2010 | Site-specific sound installation
Four-channel resonant field with subwoofer + two hypersonic sources
July 18–October 17, 2010
New Work Miami 2010
Miami Art Museum, now Pérez Art Museum Miami
Miami, Florida
Commissioned by Miami Art Museum
Co-curated by Peter Boswell and René Morales
Coincidence (2010) | 2′50″ | Stereo documentary recording of the installation in operation. A version of this recording was released in 2022 as part of Indivisibles by Subtropics Editions.
THE COINCIDENCE
For New Work Miami 2010, curator René Morales invited each participating artist to connect a work with a particular place in Miami-Dade County. I was assigned the museum’s elevator bay.
It was the word bay that started the piece.
I had been collecting underwater recordings in Biscayne Bay for years. Through a hydrophone, snapping shrimp are often the first—and sometimes the only—animals one hears. Their dense fields of clicks and crackles had always reminded me of something else: the sound of shrimp frying in a pan.
The two sound sources are acoustically different. They occupy different frequency ranges and differ in their spectral balance, transient shapes, rhythms and surrounding acoustical information. Nevertheless, they share an uncanny audible resemblance.
The same animal, heard under two different circumstances surrounding food, produces related audible manifestations.
What a coincidence.
TURNING THE ELEVATOR BAY INTO BISCAYNE BAY
The elevator bay was an enclosed area with equipment closets on either side of the elevator entrance. I replaced two of the solid closet doors with black scrims, allowing four loudspeakers, a subwoofer and the playback equipment to remain hidden.
I mapped the resonances of the elevator bay and used the resulting frequencies to compose eight chords. Each chord contained eight tones. Over a ten-minute cycle, the chords faded in, faded out and overlapped over periods lasting from five to fifteen seconds.
The tones moved gently among the four speakers, creating mild but continuous motion. Together with the subwoofer, they formed a thick resonant layer that changed the apparent density of the space. The elevator bay became a kind of quasi-tank: an architectural volume that felt less like air and more like water.
The installation could be heard outside the bay, but its greatest density remained contained within it—although museum security may not always have agreed that it was sufficiently contained.
SHRIMP ON THE ELEVATOR DOORS
Two highly directional hypersonic loudspeakers projected shrimp recordings onto the metal elevator doors. One carried snapping shrimp recorded underwater in Biscayne Bay; the other carried shrimp frying in a pan.
The projected sounds reflected slightly into the surrounding space, creating a mild stereo image in which the two sources could mix. When the directional sound reached the ears directly, however, it could seem as though the shrimp were sounding inside the listener’s head.
The transient-rich clicks and crackles remained sharply present over the resonant field. Their localization made them appear almost physically attached to the elevator doors, while the tones surrounding them gave the bay its heavier, waterlike density.
When an elevator door opened, the projected shrimp entered the elevator immediately. The resonant tones did not follow as neatly because they belonged to the acoustics of the bay. Once the doors closed behind the listener, both the shrimp and the resonant field disappeared. The listener was no longer in the bay.
Entering from the museum or stepping out of an elevator therefore produced a noticeable dimensional change. The work was not simply located in the elevator bay; it used the threshold to distinguish one acoustic condition from another.
AN INSTALLATION WITHOUT A FIXED DURATION
Two independent players operated the installation. One carried the four-channel resonant composition and its subwoofer content. The other carried the two shrimp recordings. Because the materials ran in loops of different durations, their relationships continually changed.
The ten-minute score defines the resonant layer but not the duration of the complete work. There was no clearly perceptible beginning or ending. The installation was turned on each morning and operated until the museum closed.
The posted 2′50″ audio is therefore not a shortened version of a fixed composition. It is a documentary recording of one brief passage through an installation whose layers continued to rearrange themselves.
THE SCORE
REVIEW
CREDITS
Concept, field recordings, composition and installation: Gustavo Matamoros
Commissioned by Miami Art Museum for New Work Miami 2010
Exhibition co-curators: Peter Boswell and René Morales
Underwater shrimp recorded with hydrophones in Biscayne Bay
Presented July 18–October 17, 2010