Organised Sound 10(2): 91–96 © 2005 Cambridge University Press. Printed in the United Kingdom. doi:10.1017/S1355771805000725

In Your Ear: hearing art in the twenty-firstcentury

L A U R A H E O N

Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), 1040 Mass MoCA Way, North Adams, MA 01247, USAE-mail: LHeon@massmoca.org

Over the past century, an art form has emerged between therealms of visual art and music. Created by composers andsculptors, ‘sound art’ challenges fundamental divisionsbetween these two sister arts and may be found in museums,festivals or public sites. Works of sound art play on thefringes of our often-unconscious aural experience of a worlddominated by the visual. This work addresses our ears insurprising ways: it is not strictly music, or noise, or speech, orany sound found in nature, but often includes, combines andtransforms elements of all of these. Sound art sculpts soundin space and time, reacts to environments and reshapes them,and frames ambient ‘found sound’, altering our concepts ofspace, time, music and noise.

1. INTRODUCTION

This essay recounts historical perspectives andconcrete works, and discusses the engagement of oneinstitution, MASS MoCA, with sound art from anaesthetic and practical position. Finally, it describesthe four permanent, site-specific works of sound art inMASS MoCA’s collection.

Sound art’s redefinition of artistic space and time –focusing our attention and changing our perceptionof particular moments through sound – is oftenaccomplished through the incorporation of new tech-nologies. Technological advances at the turn of thetwentieth century provided both the fundamentaltools of sound art (such as the radio and phonograph)and the modern concept of noise, which arose in tan-dem with the machine age. Indeed, the roots of soundart can be traced to that time, when new sounds andmechanical devices radically expanded possibilitiesin the visual arts and music.

2. EARLY HISTORY OF SOUND ART

When futurist Luigi Russolo, perhaps the first soundartist, published his manifesto L’arte dei Rumori (TheArt of Noises) in 1913, he envisioned huge musicalworks made from mechanical sounds of everyday life –revving motors, valves opening and closing, movingpistons, power saws and streetcars, as well as othertypes of noises, like cracking whips and sounds fromflags flapping in the wind, etc.

To capture the quality of these sounds, Russoloinvented intonarumori (noise instruments) thatmechanically produce many timbres over a range ofpitches. A modern descendant of the intonarumorimay be found on the Route 2 overpass near MASSMoCA, where Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger haveplaced a ‘tuning tube’, part of their Harmonic Bridgeinstallation. This tube collects harmonic strains oftraffic noise that are sent to speakers beneath thebridge.

In the field of music, the composer Edgar Varèseattempted the ‘liberation of sound’ in his composi-tions, and his works, like those of Walter Fähndrich,whose Music for a Quarry is located in the NaturalBridge State Park in North Adams, occupy the liminalspace between modern music and sound art.Fähndrich describes his work as music for particularspaces and times of day, qualities it shares with soundart.

Sound became a fundamental element of modernart in the work of the Dadaists during the 1910s.Marcel Duchamp’s visual and conceptual art, forexample, often involved sound. He envisioned linesof sounds turning around the listener like arabesques –sound sculpting in space – today realised throughmulti-channel techniques and diffusion. Duchamphad a significant impact on the generation of concep-tual artists working in the 1960s and 1970s, many ofwhom used sound and referred to their work as ‘soundsculpture’.

Hugo Ball, founder of the Dada movement inZurich, created the poème simultane, or simultaneouspoem, first presented at the Cabaret Voltaire in 1916,as a high-energy cacophony utilising whistling, sigh-ing, grunting and coughing, among other ‘extendedtechniques’. His Russian counterparts, such asWassily Kandinsky and Aleksandr Scriabin, exploredsimilar topics, such as links between visual and auralperception. Following the Bolshevik Revolution,Russian artist Arseni Avraamov directed severalmonumental sound spectacles in its commemoration.Performed for the fifth anniversary of the SovietRepublic, his Symphony of Factory Sirens containeda huge cast of choirs, soldiers and spectators, navyfoghorns, artillery guns, airplanes and factory sirens.

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American composer, artist and philosopher JohnCage was undoubtedly the central figure in the redefi-nition of sound from the 1950s to the present. Hisquestioning of cultural and artistic practices largelydetermined the direction of contemporary sound art,temporally and conceptually bridging that of theFuturists and Dadaists working in the 1910s and 1920sand that of artists working today. While artists work-ing in the early twentieth century generally revelled inthe new, harsh noises of industry and machinery, Cageand many later artists listened for the subtle harmo-nies that were generated by chance in the natural andbuilt environment. In his ‘silent’ piece 42 333, createdin 1952, a performer sits at a piano for four minutesand thirty-three seconds without producing a sound,simply turning the pages of the score and closingand opening the piano lid to indicate the three ‘move-ments’ of the piece. Chance-determined ambientsound (the coughing of the audience, the rustling ofprogrammes and creaking of chairs, for example)becomes the music. Christina Kubisch’s ClocktowerProject, drawing from this tradition, also relies onchance: the position and intensity of the sun, mediatedby a computer program, determine the sequencingof tones in the compositions; a passing cloud changeseverything.

