February 26–March 29, 2009
Sound-art exhibition
Curated and designed by Gustavo Matamoros
The Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach
Presented as part of Subtropics 20
Produced by iSAW
SOUND was a group exhibition conceived as an alternative approach to presenting sound art in a museum. It opened at The Bass Museum of Art on February 26, 2009, inaugurating the twentieth edition of the Subtropics Experimental Music and Sound Arts Festival.
The exhibition was originally planned for three weeks. Following its successful opening, the museum extended it for an additional two weeks, through March 29.
COMPOSING AN EXHIBITION
The central problem was simple to identify but difficult to solve: how could numerous works involving sound occupy shared museum galleries without masking or interfering with one another?
I approached the exhibition compositionally. The works were selected, installed, tuned, positioned and arranged in time according to their individual requirements and the acoustical characteristics of the museum. Content, technology and architecture were treated as interdependent parts of the exhibition.
Some works operated continuously or responded directly to visitors. Others were activated sequentially through a computer-controlled multichannel system. The result was not a room filled with unrelated sounds playing simultaneously, but an exhibition whose combinations changed over time.
THE MULTICHANNEL SYSTEM
The main gallery contained a twelve-channel audio infrastructure supplied with support from Sennheiser USA. No individual work used all twelve loudspeakers.
A computer-operated digital audio workstation choreographed the principal sequence, sending octophonic audio files through eight Klein + Hummel loudspeakers one work at a time. Separate four-channel configurations were created for works requiring their own physical relationships between sound and objects.
David Dunn’s Four Micro-Worlds used four loudspeakers positioned along one wall. In front of them, four physical replicas represented the specialized transducers used to make the corresponding recordings. A MIDI-controlled lighting system illuminated the displays when the piece entered the sequence.
Alvin Lucier’s Music for Pure Waves, Bass Drums and Acoustic Pendulums used four loudspeakers, each placed behind a bass drum. Low-frequency sine-wave sweeps activated the drumheads, causing suspended ping-pong balls to bounce against them in pendular motion.
My own Small Sounds on a Table Top, created specifically for SOUND, operated continuously in the same room. Its hypersonic system projected the illusion of small objects moving across the surface of an otherwise empty table. At times, the sequenced works made it difficult to hear from a distance. This was accepted as part of the exhibition’s changing balance: approaching the table closely revealed an intimate sound world within the larger gallery.
AUTONOMOUS AND INTERACTIVE WORKS
An adjoining area contained works activated directly by visitors, including Duane Brant’s Sew Organ, Brenda Hutchinson’s Giant Music Box, works by Alison Knowles and the Fluxus piano previously used during Subtropics 19.
Sew Organ greeted visitors in its own space near the entrance. Hutchinson’s music box allowed visitors to compose by placing pins in a large rotating cylinder. Museum guards became unusually enthusiastic guides, helping visitors understand and engage with the interactive works.
Other installations operated autonomously. These included bamboo sounders by George Lewis and Two Ways of Listening to Nothing, created for the museum’s freight elevator by René Barge and Steve Peters. Barge and Peters installed their elevator work; Hutchinson installed Giant Music Box; and museum staff installed Lewis’s bamboo sounders. I installed or realized the remaining works in collaboration with museum staff where necessary.
ARTISTS
The exhibition brought together works by:
René Barge
Duane Brant
China Blue
David Dunn
Douglas Ewart
Russell Frehling
Tom Hamilton
Brenda Hutchinson
Toshi Ichiyanagi
Alison Knowles
Richard Kostelanetz
George Lewis
Alvin Lucier
Lou Mallozzi
Chris Mann
Gustavo Matamoros
Phill Niblock
Douglas Repetto
Armando Rodriguez
Tomas Schmit
Steve Peters
Davey Williams
COLLABORATION WITH DAVID DUNN
David Dunn served remotely as a consultant and wrote the principal essay about the exhibition. While in Miami, he worked with me on connecting the MIDI lighting board to the programmed sequence so that the illuminated displays responded to the timing of his piece.
I selected the artists and works, developed the exhibition’s spatial and temporal structure, designed and programmed its flow, tuned and installed the works, coordinated the layout with museum staff, and secured the Sennheiser sponsorship.
The success of the Bass presentation led David and me to consider SOUND as an adaptable exhibition model. Future versions could be composed site-specifically for other museums, with works and technologies selected according to the architecture and acoustics of each venue.
PUBLIC PROGRAMMING
The first weekend’s Subtropics 20 performances took place at Miami Beach Senior High School. Although these events were promoted by Subtropics rather than by the museum as part of the exhibition, they extended its exploration of experimental sound through live performance.
On March 28, the museum presented Sonorama, a Family Day conceived by me and facilitated by museum staff. Visitors explored the exhibition, invented sounds, constructed simple paper record players and attended a musical-saw demonstration. The activities culminated in a fifteen-minute collective performance in which visitors followed individual timeline cards to organize five sounds of their own invention. The stated goal of Sonorama was simply: Listening.
DOCUMENTATION
Exhibition catalog: SOUND, Subtropics Editions, 2020
Designed by Claudia Ariano, with photography by Luis Olazabal and an essay by David Dunn.
SOUND — Exhibition Catalog
SELECTED PRESS
Manuela Gabaldon, “Sound Art Exhibition at The Bass Museum,” Miami Art Guide, February 27, 2009. PDF
Jennie Gottschalk, “Subtropics 20: A Festival and SOUND Exhibition Review,” Signal to Noise, Summer 2009, issue 54. PDF
CREDITS
Curator and exhibition designer: Gustavo Matamoros
Produced by: iSAW — interdisciplinary Sound Arts Workshop
Consultant and catalog essay: David Dunn
Presented by: The Bass Museum of Art
Festival: Subtropics 20
Exhibition photography: Luis Olazabal and Rodolfo Matamoros
Museum installation and lighting assistance: The Bass Museum of Art staff
Sonorama concept and artistic direction: Gustavo Matamoros
Sonorama coordination: Dinorah de Jesús-Rodríguez
Sonorama facilitation: The Bass Museum of Art educational staff
Principal support: John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Loudspeakers and technical support: Klein + Hummel and Sennheiser USA
Additional support: City of Miami Beach; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs; State of Florida; Blank Family Foundation