sonic planar analysis 02 : the audible still-life : catalog : curator's statement

As I expected when initially proposing the project, although still-life was meant to be the primary topic of the exhibition it instead became the catalyst for a diverse assortment of subject matter. The pieces range from tiny found objects (as in i+o's "The Dead Air Spaces") to massive open spaces (the "Highway Construction" of Hal Rammel). Some pieces' subjects are completely organic (John Hudak's "Untitled") or almost entirely digital (Ethan Koehler's "Stella Remembers"); and while some pieces seek to document and expound upon a process (as in Betsey Biggs' "Deluge", schoenecker's "Sugar" or my own "Still-Life with Beakers, Water, Sand, Heat and Pop-Rocks"), others seek to capture frozen moments in time (koura's "Okuru", Trace Reddell's "eliot's magic lantern" and Steve Roden's "Bookshelf [the Titles of Visible Books]").

Most works eschew human presence or interaction, yet Sawako's "dd (Dream of the Dog)" and Rick Delaney's "Still Life #3" embrace the notion of captured moments of human existence as still-life.



		As I expected when initially proposing the project, although still-life was meant to be the primary topic of the exhibition it instead became the catalyst for a diverse assortment of subject matter. The pieces range from tiny found objects (as in i+o's "The Dead Air Spaces") to massive open spaces (the "Highway Construction" of Hal Rammel). Some pieces' subjects are completely organic (John Hudak's "Untitled") or almost entirely digital (Ethan Koehler's "Stella Remembers"); and while some pieces seek to document and expound upon a process (as in Betsey Biggs' "Deluge", schoenecker's "Sugar" or my own "Still-Life with Beakers, Water, Sand, Heat and Pop-Rocks"), others seek to capture frozen moments in time (koura's "Okuru", Trace Reddell's "eliot's magic lantern" and Steve Roden's "Bookshelf [the Titles of Visible Books]"). Most works eschew human presence or interaction, yet Sawako's "dd (Dream of the Dog)" and Rick Delaney's "Still Life #3" embrace the notion of captured moments of human existence as still-life.		Plank's unpronounceably-named piece could not exist without the action of a human rubbing objects with and upon a variety of surfaces. Thanos Chrysakis' object-oriented "Moving While Still" depends heavily upon human/object interaction for its sonic material, while its visuals become a delicate rendering of objects in space in an almost Cubist approach. And while Sawako's piece includes human speech merely due to its location, Roden's libretto and vocalizations produce a carefully considered bond between person and object. Although each piece is unique, one approach to solving the still-life problem's additional sonic puzzle dominates the proceedings. Constructed devices which generate sound (either made by the artists themselves, such as Jeremy Boyle's "White Noise Generator" or found objects such as James Hegarty's "Critter") are the subject of nearly half of the pieces. Yet even within the context of devices there is wild diversity: the elaborate groupings of items in Mou, Lips!'s "5 arance" and Glenn Bach's "Two Rooms" contrast against the stark, single-device works of Neil Jendon ("VT-37"), Jon Mueller ("Furnace") and Malte Steiner ("Radiator").
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