3. THE MASS MOCA EARMARKS EXHIBITION

In recent years, festivals in the United States, Japan,Austria and Germany have highlighted the multifari-ousness of current sound art practice. MASS MoCA’s1998 Earmarks exhibition of seven sound art installa-tions was one of the largest yet held on the East Coast.The field of sound art has remained a fertile one, inpart because constant technological innovation – now,as at the beginning of the twentieth century – providesnew tools and new concepts of sound to those withears to hear them.

Sound art, strangely, constitutes MASS MoCA’sentire collection; the museum is a Kunsthalle andstages long-term special exhibitions. As noted above,its commitment to sound art began in 1998 with amajor exhibition called Earmarks of seven site-specificsound art pieces installed throughout North Adamsand its neighbouring city, Williamstown, one of whichremains. The experience of commissioning and attend-ing to these works has been a revealing one for me,their curator. Not every work of sound art is appropri-ate to a public space. When a work of art is installed ina gallery, the people who experience it have made achoice to do so. In this context, a work can be as dulcetor ferocious as its maker and curator may choose.By ferocious, I mean grating, loud, harsh, dark, evenannoying or deliberately offensive. Such a workcannot be exhibited in a public place in good con-science, with any hope of being invited back. The sonic

equivalent of Richard Serra’s famous Tilted Arc,which was installed in a public space in New York,only to be adamantly rejected by the daily users of thespace and removed, is not a good candidate. Pedestri-ans may avert their eyes from a work of visual art thatoffends them, but it is impossible to avert your ears. Inmy experience, sound, more than any other media,is invasive and inescapable. For it to be installed inpublic for any length of time – two months in the caseof Earmarks – it must have good manners. I do notmean to imply that sound art should be insipid, onlythat it not be so deliberately hard to listen to that italienates or angers all who come in contact with it.

Sound art in public spaces must also be robust.Sound art often pushes its technology to the limit, andso it is likely that it will fail to function properly atsome point during its tenure. This is a normal partof the process. What happens when it fails? Does itsimply fall silent, or does it emit a loud, high-pitched,non-stop screech evocative of alien invasions inscience fiction movies? One of MASS MoCA’s earlysound art commissions did just that and was locatedacross the street from the rectory of a nearby CatholicChurch. The elderly priest who lived there, named – Ikid you not – Father O’Hear, accused me of activelytrying to kill him. This bracing experience did not keepme from commissioning another work from the artist,however. The curator who would install sound art ina public place must accept the inherent risks of newtechnology and prepare for its constant maintenance,as well as the many rewards that experiencing suchwork provides.

4. RONALD KUIVILA’S VISITATIONS, 1999

The industrial complex now occupied by MASSMoCA has lain fallow since 1986 when employees ofSprague Electric vacated it. These people once filledthe buildings with sounds of industry, conversation,joking and complaining – in other words, the ‘voice’ ofthe now quiet company. Charles Babbage, the fatherof the digital computer, conceived of sounds asimmortal, diminishing in volume but eternally rever-berating within the space where they were made. Thisnotion of history hidden in the gentle murmur ofspaces – a din often too soft and too subtle to discernwith the human ear – inspired sound artist RonKuivila to undertake an imaginary excavation of the‘voice’ of Sprague Electric in his work Visitations.

The relationship of space and place to sound is thecommon denominator of Kuivila’s work, a relation-ship manifested in Visitations through the incorpora-tion of layered visual components within the formerSprague machine shop. At select windows of the shopthe viewer sees a number of commemorative Sprague‘5 Year Pins’, awarded to employees for accumulatedservice time. Simple rotary motors, powered by

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capacitors much like those manufactured in Sprague’sheyday and accompanied by empty chairs, spin in themiddle ground. Finally, orderly regiments of over4,000 capacitors, standing in for the number of indi-viduals employed by Sprague at its peak, are placed onlong workbenches that form a spine down the centreof the room. This pastiche echoes Kuivila’s layeredsoundscape emanating from the walls outside.

Visitations’ sonic component is comprised of oralinterviews, readings, radio broadcasts, Sprague adver-tising video soundtracks, found industrial sounds, andcomputer generated noises. Through the incorpora-tion of living memory and voices, however, Visitationsillustrates the influence of John Cage’s modernmusical theory. Visitations embodies an idea of lifenot being lived in monotonic modes, but ratherexisting in a messy conversation at the intersection ofpresent, past and future. This sentiment incorporates

Cagean interest in the contribution of random andunrehearsed circumstances to the evolution andcompletion of a work of art.

Visitations mines memory for its source material.This fact, coupled with the difficulty inherent in navi-gating the past through oral history, is central to theorganisation of its ‘narrative’. Through the traditionof oral history, people, knowingly or not, recreate andreshape their own and others’ histories. Visitationsoffers a glimpse of the complex relationships amongthe past and present incarnations of the buildings onthe MASS MoCA campus.

