“The Listening Gallery is a sonic oasis on Lincoln Road. The experience keeps changing according to what is going on around, expanding or contracting in its reach, shifting in mood. It’s too complex an interaction of sounds in space to ever figure out completely, but I love to listen closely to each exhibit to try to get a deeper sense of what is going on” — Jennie Gottschalk, author of the book Experimental Music Since 1970
Listening Gallery
Season 4 | 2014-15
11/22/14 S4:E1 | Walk-Run
A world premiere by Charles Recher/Gustavo Matamoros
02/18/15 S4:E1 | F.L.U.T.E.
A Subtropics 23 world premiere by Robert Dick/Gustavo Matamoros
04/01/15 S4:E1 | The Use
A world premiere interpretation and adaptation by Chris Mann/Gustavo Matamoros
05/01/15 S4:E1 | Interstate
A world premiere by Esther Mañas/Arash Moori
“A big challenge for anyone working in contemporary art is, of course, to balance issues of accessibility and audience development with the desire and the mandate to present and support experimental advanced art production. This challenge is exponentially more pronounced in the context of public art, as opposed to institutional contexts. It is in the sense of this balance that the project is particularly successful. It is especially effective because, being non-visual, its effect is unexpected, a surprise; by the time one realizes it’s an artwork one has already experienced it. This is very valuable in public art because the subject experiences the work before he/she has had time to make up his/her mind about it, and before he/she has had time to put up a psychological wall” … “Lincoln Road is the most public, densest pedestrian area in the whole city, so in terms of the level of “engagement” this project can’t be beat. At least in terms of numbers of participants and the amount of acoustic material” — Rene Morales, Associate Curator, PAMM
Listening Gallery
Season 3 | 2013-14
11/15/13 S3:E01 | Distant Bats
A world premiere by Gustavo Matamoros
02/27/14 S3:E02 | Experiment 4: Strong Wind Advisory
A world premiere by Gustavo Matamoros
05/01/14 S3:E03 | From Four Micro Worlds
An adaptation from the Subtropics Collection work by David Dunn
05/15/14 S3:E04 | Experiment 5: 1:Wet Season — Mosquitos
Gustavo Matamoros
08/01/14 S3:E05 | Not Art
An adaptation from the Subtropics Collection work Russell Frehling
09/01/14 S3:E06 | Untitled
A world premiere by resident artist Rene Barge
09/26/14 S3:E07 | Diagonal Y Florida en la Florida
A world premiere by Santiago Perezón
“Because of the Listening Gallery Project, the ArtCenter South Florida has become a much more dynamic environment, and from the outside! The first thing one encounters upon nearing the building is the sound emanating from under the awnings of the building. It is such a surprise to encounter that it literally will stop people in their tracks! The ArtCenter has added a new dimension, literally, to their program that consisted mostly of visual artists studios. I am assuming that the general public may not always understand exactly what’s going on when they first encounter the Listening Gallery. This is the magic of it however! It is completely unexpected, and therefore, foreign. I think the first reaction is to pinpoint the origin of the sound and then to try to understand what it is that is being heard. I also think it is very impactful to come across something like this, where there is nothing quite like it anywhere, especially considering the environment of Lincoln Road on Miami Beach.”—Kristen Thiele, Artist, Board Member, ArtCenter South Florida (a.k.a. Oolite)
Listening Gallery
Season 2 | 2012-13
10/19/12 S2:E00 | Acoustical Transpositions in a Single Architectural Space
A Nightclub remote exhibition of sound works by R. Barge, D. Dunn, R. Frehling, G. Matamoros
12/01/12 S2:E01 | Radiance 2
A Listening Gallery adaptation of the work by Armando Rodriguez
01/16/13 S2:E02 | Sin Ninguna Imperfección
A Listening Gallery adaptation of the work by Gustavo Matamoros
04/01/13 S2:E02 | Aomori Water
A Listening Gallery adaptation of the work by Phill Niblock
05/01/13 S2:E03 | Paper Weather Instruments
A Listening Gallery adaptation of the work by Alison Knowles
06/01/13 S2:E04 | PUNTO: Flow
A Patterns of Behavior exhibition world premiere by PUNTO: Gustavo Matamoros & Armando Rodriguez
