For Acoustic Art, all of the audible events are components of equal value. Acoustic Art is a melting pot of heterogeneous acoustic elements. Acoustic Art: a world of language and a world of sounds and noises from the acoustic environment. A language that tends toward sounds, to the sound of language and to music, the all-sound of notes. As a new genre of the electronic age, like film, Acoustic Art developed its own language. Like filmmakers, audio artists have also blurred the distinction between author and director: they usually realize their pieces themselves.
"riverrun" - the title of the two sound montages of this CD edition, with excerpts from a few of the many productions by the "Studio of Acoustic Art", cites the first word of the multilingual sound poetry of "Finnegans Wake" by James Joyce, a work whose end leads back to its beginning and which the Irish writer described as "soundsense". Soundsense is also a key to Ars Acustica. The sound quotations selected here give something of the inexhaustible richness of this art. Its language is a language of many languages whose wandering alphabet is open to everything audible.
In "Voicings", the first sound montage, the wide-ranging, expressive organ of the human voice forms the acoustic panorama: beginning with quotations of the beginnings of language, first articulations, prelinguistic sounds and word formations, multilingual sequences, and language as a testimony in which history presents itself as a series of sorrowful conflicts. These are meditative compositions for voice that range from an evocation to memory to an evocative hint of cultures rich in tradition. "Soundscapes", the second sound montage, is a journey through works that are mostly not tied to language, through real or imaginary soundscapes, through sound compositions of the Studio's Metropolis series, in which international artists have sketched audio visions, and even the "Topography of a SoundMind".

Charles Amirkhanian, Ros Bandt, Klarenz Barlow, Barry Bermange, Jack Body, George Brecht, John Cage, Paul Carter, Werner Cee, Henri Chopin, Carlfriedrich Claus, Frank Corcoran, Philip Corner, Alvin Curran, Raimund Fleiter, Bill Fontana, Marielouise Franke, Malcolm Goldstein, Sorrel Hays, Hans G Helms, Pierre Henry, Sarah Hopkins, Stephan von Huene, Hans Ulrich Humpert, Ernst Jandl, Arsenije Jovanovic, Mauricio Kagel, Alison Knowles, Richard Kostelanetz, Ferdinand Kriwet, Francisco Kröpfl, Joan La Barbara, Emmanuelle Loubet, Jackson MacLow, Friederike Mayröcker, Franz Mon, Charles Morrow, Linda Mussman, Pauline Oliveros, Richard Ortmann, Hans Otte, Peter Pannke, Robert HP Platz, Carlo Quartucci, Douglas Quin, Michael Riessler, Jerome Rothenberg, Gerhard Rühm, Nicola Sani, R. Murray Schafer, Klaus Schöning, Thomas Schulz, Ronald Steckel, Susan Stone, Anne Tardos, Randy Thom, Josephine Truman, Ralph R. Wassermann