TextSound
Richard Kostelanetz, whose earlier books introduced John Cage to two generations of readers, is an internationally recognized writer, composer, and media artist. His poems, stories, articles, and experimental prose have been published in magazines throughout the world.
This book is a history of early vocal art based in the 1970s. As Kostelanetz introduces it, “The art is text-sound, rather than sound-text, to acknowledge the initial presence of a text, which is subject to aural enhancements more typical of music. To be precise, it is by non-melodic auditory structures that language or verbal sounds are poetically charged with meanings or resonances they would not otherwise have.”
In other words (and sounds), you may view this book, and all of the artists it describes, as the opening up of a new artistic medium.
Although its background is international, the first part of the book points mainly to work by artists in North America, many of them, as a characteristic of their work, using electronics.
The second part of the book is a focus on the Twelfth International Sound Poetry Festival, New York, 1980.