Found object
A
found object, in an artistic sense, indicates the use of an object which has not been designed for an artistic purpose, but which exists for another purpose already. Found objects may exist either as utilitarian, manufactured items, or things (including, at times, dead bodies) which occur in nature. In both cases the objects are discovered by the artist or musician to be capable of being employed in an artistic way, and are designated as "found" to distinguish them from purposely created items used in the art forms.
When found objects are used as part of visual art works, the resulting works are referred to as
found art.
Early uses of found objects in art focussed on the readymades of artists such as
Marcel Duchamp, who shocked the art world with his famous display of a ceramic urinal ("Fountain") in 1917.
Pablo Picasso and
Kurt Schwitters were among many early proponents of the use of found objects in art, which became an important feature in the work of many schools of art, including the
Surrealist,
Dadaist,
Merz, and
Conceptual art movements.
Found objects have gained increasing importance in art over the course of the twentieth century, with many art movements finding new freedoms of expression which had been stifled by the more stringent definitions of art previously used. In the last fifty years, artists ranging from
Robert Rauschenberg to
Tracey Emin have incorporated found objects into their work either as a main focus of the art or as embellishing features.
Found objects are often used in music, particularly to add unusual percussive elements to a work. Their use in such contexts is as old as music itself, as the original invention of musical instruments almost certainly developed from the sounds of natural objects rather than from any specifically designed instruments.
[See "The Music of Man", Y. Menuhin and C.W. Davis, Methuen, Toronto, 1979] The use of found objects in modern music is connected to experiments in
indeterminacy and aleatory music by such composers as
John Cage and
Karlheinz Stockhausen, although it has reached its ascendency in those areas of popular music most closely aligned with these classical movements, such as the
ambient works of
Brian Eno. In Eno's hugely influential work, found objects are credited on many tracks.
[These include his work with David Byrne on "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" and on several tracks on his solo album "Before and After Science", where they are listed with such names as "metallics"] The ambient music movement which followed Eno's lead has also made use of such sounds, with notable exponents being performers such as
Future Sound of London and
Autechre, and natural sounds have also been incorporated into many pieces of
New Age music.
The use of found objects in music takes one of two general forms: either objects are deliberately recorded, with their sound used directly or in processed form, or previous recordings are
sampled for use as part of a work (the latter often being referred to simply as "found sound" or "sampling"). With the improvement and easy accessibility of sampling technology since the 1980s, this second method has flourished and is a major component of much modern popular music, particularly in such genres as
hip hop.
*
Sampling (music)
