VOLUME is neither a musical magazine, nor a magazine about sound art; rather, it sees sound and its “by-products” (music, noise, vibration, etc.) from the angle of the visual arts. The history of relations between sound and art is not recent, but the past few years have seen many more works, exhibitions, publications and other events whose aesthetic and theoretical content attests to a growing interest in this medium, and the various ways it is used. Like photography and video, sound is now a fully-fledged part of the contemporary art arena. Through a broad range of critical and artistic contributions, it is VOLUME’s intent to represent a platform observing and analyzing this dynamic, while at the same time being sure to re-position it within a historical perspective.

This first issue questions and challenges the often blurred boundaries between sound art and contemporary art presenting sound as a medium or simple referent. It also broaches the figurative dimension of sound through its pictorial, photographic and sculptural representations, as distinct – by way of their silence – from strictly acoustic and sonic considerations. Just like the magazine itself, whose brief, not unparadoxically, involves dealing with sound by way of words and imagery. In adopting a conceptual approach to sound, some articles explore its time-related dimension, especially through the recording factor and the exhibition format. All areas of interest which give a glimpse of the scope of the intermingled territories of sound and the visual arts…