OPENING PARTY SATURDAY, APRIL 14, 2007, 7-10pm
$10/$5 MMAA Members
Live music by Beatrix Jar, a local sound-art-duo
Food and drinks!
Become a new member the night of the opening and receive 2 complimentary tickets to the party!
Sound in Art/Art in Sound is an auditory exploration of the power and nuance of sound. The artwork in this exhibition is comprised of both sound art pieces and visual art which incorporates sound as a critical element, and ranges from sound art, digital projection, installation, and sculpture to interactive artwork.
The first exhibition in the Twin Cities to focus solely on the role of sound in art, Sound in Art/Art in Sound showcases the many forms of sound—as mechanical, temporal, dynamic, collected and altered. The artwork brings “noise” from the background of our daily lives to the foreground of our consciousness; it examines the ways in which we communicate with each other and with the world around us; it speaks about place, dialogue, documentation, and humor by transforming perception and transporting the mind/body experience.
Eleven artists from across the nation are featured in the exhibition which includes thirteen works of art. The artists in Sound in Art/Art in Sound are as follows: J. Anthony Allen of Minneapolis, Christopher Baker of Minneapolis, Leif Brush of Duluth, Cheryl Wilgren Clyne of St. Paul, Shawn Decker of Evanston, IL, Matthew Garrison of Downingtown, PA, Mike Hallenbeck of Minneapolis, Helena Keeffe of Oakland, CA, Abinadi Meza of Minneapolis, Jack F. X. Pavlik of Minneapolis, and Anne Wallace of San Antonio, TX.
Descriptions of the artwork:
Mike Hallenbeck’s Sound Spandrel: MMAA is an acoustic architectural portrait of the “silent” gallery space experienced through headphones. Anne Wallace’s Clear Fork Soundscape transports listeners to a ranch in Texas through the crisp sounds of nocturnal animals, storms, and livestock which she recorded over the course of a year.
Cheryl Wilgren Clyne’s film three addresses the roles of generations within a family through repetitive imagery and a carefully synched cacophony of sounds resulting from manipulated recordings. Matthew Garrison’s Autorange combines chilling United States Department of Defense video and sound footage from recent international conflicts with clips from D.W. Griffith’s silent films of war and sound from American Revolutionary War reenactors.
Composer J. Anthony Allen and visual artist Christopher Baker’s collaborative Urban Echo interweaves voicemail and text messages, live collected sounds from four remote locations across the Twin Cities, and live transmitted sounds from within the gallery into a dynamic interactive projection and composition. To participate in Urban Echo, call 612-501-2598 in response to the following two questions: What do you hear? What do you want others to hear? The artists request that callers leave their zip code as part of their voice or text message so they can create a map of the locations of the added material.
An unsung pioneer of sound art, and equal parts artist and physicist, Leif Brush combines science and nature in his sound pieces with recordings of normally undetectable natural sound phenomena such as the sounds of roots growing. This winter, sound artist Abinadi Meza recorded the pinging of individual snowflakes hitting a steel plate and the low rumble of nighttime snow plows. From those recordings Meza has created Beacon, a voluminous, seductive soundscape that visitors experience through wireless surround-sound headphones while watching his mesmerizing video of snow falling in front of a streetlight at night. Shawn Decker’s installation Green, was inspired by the patterned sounds of insects and birds in Midwestern meadows. Made up of 32 small speakers and four homemade custom-programmed micro-controllers, Green creates a spatial and rhythmic series of clicks and buzzes resulting from impulses based on ever-changing light levels and natural radiation.
Sculpture in the exhibition includes Jack F. X. Pavlik’s The Storm, a large-scale kinetic sculpture made of a wide strip of steel undulating loudly on a steel frame, and Meza’s Creatures, two pet carrier bags with emanating purring and scratching sounds. A mixed media piece in the exhibition by Helena Keeffe titled The Past Is Over includes speeches written by 5th graders for George W. Bush and recorded by a professional voice impersonator along with the handwritten speeches and a celebratory cake.
ABOUT MMAA
Experience and explore the energy and depth of American visual culture at the Minnesota Museum of American Art in downtown St. Paul. MMAA’s Riverfront Gallery at Kellogg Boulevard and Market Street is a place for the traditional and the unconventional. At MMAA the diversity of art and artists—past, present, and emerging—is revealed through visual and performing arts. For more information call 651-266-1030 or visit www.mmaa.org.
Hours:
Tuesday 11am-4pm
Wednesday 11am-4pm
Thursday 11am-8pm
Friday 11am-4pm
Saturday 11am-4pm
Sunday 1-5pm
Closed Monday and Major Holidays
Admission: FREE
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