Sound Arts – Year Two

To stimulate some ideas and experience installation works live in the flesh, I went to a few exhibitions around London. The first was this exhibition titled “Can You Hear Me?” by Indian artist Nalini Malani. Despite the fact that Malani is a visual artist, I found this installation very relevant for this current project. There were various large speakers laid across the floor in the open space, which projected uneasy synth tones and piano notes. These sounds provided the soundtrack to visceral animations that were stunningly beautiful with a sharp edge of explicit darkness. The freehand style of the drawings (that had been sequenced to create fast paced moving images) induced a sense of innocence around the cold themes of the images themselves.

Based largely around feminism, racial tension, violence and social inequality, Malani highlights the horror of the present moment through detailed images of mythical characters, quoted text and notation. These unmistakeably explicit depictions of the current state of the world often lean into a satirical tone, with the description of the installation on the Whitechapel Gallery website describing the work as “Moral outrage [combining] with a rollicking delight in satire and absurdity.”

VIDEO I TOOK –

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sp43ETQLCOM5pcmkp_wK74HlwPGx5K82/view?usp=sharing

“THE ANIMATION CHAMBER CONTAINS THE VOICES IN MY HEAD AND MY HEART, SIMULATING HOW THE MIND WORKS, AS ORDERED CHAOS”

• This resembles a ‘stream of consciousness’, and I love how Malani has adapted this ‘scatter-brained’ concept directly into the style of her work.

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I found a lot of inspiration through my experience viewing this, not just because of the dazzling visuals and encapsulating soundtrack, but also because of how well the space was used. Malani has done a fantastic job of filling up a very big open space, whilst at the same time leaving enough room for each projection to breathe. The angles that the images were projected at were slightly skewed, creating an air of discomfort which made the whole installation feel more organic and human. The images were an exaggerated and graffiti-like representation of issues we face in the current moment, but the composition in the space meant that you could examine one projection closely and feel consumed by the feeling it would emanate, and then you could stand in the middle of the room and experience the scale of all of the projections together, which offered me a totally different perspective on the work. I felt an increased sense of agency as a visitor, as if the work was a world I was free to explore. I liked this feeling and it is something that I would like to capture in my own work.

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REFERENCES

Whitechapel Gallery. (2021). Nalini Malani: Can You Hear Me? – Whitechapel Gallery. [online] Available at: https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/nalini-malani-can-you-hear-me/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2022].

Gallery, W. (2020). Nalini Malani: Can You Hear Me? YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1iK-IQNFfw&t=202s&ab_channel=WhitechapelGallery [Accessed 7 Jan. 2022].

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I’m very excited to start this unit, as it is the project that I feel is most important for me. My work has been evolving recently and my ideas are as good as they’ve ever been, so a chance to showcase my work in a public exhibition is a huge opportunity that I don’t want to miss out on. Seeing as there will only be 8-10 proposals actually being included in the show, it is vital that I work quickly, efficiently and in a focused manner to make sure my installation is included.

I have started the process off by reading Adam Basanta’s article ‘Extending Musical Form Outwards in Space and Time: Compositional strategies in sound art and audio-visual installations’. I found this article hugely beneficial as it goes into depth about how work within a gallery space differs from a musical performance, but also how the fundamentals of a musical performance can be reinterpreted when working with and writing about an installation. I have included all my notes below, which contain quotes from the article, analysis and references.

What stood out the most to me from the article was this idea of temporal form, which can be experienced differently depending on the structure of the installation. In a co-produced work, the experience cannot be temporal if the mobile visitor isn’t moving around, as the experience is then not happening over time as the physical human movement triggers changes in the otherwise static sound. This is based on the perception of the visitor as the variation in their position would change how the sound is received. On the other hand, a motivic development within the installation (which means the expansion or expression of a works core aspects) would mean the experience is temporal without the need for visitor movement as the sound is developing through spatial movement and changes in itself. The two approaches vary dramatically and would require totally different methods of building up an installation.

Both, however, are new approaches for me because I have never had the opportunity to produce work that can potentially be in collaboration with the audience. In both approaches, visitor movement, length of their stay, interaction and exploratory journey are all indeterminate and all affect how their individual experience will be. This is an important thing to keep in mind because I will have to think as if I was visiting an installation myself, and what things would keep me interested and inspired.

I’m happy I have learned more definitive terms used within installation practice because it will help me to distinguish aspects of my work and make explaining my ideas easier over the process of completing this project.

References :

Basanta, A. (2015). Extending Musical Form Outwards in Space and Time: Compositional strategies in sound art and audiovisual installations. Organised Sound, [online] 20(2), pp.171–181. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/organised-sound/article/extending-musical-form-outwards-in-space-and-time-compositional-strategies-in-sound-art-and-audiovisual-installations/BF3BB8F61FC032822EAA14F3CA1A4335 [Accessed 6 Jan. 2022].

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