| The distinctions between noise, sound, and music is central to my work. I rationalize these distinctions as the perceptual nuances between hearing and listening as modes of auditory reception. Through lo-fi yet seemingly complex assemblages and installations, I attempt to isolate moments where noise is perceived as sound and sound is perceived as music. Noise, like other sound, is the result of physical events that take place through space and in time, but unlike other sounds, noise is a nomad; it has no place to go once it has departed; it just gets absorbed into the materiality of the space that surrounds it. Sound, on the other hand, has a destination. Sound is more than often generated to perform functions of communication and affect. | 
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Haroon Mirza
Haroon Mirza, Atlantic Ocean, Waterfall, (detail), 2007. Mixed media. Courtesy of the artist.The perceptual shift from hearing to listening is poetically illustrated in Lars Von Trier’s film, Dancer in the Dark (2000) in which wannabe musical performer, Selma Jezkova, played by Björk, slowly becomes blind. The deterioration of her eyesight leads to an increased awareness of the acoustics of the environment, and each noise becomes an orchestral part in a perceptual soundtrack to the fantasized musical of her life.
The distinctions between noise, sound, and music is central to my work. I rationalize these distinctions as the perceptual nuances between hearing and listening as modes of auditory reception. Through lo-fi yet seemingly complex assemblages and installations, I attempt to isolate moments where noise is perceived as sound and sound is perceived as music.
Noise, like other sound, is the result of physical events that take place through space and in time, but unlike other sounds, noise is a nomad; it has no place to go once it has departed; it just gets absorbed into the materiality of the space that surrounds it. Sound, on the other hand, has a destination. Sound is more than often generated to perform functions of communication and affect. Although both sound and noise are always unwillingly received, it’s only sound that is welcome whereas noise is a repellent or is destroyed. However, the ear of the beholder governs the distinction between noise and sound. Noise and sound mutate in and out of one another. Structures, intensities, documentation, reverberation, manipulation, and many other intended or non-intended interventions dictate whether vibrations are received or dismissed as noise. Both can be structured to create music but music itself can be received as either music, sound, or noise depending on the ear of the beholder.
These ideas have been widely explored by composers such as Varèse and Russolo in the early part of the 20th century. Then, although Neuhaus and Cage brought the same ideas to the peripheral of visual arts during the 60s, the “visual” was never really addressed in the emerging genre now known as “sound art.”
In many ways I’m working the other way around by taking art to the peripheral of music, so the question for me is whether I’m truly addressing the acoustic. Although I claim to compose music, by no means do I regard myself as a musician, which I guess identifies my use of the term “composition” as much with a visual sense as with an acoustic sense. Considering that sound reappeared in my recent work as a byproduct whilst designing self-governing systems, it would seem that the acoustic may be consequential to the visual.
Regardless of this, I consider the acoustic and visual of equal significance to what I do as an artist. It’s a practice that comes from the discursive sensibilities of art, the utilitarian processes of design, and the love of music.
