This book delineates a territory of investigation for sound art and its various manifestations through historical, theoretical, polemical and critical analyses of artistic, musical and literary works. In doing so, Migone gives radical definition to an auditory study that includes the complexity of silence and mutism, identity and abjecthood, and language and its stutterances. The recurring site of these stagings is the somatic under all its forms: embodied and disembodied, fragmented and amplified, vocal and mute.

Concrete sites that are investigated include: Antonin Artaud’s writings, Alvin Lucier’s recording I am sitting in a room, Erik Satie’s composition Vexations, Marina Abramovic’s performance Rhythm 0, Adrian Piper’s Untitled Performance for Max’s Kansas City, Melville’s short story Bartleby, the Scrivener, Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson’s documentary film First Contact, and John Cage’s composition 4’33”.