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Close Listening:
sound, art, science and the imagination
Curated by Stephanie Rowden
November 17 – December 16, 2001
Close Listening explores the way sound resonates in the imagination
and opens up an understanding of the larger world around us. The exhibition
features several audio installations and objects in addition to sound
gathered from a wide range of disciplines where listening is a vehicle
for inquiry or expression, including: poetry, astronomy, medical science,
ethnomusicology, radio, performance art, engineering, zoology, anthropology
and music. Key to the show’s concept is the unique character of
sound – the way in which experiences of listening not only touch
interior dimensions of memory and emotion but also move us outward,
beyond the borders of home, toward an awareness of the world not visible
from where we sit.
Curated by sound artist Stephanie Rowden, Close Listening includes
several installations and sculpture works that draw on the expressive
dimension of sound. Heather Nicol’s exuberant sculptural light
fixtures are fabricated from party dresses and interwoven with a seductive
audio collage of female voice. Elke Lehmann’s humorous stuffed
macaw simulates the sound it “hears.” Frank Pahl’s yard
sale assemblages create an ambient music from vintage zithers, air organs
and ukuleles. Anne Kirby Rubin’s bas-relief is an evocative translation
of a nocturnal soundscape in nature. Shawn Decker’s installation
surrounds listeners with a subtle, continuous music created by the delicate
clicking sounds of sixteen paint stirrers in motion. Alan Berliner’s
“Aviary” consists of twenty-seven file drawers each with different
bird sounds -- allowing the visitor to compose a concrete music rooted
in abstract natural language.
The show also includes six “listening tables” with a wide
range of sounds assembled by curator Stephanie Rowden. These audio segments
from over twenty artists and researchers range from exquisite field
recordings and interviews with the people who made them to poetry, performance
art monologues, audio essays, sounds collected for scientific research,
and everyday sound reconfigured into music. Rowden has collected a series
of “listening excursions -- from neutron star pulsars to the pulse
of the human heart, from a remote village in Indonesia to the Bowery
in New York City, from sound as a conveyer of story to sound as a map
to places unknown.
These various experiences of sound suggest an array of questions: How
does sound awaken the imagination? What knowledge is uniquely gained
by listening? What effect does listening have on our understanding of
ourselves and of the larger world? Moving across many disciplines, the
Close Listening exhibition explores these questions and celebrates
the richness of sound as an expressive medium.
Artists in the exhibition:
Elke Lehmann (New York City, NY)
Alan Berliner (New York City, NY)
Shawn Decker (Chicago, IL)
Heather Nicol (New York City, NY)
Frank Pahl (Detroit, MI)
Anne Kirby Rubin (Ann Arbor, MI)
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Frank
Pahl
Virtual Conductor
Photo credit: Paul Jaronski, UM Photo Services
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Heather
Nicol
Psst!
2000
Fabric hardened with urethane
Changing sound and light
sound excerpt
from installation
Photo credit: Paul Jaronski, UM Photo Services
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Elke
Lehmann
Back Talk
Mounted Macaw, interactive, speaking
mechanism, microphone, speaker, aluminum
Photo credit: Paul Jaronski, UM Photo Services
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Anne
Kirby Rubin
Florida Frog Song II
1998
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click
on icon to open the audio file
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Michigan
Radio, NPR
11.21.2001
91.7 FM
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Selected
audio segments heard at the listening tables:
| Sound
and Story |
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“Sounds
Like Home” Suzanne Camino
Written and recorded by Suzanne Camino
Featuring singer Ermira Babaliu
Edited by Evan Chambers
0:20 excerpt
Full piece 5:30
“World
Without End” (excerpt) Holly Hughes
Written and performed by Holly Hughes
Recorded by Chris Konovaliv
0:16 excerpt
Full piece 3:32
“State
Fair” Mark Anderson
Written and performed by Mark Anderson
Recorded by Andy Kirshner
0:18 excerpt
Full piece 3:48
Natural Song
“The
Song of the Humpback Whale”
Interview with Salvatore Cerchio
Whale sounds recorded by Salvatore Cerchio
Interview recorded and edited by Kristy Kuster
0:29 excerpt
Full piece 4:49
“The
Song of the Gibbon”
Interview with John Mitani
Gibbon sounds recorded by John Mitani
Interview recorded and edited by Stephanie Rowden
0:22 excerpt
Full piece 2:55
Verse
Curator
Stephanie Rowden asked five poets to read poems they had written
that contained an image of a sound. Musicians James IE Ilgenfritz
111 ( bass), Michael Gould (drums), Andy Kirshner (alto saxophone),
Andrew Bishop (tenor saxophone) improvised short musical interludes
to be heard after each poem.
Keith Taylor:
“First Words”
From Detail from the Garden of Delights, Limited Mailing
Press, 1993.
0:20 excerpt
Full piece 1:28
Josie Kearns:
“Kisura ”
From New Numbers, New Issues Press, 2000.
0:20 excerpt
Full piece 1:58
Richard Tillinghast:
“Savannah, Sleepless”
From The Stonecutter's Hand, David R. Godine, 1995.
0:20 excerpt
Full piece 2:07
Sebastian
Matthews: “Louis Armstrong peforming ‘I cover the Waterfront’”
0:20 excerpt
Full piece 2:07
Thylias Moss:
Excerpt from “Some praise for a little right-sided anarchy
that is also tribute to the lobe girls”
The full essay appears in Body: Writers reflect
on part of their body. Edited by Sharon Sloan Fiffer and Steve
Fiffer. Bard, Avon. 1999.
0:23 excerpt
Full piece 2:24
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Photo
credit: Paul Jaronski, UM Photo Services
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| Poems
and music recorded and edited by Chris Konovaliv, University of
Michigan Media Union |
| Produced
by Stephanie Rowden |
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Contributors to
the Listening Tables:
Bios
of Listening Table contributors
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Now I
will do nothing but listen. . . .
I hear all sounds running together,
combined, fused or following, sounds
of the city and sounds out of the city,
sounds of the day and night. . .
-Walt Whitman
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