James Mansell

Luigi Russolo's Art of Noises

The perceptual shock of life in the early twentieth century’s great cities has been understood in overwhelmingly visual terms. From the blasé glance of Georg Simmel’s street-walker to the godlike elevation of Michel de Certeau’s city-planner, few have disagreed with Walter Benjamin’s assertion that “interpersonal relationships in big cities are distinguished by a marked preponderance of the activity of the eye over the activity of the ear” (1997: 38). Yet we find a contemporary of Benjamin’s inviting us to “walk together through a great modern capital, with the ear more attentive than the eye” (Russolo 1986: 26). This Italian Futurist also invites us to “vary the pleasures of our sensibilities by distinguishing among the gurglings of water, air and gas inside metallic pipes,” and “the rumbling and rattlings of engines breathing with obvious animal spirits” (Russolo 1986: 26). Luigi Russolo (1885–1947) shared with other Futurists an interest in the urban and the technological, and a desire to create an art movement which harnessed the totality James Mansell is a Postgraduate Fellow at the University of Manchester. He is currently preparing a doctoral thesis on the modernist experience of sound in London and Paris, 1880–1940. James.Mansell@manchester.ac.uk +

‘Organising Sound’: how a research network might help structure an exhibition

Journa l ISSN numbe r: 2054-5770 Thi s a rti cl e wa s wri tte n by Ti m Boon, Anni e Ja mi e s on, John Ka nne nbe rg, Al e ks Kol kows ki , Ja me s Ma ns e l l 10-31-2017 Ci te a s 10.15180; 170814 Re fl e cti ons on re s e a rch ‘Orga ni s i ng Sound’: how a re s e a rch ne twork mi ght he l p s tructure a n e xhi bi ti on Publ i s he d i n Autumn 2017, Is s ue 08 Arti cl e DOI: http://dx.doi .org/10.15180/170814

Book review: Luigi Russolo, Futurist: Noise, Visual Arts and the Occult

In 2006, I visited an exhibition entitled Luigi Russolo: Life and Works of a Futurist at a little gallery in London, the Estorick Collection, dedicated to modern Italian art. Included in the show were not only Russolo’s paintings, a curious mix of typically dynamic futurist scenes and rather less stereotypical mystical reveries, but also peculiar wooden boxes. Upon request, the attendant turned a handle attached to these boxes, filling the gallery with strange sounds. These were Russolo’s intonarumori [noise intoners]. Well, they were reconstructions: the original noise-creating machines which Russolo built between 1913 and 1921, and which were infamously demonstrated in the concert halls of London and Paris at the time, were destroyed during the Second World War. Indeed, as Luciano Chessa explains in his fascinating account of Russolo’s noise experiments, Luigi Russolo, Futurist, we cannot know what Russolo’s original intonarumori really sounded like. Recordings made at the time are too crude and we do not possess precise enough specifications to rebuild them faithfully. According to Chessa, astonishingly, the best source of reference to appreciate the intonarumori’s sound is the use of glissando in Maurice Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges. Ravel had originally intended to use one of Russolo’s noise intoners in the score and, according to Chessa, given his ‘supreme ability as an orchestrator’, Ravel’s L’enfant ‘may be considered a more faithful picture of the intonarumori than any gramophone recording’ (150). The true aural quality of the intonarumori matters because, contrary to received wisdom about Russolo and the Italian futurist movement, Chessa argues that futurist noise machines were scientific experiments in the mystical and spiritual power of sound vibrations. In such experiments, the spiritual effects of sound were dependent on precise