art, review

Soundings

Oh technology. We love to love you to hate you to love you. Every innovation, every feature is a double-sided coin: every benefit comes with an attendant threat/detriment. So cultural commentators tie themselves in knots over the promise and perils of the latest (and not so latest) in device, online platform, &c.

Soundings, Nathan Dinihanian’s current installation at Tractor (328 NW Broadway #114) can be taken as a physical study of the social dimension of the personal sound delivery device. Dinihanian constructed a handful of speakers in natural wood that also function as sculpture…a column, a bridge. All have dangling cables to which viewers (listeners) can connect their iPods and broadcast the contents to the assembled.

I saw Soundings at the opening and as with any sound work at an opening, it was impossible to hear the effect of the work over the din of the crowd. And viewers, trained not to “touch the art” appeared to be unclear on the rules of engagement with a work like this. Nevertheless, one can imagine the experience with a few fellows, and hopefully a stranger or two; the music (because it will be music…few of us are field recorders and/or devotees of the Internet Sound Archive) emanates from speakers that hang from the ceiling (a counterbalanced pair) in one corner, from the top of a chest-high column, from a multi-input speaker running the length of one side of the gallery. And one can imagine the songs talking to one another, providing counterpoint, comedy, unexpected complement, chaos.

Dinihanian transforms what could otherwise be an isolating activity (listening to music via earbuds…shared earbuds in Mystery Train as an example to the negative) into a social activity, transforming the iPod into the boombox. Everyone’s a DJ, and this is one messed up remix that not incidentally mimics the cacophony of sharing of sound via dozens of online platforms.

I like this performative, live aspect of what otherwise is a private experience of a private collection of music and/or the distanced social experience of sharing the music via the internet. It’s the flipside of a device I’ve seen a handful of times now in performance: the performer plugged into an iPod either moving to secret score or repeating aloud some version of what they are hearing thus introducing a(nother) layer of separation or distance between performer and audience. Dinihanian, by contrast, eliminates barrier and distance, bringing it all into the room right here, right now.

Finally, the fact that the iPod is tethered by a cable to the speakers prevents the viewer/listener from moving around the space (toward and away from one song and another thus altering one’s experience of the sonic mix). Confounding that movement makes an interesting comment on the “freedoms” promised by one’s personal sound storage and delivery device or perhaps points up that those freedoms only go so far…and here the speaker cable stands in for, among other things, the lifeblood cable…for recharging the device’s battery.

POSTED: July 13th, 2010 | AUTHOR: admin | FILED UNDER: art, review | 1 Comment »

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