The elevator doors to the third floor part, allowing multiple
and intermingling sonic currents to rush down the length of the narrow
corridor, flooding the carriage.
Against the flow of machine and mouthed sounds, a visitor steps into
a gap in the room; a breathing space to pause and get bearings before
plunging into Sometimes Always, a group exhibition of eight
international artists opening on this night at the Art Gallery of Nova
Scotia, a co-presentation with CFAT. Conceptualized by John Mathews,
who curates the show with Robert Zingone, the exhibition is part of
Sound Bytes, the citywide festival of audio art continuing in Halifax
this month.
The eye goes to several circular forms mounted on the wall at the
end of the hall. These are an important part of Craig Leonard’s
installation “Adventures on the Wheels of Steel.” Earlier in the day of
the opening, Leonard, who also teaches at NSCAD, discussed his project
on the phone.
“Each bike wheel has different sorts of Op-Art patterns using duct
tape,” he says, adding that the steel circles are “an invitation to
interact with the sculptural piece. Like a record collection, you can
take the wheels off the wall and you can try them out.”
By “try them out,” Leonard means playing the bike wheels, with their
taped-up spokes in pleasing visual patterns, on a pair of purpose-built
plywood turntables—the nominal ones-and-twos, the decks.
The plinths flank a recessed shelf where a small and simple control
box sits. Visitors use a small series of buttons and dials to vary
pitch, tone and volume. Made from a roasting tray, the controls are
connected to a set of four oscillators and another set of APCs, or
Atari Punk Circuits.
In lieu of the old needle on the record, each plinth, Leonard
explains, houses a photo-resistor cell, which absorbs the direct light
shining from above and down through two-inch holes the artist drilled
into the wooden tops; each cell powers a tone generator, which produces
the basic lithe, wiry sound source.
“When there’s no wheel on top, it’ll just produce a single tone,”
Leonard says. “But when you spin the wheel it produces a rhythmic
pattern.” The duct-taped shapes on the spokes of each wheel pass
through, or break, the beam of light to make beats.
“The whole thing is really about exploration,” Leonard points out.
That’s why, he says, he didn’t label the controls as he wanted people
to just play around. He didn’t want to direct the interaction.
Eleanor King’s project, “Obso-less-sense,” provides a useful
contrast to Leonard’s “Adventures.” For one, she creates a space “with
varying sculptures within it that are meant to be read as one piece.”
Think of a small but crammed repair shop that you make your way through
(at the end of the room is Leonard’s piece) with a sense of wonder and
awe at the amount of stuff that gets created and discarded for the
purpose of listening pleasure and edification.
“Like a lot of my work, it comes from an environmental standpoint,”
says King, also on the phone the day of the opening. “The original
inspiration for this shop was that it existed after things could
be produced—post-apocalyptic in a way.”
According to King, her installation consists of a “cube van’s worth”
of material she found and sought out by searching websites such as
Freecycle and Kijiji, and by going to sales and talking to
people—that “social aspect” is a big part of what she does.
Sound is incidental: Sometimes the simple hum from banks of computer
monitors plugged into the wall does the trick. Radio tuners emit AM
signals and turntables spin with no records, just the scratch of the
needle on nothing. Sounds cut and bleed into one another.
Tape decks are stacked, their doors open like tongues hanging out.
CD players stick out their tongues, too. A column of record covers
traces a graceful line and gradient of colour.
Much of King’s material was already on hand, in her studio. “I was
holding onto or preserving these objects that are no longer useful, or
maybe don’t even work, to put them into this new context, as decorative
or architectural—giving them a new function in beauty or structure.”
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This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2009.