranging from private writings and letters to program notes, manifestos, and proposals for unrealized projects, are framed by interviews in which Amacher discusses corresponding periods of her life. This structure leads readers carefully into the composer’s musical thought as it develops and transforms over time, while working strenuously against the definitiveness associated with “collected” writings. This study of a still-unfolding body of work approaches its materials as provisional, promissory and open-ended.

 

Title: Selected Writings and Interviews
Publisher: Blank Forms, 2021
Author: Maryanne Amacher, Bill Dietz, Amy Cimini
Photographer: -
Graphic Design: -
Format: Softcover
Size: 24 x 16.5 cm, 398 pages
ISBN: 9781953691002
Edition: -