Two Chambers Divided by an Opening

2008
Two-part, site-specific multichannel sound installation
Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoros
Sixteen visible loudspeakers: eleven and five

February 9–March 2, 2008
Dorsch Gallery, Miami, Florida

Two Chambers Divided by an Opening (2008), 2′54″ excerpt. The recording primarily documents resonant tones heard within the installation.

Two Chambers Divided by an Opening was the first sound installation Rene Barge and I created together. Rene had been offered an exhibition by Dorsch Gallery and invited me to join him. The exhibition was curated by Brook Dorsch.

The title describes the gallery’s architecture literally. Two contiguous rooms—one substantially larger than the other—were connected, or divided, by a broad opening without a door or gate. Rene occupied the larger chamber with eleven loudspeakers; I used five in the smaller room. All sixteen speakers remained visible and were positioned close to the floor.

Black loudspeakers on white pedestals positioned around a structural column and the opening between two adjoining gallery rooms. — Loudspeakers and playback equipment positioned near the architectural junction between the two independently operating chambers. Photograph by William Keddell.

Before we developed our individual environments, I mapped the resonances of both rooms simultaneously through controlled feedback and shared the resulting frequencies with Rene. The mapping treated the two chambers as parts of one acoustical structure, even though each of us would create an autonomous installation within it.

As I remember it, my smaller chamber incorporated resonant tones and Small Sounds, along with extended recorded gestures—including the sound of a hydrophone skimming the surface of the water while sailing. I cannot reconstruct the precise sources used in Rene’s part; his practice at the time generally drew upon electrical and electronic sound-producing devices.

Small white gallery chamber with three visible black loudspeakers elevated on narrow white pedestals. — Gustavo Matamoros’s smaller five-speaker chamber in Two Chambers Divided by an Opening; three of its loudspeakers are visible. Photograph by William Keddell.

The two environments used separate playback systems and operated independently. We did not compose their relationship in advance. Each of us worked within his own chamber, allowing the sounds to reveal their internal characteristics and relationships to the room. Only once both systems were operating did we learn how they would interact through the opening.

Because the two compositions repeated independently, their relationship continually changed. From deep inside either chamber, one installation predominated while the other arrived indirectly through the architecture. Near the opening, neither environment remained entirely separate. The sounds overlapped acoustically and produced a third condition belonging to neither artist alone.

Visitors could move freely between the rooms. Their movement altered the balance among the two installations, the resonant behavior of the architecture and the composite field produced at their shared threshold.

The installation operated continuously during gallery hours.

Visitors walk through a dim gallery where small black loudspeakers are positioned near the floor along the walls; an opening at left connects the larger room to a smaller adjoining chamber. — **Two Chambers Divided by an Opening** at Dorsch Gallery, 2008. The photograph shows Rene Barge’s larger eleven-speaker chamber; the opening to Gustavo Matamoros’s smaller five-speaker chamber is partially obscured at left. Photograph by Alesh Houdek, originally published on the *Critical Miami* blog.

EXHIBITION

Two Chambers Divided by an Opening
Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoros
Curated by Brook Dorsch
February 9–March 2, 2008
Dorsch Gallery, Miami, Florida

ENTRANCE TEXT

At the entrance to the installation, visitors encountered a quotation from Marjane Satrapi’s interview with Michelle Goldberg:

“… we don’t know each other, but we talk together and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same.” — Marjane Satrapi in an interview with Michelle Goldberg

PUBLICATIONS

Abel Folgar, “The Art of Sound: Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoros,” MAP Magazine, issue 4. The article discusses the artists’ individual practices and their collaboration in Two Chambers Divided by an Opening.

Magazine page titled “The Art of Sound: Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoros,” featuring a photograph of both artists standing inside the larger gallery chamber and an article about their sound practices. — Abel Folgar, “The Art of Sound: Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoros,” *MAP Magazine*, issue 4. Portrait photograph by John Kazar.

Critical Miami (2008-02-12)
Alesh Houdek, documentation and coverage originally published on the Critical Miami blog, February 12, 2008.

CREDITS

Artists: Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoros
Curator: Brook Dorsch
Resonance mapping: Gustavo Matamoros
Equipment and technical production: interdisciplinary Sound Arts Workshop (iSAW)
Installation photographs: William Keddell and Alesh Houdek