“I found it to be a very engaging and satisfying experience. Mr. Matamoros and his staff were supportive, clear in communicating their vision for the Listening Gallery and very knowledgable about my work and what I might bring to the site. They encouraged me to develop my own concepts and solutions to the venue they had developed. Opportunities like this are becoming more and more rare. I believe it is important that the general public be able to interact with an artist’s work outside of the normal commercial gallery or formal museum settings. This site really allowed a great cross-section of folks to take advantage of the venue by simply wandering through it as another aspect of an already popular district. My work deals with sound as a sculptural material. For this installation specific sounds from the surrounding ambient noise are recorded then digitally encoded. From these samples extremely short segments, a few thousandths of a second long, are extracted and looped in such a way as to render them essentially static instantaneous slices; the way that a photograph has the ability to freeze a subject in motion. These waveforms are distributed along a line of sixteen loudspeakers that form a sound-field along two faces of the Art Center building. I’ve further distilled from these waveforms only the uppermost spectral components. What is left are these delicate ethereal timbres which have been inconspicuously layered on top of and interact with the real-time ambient noise in curious and unpredictable ways. Firstly, the setting is very special. Secondly, by having a very sophisticated sound system already built-in to the site made projects like this even possible. By having this infrastructure different artists can design and create unique works for the system, while saving a tremendous amount of logistical effort and expense. I understand that mine was the first commissioned work in the series and so was part of the inevitable “de-bugging” process that happens with new complex systems. That said, everyone involved combined their efforts and considerable experience to get things sorted out relatively quickly and smoothly. It was ready for the opening and ran well for the entire scheduled period. I understand the piece generated quite a bit of interest while getting along well with the neighborhood. It was a very satisfying experience all around and I was quite pleased. I expect the normal refinement that takes place as one gets more experience with the system will lead to incremental improvements. This piece is very delicate so subtle control over balance is important to me. I always enjoy watching folks discover and get drawn in to that, ‘artificial’ layer of sound I’ve generated over the ordinary ambient noise of the site. I’ve heard many times over the years how my sound installations have helped them discover the wonder in the mundane noises that surround them”—Russell Frehling, Miami Beach-born Sound Artist
Listening Gallery
Inaugural Season | 2011-12
11/05/11 S1:E00 | FM: Awning
a Sleepless Night world premiere by Frozen Music — R. Barge, D. Dunn + G. Matamoros
12/02/11 S1:E01 | Art is Not a Commodity
an ArtBasel world premiere by Russell Frehling
12/22/11 S1:E02 | Glee
a holiday themed Listening Gallery adaptation curated from the Subtropics Collection
12/28/11 S1:E03 | London Fix
A Listening Gallery adaptation of the piece by Tom Hamilton
02/01/12 S1:E04 | Thresholds & Fragile States in the Sea of Cortéz
A world premiere by resident artist David Dunn
04/06/12 S1:E05 | Prism Break
A world premiere by resident artist Rene Barge
05/05/12 S1:E06 | Experiment 1: Glade(S)cape
A world premiere by Gustavo Matamoros
05/05/12 S1:E06 | Face2Face: Rodrigo Arcaya
A Face2Face world premiere by Rodrigo Arcaya
06/23/12 S1:E07 | Experiment 2: The Most Radian Words Were Spoken to My Inner Ear
A world premiere by Gustavo Matamoros
08/06/12 S1:E08 | Experiment 3: La Asunción de Remedios
A world premiere by Gustavo Matamoros
09/01/12 S1:E09 | Water Walk
A John Cage Centennial Tribute adaptation at 924 Lincoln Road
09/05/12 S1:E10 | Sounding Thru Empty Words IV
A John Cage Centennial world premiere tracing by Cage/Matamoros
Acknowledgements
Listening Gallery was created, designed and curated by Gustavo Matamoros in response to a commissioning invitation from Jeremy Chestler, Director of ArtCenter South Florida for installation on the façade of the organization’s 800 Lincoln Road Building. The project was augmented by a video art installation called Face2Face in collaboration with Charles Recher that occupied human scale size digital monitors on opposite windows at the building’s entrance. The project was managed by Subtropics Organization (a.k.a. South Florida Composers Alliance)
It was made possible with funding from a 2010 Knight Arts Challenge grant from Knight Foundation, as well as with support from Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, Culture Builds Florida, and the City of Miami Beach. Additional collaborative support was provided by ArtCenter South Florida (a.k.a. Oolite Arts), and Books and Books
Special thanks to Jeremy Chestler, Maria Del Valle, Luis Olazabal, Charles Recher, Rene Barge, David Dunn, Dennis Scholl of the Knight Foundation, Kristen Thiele, Merle Weiss, Carol Damian, Lilia García, Susan Caraballo, Jennie Wong, Leila Leider Kremer, Cherese Crockett