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The sound and its fury
By Adam Goldstein
goldstea@mscd.edu

Photo by Rachel Crick • crick@mscd.edu “LUX,” a single-channel projection with sound made in 2003, is a piece by artists Kurt Hentschläger and Ulf Langheinrich head Granular-Synthesis, based out of Vienna. “What Color Does a Sound Make?”, an exhibition that explores the relationship between vision and sound, is running at the Center For Visual Arts until Nov. 11. The Center For Visual Arts is located at 1734 Wazee St. The center is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Friday, and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday.

A motley mixture of sounds stream from around hidden corners and behind closed doors. The continuous buzz of screen static, the synthesized drone of electronic arpeggios and the sparse beat of rhythm machines vie for supremacy.

This clash of sounds is the visceral introduction for the Center for the Visual Arts’ latest exhibit, “What Color Does a Sound Make?” Before a viewer has a chance to take in any visuals, a flood of sound filters to the front desk.

It is an apt preview for an exhibit that probes the aesthetic relationship between sound and vision and that seeks to make a clear connection between the ear and eye in terms of artwork. Drawing on diverse electronic and digital media, the show plays on viewers’ separate senses.

According to Jennifer Garner, curator and director of the Center for the Visual Arts, “What Color Does a Sound Make?” is a watershed moment for Metro’s cottage-industry gallery.

“[It represents] the biggest names in the medium, the who’s who in audio-visual art,” she said. “Not only is this important for the school, but for the artistic community.”

Six Metro work-study students helped install the show, which includes complex visual projections and demanding audio setups.

“It’s a big production,” Garner said. “They go through a lot of training in art handling, installation … It’s an incredible experience for them.”

The exhibit’s pieces span over 40 years, from early film experiments in sound and sight from the 60s and 70s to contemporary avant-garde digital-media artists.

Icelandic artists Steina and Woody Vasulka were early pioneers in exploring the aesthetic boundaries between audio and visual artwork. “What Sound Does a Color Make?” features three pieces by the Vasulkas, spanning over 30 years.

“Violin Power,” a single-channel video recording from 1970 – 1978, features a black-and-white image of Steina Vasulka playing the violin. Vasulka touted the piece as a “demo tape of how to play the video on the violin.” As she draws the bow across the strings, the visual field itself is altered, creating wavy lines of static and bended vertical bars. Vasulka’s manipulation of the instrument in turn manipulates the video’s image, lending the screen a self-regulatory power as its subject controls its visual layout.

Photo by Rachel Crick • crick@mscd.edu Thom Kubli’s “Monochrome Transporter.”

“Beatles Electroniques,” a three-minute video montage by artists Nam June Paik and Jud Yalkut, is the earliest piece in the exhibit, dating from 1966 – 1969. Paik and Yalkut transform the images and soundtrack from a Beatles concert, creating a disorienting and dissonant hybrid that bears little relation to its source material. Distorted snippets of Beatles songs play behind distorted black-and-white images of the musicians. Barely discernible chunks of music bound from the aural chaos as a rare clear image of Ringo or Paul flashes from an unrecognizable visual field. The piece plays on omnipresent pop tunes and images to create a nightmarish, though oddly familiar, visual and audio landscape.

The show’s contemporary pieces display a similar fascination with sound, sight and the relationship between the two. Jim Campbell’s “Self-Portrait of Paul (DeMarinis)” uses an LED panel, speakers, a single microphone and custom electronics to create a portrait forged of tones and timbres. The piece literally uses sound to paint a grainy portrait on an LED screen. The altered voice of the piece’s subject is played through a speaker and translated through a microphone into different degrees of black and white rendered on the small screen. A grainy, impressionistic visage emerges, a portrait of DeMarinis created by his own voice. The piece gives the traditional portrait an added sensory dimension and rounds out the physical picture of the subject with an audio accompaniment.

Atau Tanaka’s “Bondage” adds another factor to the exhibit’s focus: motion. The Japanese visual artist’s 2004 interactive, computer-generated projection relies on the viewers’ movement for its revelation. A traditional Japanese screen is Tanaka’s canvas, as a projector reveals pieces of a photograph by Nobuyoshi Araki and its multi-channel speaker spouts accompanying musical tones. The projection follows the movement of the viewer, so that Araki’s image of a young woman bound is revealed according to the frequency and the vehemence of the participant’s gestures. The effect is participatory; the viewer must move to catch a glimpse of the subject, creating a sense of voyeurism. It is like catching illicit peeks of a forbidden act from the shelter of some secret hiding place. The impact is intimate and unsettling.

“What Sound Does a Color Make?” draws on a coupling that has marked mass entertainment in the familiar forms of film and television. Here, the partnership makes the artistic abstractions more compelling, autonomous and demanding.

For all its abstraction, “What Sound Does a Color Make?” involves its viewers viscerally. The art grabs the eyes and the ears, pulling the audience deeper into the artists’ personal visions.