Organizing In Sound: Sound Art and the Organization of Space

Starting from the assumption that music and sound are a source of organizational knowledge, this paper explores the possibilities for reconsidering the artistic and intellectual movement known as “sound art” in the framework of organization studies. The paper takes the steps from the consideration proposed by sound artists and theorists that sound is not only an aesthetic object but a ‘relational medium’, in which and through which social knowledge and organizational dynamics deploy. Since sound is fundamentally inseparable from space, we refer to scholarship on the organization of space and organizational aesthetics in order to show the connection between sensorial, perceptual and socio-material aspects in organizing. We explore this topic through ethnographic study of the sound art festival La Digestion, held in Naples and focused on the relation between sound and space. Adopting a constructionist view of organizing, we show how sound is part of the socio-material action-net from which organizational space performatively emerges. Thus we argue that the perspective of “organizing in sound” can offer scholars of organization studies a method by which to more accurately study and comprehend various organizational phenomena with multimodal manifestations.