Small Sounds on a Table Top (2009)
Directional sound installation
Two stereo HSS loudspeaker units, two independent random-playback systems and an illuminated tabletop
Small Sounds on a Table Top uses directional sound to create the illusion of small, invisible objects inhabiting and moving across the surface of an empty illuminated table.
Two stereo HSS loudspeaker units project tightly focused sound toward the tabletop. Two independent CD players select short stereo files in random order. Their four output channels are cross-fed between the two speaker units, creating overlapping stereo images whose positions and relationships continually change. Because the files are selected independently, the installation has no fixed sequence or duration.
The sounds come from my evolving Small Sounds collection: recordings made from the vibrations of minute objects using phono cartridges, contact microphones and other transducers. In this work, however, the sounds are not used primarily to excite or reveal the resonances of the table. Their transients, localization and movement articulate its surface. The table remains visibly empty while appearing to be occupied by the objects heard moving across it.
The work is experienced most convincingly when approached from the front. The narrow sound beams and their reflections produce a physical presence that is difficult to capture with ordinary microphones. The audio presented here is therefore a short selection of source recordings rather than documentation of the installation itself.
LISTEN
Selection of source recordings used in Small Sounds on a Table Top | 35″ | These recordings represent the work’s sonic materials, not its directional or spatial effect.
The original installation used a finished tabletop that I had owned for several years, placed on a printer stand and illuminated from below. For subsequent presentations, I built a black cabinet that holds the tabletop in place and conceals the speakers and playback equipment.
The recordings used in the piece continue to be remastered and refined as the Small Sounds archive develops. The identity of the work resides less in one definitive sequence than in its physical arrangement: an empty illuminated surface made audible by small, unseen activity.
For the wider history of this practice, see Small Sounds Series.
Video documentation of the premiere presentation in SOUND at the Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, 2009. © Gustavo Matamoros / Subtropics Editions.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
2026
Marmoris 2
Curated by Liliam Dominguez
Small Sounds on a Table Top and ENCLOSURES
Coral Springs Museum of Art
Coral Springs, Florida
2025
Marmoris
Curated by Liliam Dominguez
Arts Warehouse
Delray Beach, Florida
2022
Beyond the Sound of Silence
Curated by Adriana Herrera
Lowe Art Museum
Miami, Florida
2009 — Premiere exhibition
SOUND
Bass Museum of Art
Miami Beach, Florida
Featured image: Small Sounds on a Table Top in SOUND, Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, 2009. Photograph by Luis Olazabal. Subtropics Editions Archive.