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What lies behind the meaning of the uttered words? Can these meanings be visible? These are the key issues of the artistic research presented in this article. The human voice is probably one of the most customary instruments of the body to express meaning, and probably it is not by accident that researchers into various fields take interest in sound and the phenomenon of hearing. The author of the current research presents an overview and insights into how sound is visualized in works of art and design, and tries to answer the question if sound / voice, which is visible in these works in different ways, manifests itself more fully than when it is heard only, and if the work is perceived more comprehensively when hearing is replaced by vision. If an artwork visualizes the voice of a spectator who has become a co-author, does the spectator experience the work differently when listening with his/her eyes? And how differently? Perhaps an open work involving the spectator into the creative process, or an open work of visual design giving the utilitarian purpose to the process or its result could become a tool to finding an answer. The human voice is the sound emitted by the speech apparatus, which is inseparable from the sense of hearing. The experiences and perception of sound and hearing are analyzed with the help of several methodologies - Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology, Robert Plutchik's psychological theory of emotion, the (psycho) acoustic research by the Lithuanian author Rytis Ambrazevičius, and the analysis of the relation between voice and emotion by the American scientists Arthur P. Shimamura and Stephen E. Palmer. All the discussed theoretical approaches differently reveal the complicated and manyfaceted sound-hearing / speaking-hearing relations, which unfold in various ways in practices embodying the above-mentioned theories of visual art, science and design, or become full-fledged participants of an open creative process, supplementing or themselves turning into visual perception in some works, and replacing hearing with vision and offering new experiences in others. The visual possibilities of the analyzed phenomenon are revealed by discussing the artistic and scientific works by the Austrian artist VALIE EXPORT, the Swiss physician Hans Jenny, and the British psychologist Alastair Haigh and his team, including the application of visual perception of voice when working with persons with impaired hearing or eyesight. The author of the article also presents an overview of her own works introducing the research on the visualization of voice, from Typographic Jazz revealing the psychoacoustic experience of voice and the search for emotions in voice artworks, to an open work of visual design meant for training an individual's emotional introspection and emotional intellect. The aim of the article is to generalize, develop and validate the problems of the visual experiences of sound / voice, as well as artistic and scientific practices, and propose an open design work as the most adequate possibility to solve them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the notions of performative utterance, performativity, performance and performative artwork. John Langshaw Austin in his book How To Do Things With Words makes a distinction between the constative and the performative utterances. The constative utterances are statements of fact that refer to the state of things and in this sense can be considered as being true or false. Performatives, on the contrary, not only refer but actually perform what they utter. That means that performative utterances cannot be true or false; instead they can be successful or unsuccessful. Austin considers many different ways in which a performative utterance might go wrong or fail to take effect. These failures are divided into two categories: misfires and abuses. Misfires result when the intended outcome of the performative utterance does not occur or is not carried out, owing to inappropriate circumstances. In case of an abuse the act succeeds, it is executed; but it may be executed in bad faith; in such case, I deceive my interlocutor. In these cases, there is something like a fundamental failure of intention or accomplishment. This "failure of intention" leads us to another group of infelicities: the so-called "non-serious" performatives. Here Austin points out that a performative utterance in certain circumstances can be used not seriously, but in ways parasitic upon its normal use. Austin makes a distinction between proper or substantial performatives and "parasitic" or fictional performatives. Jacques Derrida in his famous text "Signature, Event, Context" deconstructs this alleged distinction between substantial performatives and hollow, abnormal ones. For Derrida, this distinction is undermined by Austin's insistence that every performative utterance is based on convention or citationality of already existing models. Judith Butler, commenting on both Austin and Derrida in her book Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, discusses the improper use of the performative utterance for political purposes. In this sense, the misapplied performative statement can be used as a means for institutional and political critique and work in counter-hegemonic ways. Having in mind this power of the performative to work in counter-hegemonic ways, I discuss the artistic projects Pro-Test Lab (2005) and Villa Lituania (2007) by Nomeda and Gediminas Urbonas. These projects, on the one hand, express clear features of an abuse and a misfire: the messages they transmitted were quite ambivalent and some of them failed. On the other hand, those failures produced a counter-hegemonic effect, provoking a real response from Lithuanian and Italian politicians. In this sense, Austin's ideas can be substantially improved, showing that even misfires and abuses can be considered as a case of successful performative practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociology of reception is a constituent part of research in contemporary art. When examining the functions of artworks and the effect of the phenomena of visual culture upon society and its groups as well as upon collective self-consciousness and consciousness, it is important to perceive the social, historical and ideological contexts of the functions of art and to clarify the possible receptions for contemporary art. Therefore, this article uses the approaches of the sociology of art in order to discuss the manifestations of destructive reception of Lithuanian art that are. often referred to as vandalism in public discourse. The concept of modern iconoclasm has been invoked in an attempt to describe the nature of the destructive forms of artistic reception. The contemporary Swiss art historian Dario Gamboni was one of the first to adopt the concept of iconoclasm when examining contemporary cases of art destruction. Iconoclasm is usually described as a collective and organized form of the destruction of art and cultural objects that has a clear program of actions; it is based on political, cultural, aesthetical, artistic, religious or other reasons. Thus, iconoclasm can be political, aesthetical, etc. The cases of tactical vandalism manifestations of "conscious tactics" planned in advance can be seen to correspond with the paradigm of iconoclasm, while in most cases the term of "vandalism" is applied to the situations when damage is done to artistic and cultural objects by solitary persons. The ambiguous nature of the first gesture of attack and its lack of conceptualization does not allow for the act of vandalism to be legitimised as a manifestation of aesthetical and political iconoclasm; most likely, it should be referred to as tactical vandalism. Traditionally the authenticity of the artist is associated with disconcertment, originality, sincerity, gentleness, seriousness, rationality and inspiration. Those criteria are applied to the domain of sacral art and profane spaces differently. For the participants of the art scene, originality and inspiration bear more importance, while in the sphere of artistic consumption, the criteria of honesty and rationality are most relevant. When applying the criteria of rationality, contemporary art is treated as stupid, nonsensical or absurd. The contents of contemporary "art" are seen as absurd and meaningless while its form and expression, as disgusting. Its opponents maintain that such art does not require artistic mastery or technical knowledge, while the material used to create art is "not artistic" and repugnant. Its creators seemingly lack honesty and aim only at provoking negative emotions in the viewer. The authenticity of the artist is called into question by arguing that such art can be created by anybody and one does not even have to be an artist. Having examined the second case of vandalism, the conclusion is made that the event has an iconoclastic program of actions (organized, collective, etc.). In the case of the third attack, it is claimed that, even in the absence of information regarding the number of participants, their program and objectives, the conceptual political nature of the attack allows us, with some reservations, to name the event as a socially legitimated manifestation of political iconoclasm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]