这是一部生动的音乐实践与作品集，它颠覆了我们对创造力和表现力的传统认知，并拓展了我们对音乐经典的理解。
一位艺术家从帽子里随机抽取两个八度的音符，刚好足以构成“imprimer”（作曲、印刷）一词的字典释义。另一位艺术家在互联网上搜寻猫咪“弹奏”钢琴的可爱视频，并将它们拼接成阿诺德·勋伯格作品11号的完整演奏，音符精准无误。在迈尔斯·戴维斯专辑《Kind of Blue》发行半个世纪后，一支爵士五重奏乐队花费数月时间进行专注练习，力求完美复刻原作。这些演奏都有一个共同点：对既定体系的绝对忠实。从马塞尔·杜尚到小野洋子，从史蒂夫·莱奇到太阳拉，《思维之声》汇集了各种各样的音乐或声音作品，这些作品是算法性的、自动的、排列组合的、程序性的，或者以其他方式构建的，这与通常与艺术创作相关的创造性表达形成对比。
在二十六篇短文中，每篇都对应一个以不同字母开头的术语，作者探讨了根据预设规则创作或演奏的作品，将艺术创作转化为一个按部就班运行的系统。这些作品取材于一个多世纪的音乐实验，通过将音乐与表达分离，并将创造力从组织声音的层面转移到设计一个能够进行组织的系统层面，为创新音乐史提供了一个全新的视角。本书不仅凸显了音乐在二十世纪观念艺术中的关键作用，还揭示了不同艺术家和运动之间此前被忽视的联系。
好评：
"Craig Dworkin’s new book is a rhizomatic atlas, a poetically mapped room of musical possibilities in which one door leads to a Wittgensteinian room and another onto a whale’s vagina. Whether you’re new to its imaginative possibilities or a long-time resident of its frontiers, The Sound of Thinking’s unique scholarship and textual virtuosity are a perfect introduction to the 'resonant paper' of conceptual music." -- Nate Wooley, trumpet player and composer
"Declaring that “even the most esoteric music need not be off-limits to nonspecialists,” the practitioner and scholar of conceptual writing Craig Dworkin sets off on an abecedarian’s course through largely uncharted musical practice. The Sound of Thinking is a joy not only due to its vast research and wild associative leaps, but because Dworkin is a brilliant prose stylist whose comic panache pairs well with the deadpan stare of much of the work gathered here." -- David Grubbs, composer, musician, and vocalist
"In this brilliant sourcebook that guides the listener through global musical practices, Craig Dworkin takes us on a tour of conceptual music, defined for its exploration of procedure, arbitrary rules, and contextual reframing. The twenty-six short chapters are presented as an abecedarium that may be read in any order, focusing as they do on lesser-known composers, on anomalous works by famous composers, and on practices such as collage, chance, appropriation, the sonification of data, and visual art taken as musical scores. Even the most esoteric music need not be off limits to nonspecialists, argues Dworkin." -- Nancy Perloff, Getty Research Institute
关于作者：
Craig Dworkin teaches literary history and theory at the University of Utah. He is the author of Reading the Illegible, No Medium, Dictionary Poetics, and Radium of the Word: A Poetics of Materiality.
目录：
Introduction: Definitions and caveats
Key works by John Cage; Éliane Radigue; Christopher DeLaurenti; Maryanne Amacher
1. Alphabet: Arbitrary and aleatory organization
Key works by Gilius van Bergeijk; Erik Carlson; Jasna Veličković; Cathy Berberian; Luis Andriessen; Alvin Lucier; Luiz Henrique Yudo; Mieko Shiomi
2. Birds: Nonhuman composers
Key works by Ezra Pound; Pamela Z; Cassandra Miller
3. Chess: Sonification of chessboards
Key works by John Cage; Atanas Bozdarov; Rodney Waschka; OPO; Francesco Ardan Dal Rì and Raul Masu; Michael Horgan; John White; Murielle Lucie-Clément
4. Data: Sonification of data
Key works by George Brecht; Alexander Chen; Johannes Kreidler; Edith Viau; Cassie Thornton; Marko Ciciliani; Tae Hong Park; David Pocknee
5. Errata: Chance and readymades
Key works by Marcel Duchamp
6. Forgery: Appropriation
Key works by Vito Acconci; Mekhitar Garabedian; Jane Pollard; Rosemary Brown; Mostly Other People Do the Killing
7. Glue: Collage and appropriation
Key works by Jim Hodges; Jennifer Walshe; Christopher Hobbs; Milan Knížák; Yasunao Tone; Maria Chavez; Nicolas Collins; Peter Ablinger; Lukas Foss; Rodney Graham; Katie Paterson; Todd Levin; Mauricio Kagel; Christian Marclay
8. Helix: Sonification of geometry
Key works by Cildo Meireles
9. IPA: Deskilling and translations of speech
Key works by Nate Wooley
10. Jeux de Dés: Chance and games
Key works by Robert Xavier Rodríguez; Tom Johnson; Hanne Darboven; Robert Ashley; Zexuan Qiao; Dave Soldier, Vitaly Komar, and Alexander Melamid; Percy Grainger
11. Kittens: Appropriation and deskilling
Key works by Cory Arcangel
12. Long: Computational durations
Key works by James Whitehead (jliat); Roc Jiménez de Cisneros and Stephen Sharp; David Pocknee; Cassandra Miller; Rodney Graham; Richard Beaudoin; Bethany Collins; Seth Kim Cohen; Leif Inge; Joanna Bailie; John Cage; Jem Finer; Ian Melish; Erik Satie; La Monte Young
13. Mute: Appropriation and erasure
Key works by Samson Young; Weronika Trojanska; Luke Nickel
14. Nature: Nonhuman composers, deskilled performances, systems
Key works by Raven Chacon; Dave Soldier; Sun Ra; Paul Panhuysen; Alvin Lucier; Nigel Helyer; Devin Maxwell
15. Organs: Appropriation
Key works by Eva-Maria Houben
16. Portraits: Sonification, appropriation, erasure
Key works by Clarence Barlow
17. Q&A: Chance and games
Key works by Ben Patterson
18. Rocks: Chance
Key works by Mineko Grimmer
19. Speech: Sonification of sounds
Key works by Peter Ablinger; Jacob ter Veldhuis; Florent Ghys
20. Tenebrae: Chance and systems
Key works by Toshi Ichiyanagi; György Ligeti; Yoko Ono
21. Ut Pictura Musica: Sonification of images
Key works by Philip Corner; Alvin Lucier; Charles Gaines; Sylvain Chauveau; Luiz Henrique Yudo
22. Vaginas: Yep.
Key works by Nam June Paik; Lauren Lesko; Miya Masaoka
23. Weave: Sonification and readymades
Key works by Stine Janvin and Cory Arcangel; Christopher Hobbs; John White; Brian Eno
24. Xylorimba: Appropriation and erasure
Key works by Lance Massey; James Hoff
25: Y-Intercept: Systems
Key works by Steve Reich
26. Zone: Systems
Key works by La Monte Young and Tao G. Vrhovec Sambolec
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index