5. BRUCE ODLAND AND SAM AUINGER’SHARMONIC BRIDGE, 1998

In the MASS MoCA portion of this multi-partproject, Harmonic Bridge, low sounds roll and drone

Figure 1. Kuivila, Visitations.

Figure 2. Route 2 overpass, near MASS MoCA.

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under the Route 2 overpass half a block from MASSMoCA. Entering the space under the bridge, onebecomes aware of a turning eddy of sound in the midstof intersecting streams of traffic. Cars pass by headingnorth or south on Marshall Street and east or west onthe Route 2 bridge, but this linear motion is counter-poised by a rolling, humming C as calming as therhythm of ocean waves. Although cars stream by,pedestrians lose the impetus to move forward, derailedby this cool pool of sound with its mysterious, chant-like hum. Harmonic Bridge presents an aural cross-section of North Adams, a slice of the city in the key ofC, comprised of the fundamental note and its overtoneseries.

To produce these rolling tones, the artists affixedtwo 16-foot tuning tubes to the guardrail on the northside of the bridge on either side of the overpass. Thelength of the tubes determines the fundamental tone: asound wave at such a low pitch is 16 feet long and mustbe generated (whether for sound art or a pipe organ)with a 16 foot tube. Inside each tube, a microphone isplaced at a certain harmonic interval (the 5th in onetube, the 4th in the other). These locations emphasisethe harmonic and give a slightly different timbre tothe two Cs. (The difference in timbre between the twotuning tubes is analogous to the difference in timbrebetween a cello and a violin playing the same note:though the pitch is the same, the sound is slightlydifferent).

As traffic passes by, its noise generates a sympa-thetic resonance in the columns of air inside the tubes.High-pitched sirens and even voices generate higherharmonics, while the low rumble of trucks creates lowones. The sound is carried from the microphones in thetubes to a control room, where the sound signal is thenamplified and transmitted to the concrete cube speak-ers under the bridge. There are no electronic effectsadded. The sounds have been simply extracted from

the traffic noise above, as one might extract preciousmetal from a baser substance. The pedestrian hearsone tuned layer of city sounds, and strains to separatethe harmony from the traffic on Marshall Street. Thework requires that we focus our ears on it, and we walkaway from the experience as the composer John Cagewould have us: hearing music everywhere. The bridgebecomes an instrument played by the city revealinghidden harmonies within the built environment.

The only visible elements placed under the bridge byOdland and Auinger are the two concrete cube speak-ers. They are simple cubes, undecorated save a smalltyre imprint that suggests the connection between thesound and the traffic. Yet the space there is visuallytransformed by the harmonies. The sound focusesone’s attention on the majestic columns, the elegantproportions, and grand scale of the area, which, com-bined with the droning, somehow sacral tones, bringsto mind a gothic nave. The speakers themselves offerplaces to sit while listening to the bridge and providea pleasant respite. Once an imposing barrier betweenMain Street and the museum, the underpass istransformed into a resonating sonic gateway.

Sam Auinger and Bruce Odland have extractedharmonies from everyday spaces since 1987. Theyhave found rich resonance in an old traffic tunnel inStrasbourg, a Roman amphora in the Forum, and theWest Side Highway in New York. Their collaborativeworks tune public spaces, sifting through noises andisolating harmonies in found sound.

6. CHRISTINA KUBISCH’S CLOCKTOWERPROJECT, 1997

The comparison of a city’s clock to a person’s heart,though it has been made countless times, remainsevocative. When Christina Kubisch first visited MASSMoCA in 1996, she was moved by the fact that thecentury-old factory clock had not kept time, nor

Figure 3. Loudspeaker casing, Harmonic Bridge.

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had its bells rung, since 1986, when the Sprague Elec-tric Company (http://www.massmoca.org/about.html#history) vacated the 13-acre site. This nineteenth-century clock, located in an 80-foot tower with a 750-pound and a 1,000-pound bell, had set the rhythmof the workday in North Adams since 1895, ringingevery quarter hour. Now those bells and beautifulbrass clockworks share the tower with componentsof the Clocktower Project: solar panels, electronicsound system, and a computer with Kubisch’s uniqueprogram on its flash disc.

Kubisch felt that the loss of these bell sounds couldbe as keenly felt as the loss of an important local build-ing. With this in mind, she undertook to restorethe clock in a way that would also mark the arrival ofcontemporary art in the city. A classically trainedmusician and professor of experimental art, Kubischbegan playing the bells like musical instruments, ring-ing them with their clappers as well as hammering,brushing and striking them with her hands and varioustools. She recorded the bell tone database with adigital audio recorder.

Kubisch then placed small solar sensors in a bandencircling the tower just under the bell window. Thesensors relay information about the intensity andlocation of the sun to a computer inside the tower. Aunique software program, designed for this project byBerlin engineer Manfred Fox, interprets the solarinformation and combines Kubisch’s pre-recordedbell sounds in response to light conditions. Thus,a sunny summer morning generates loud, distinct,metallic tones, while a grey afternoon in winter bringsabout softer, somewhat melancholic sounds. At noonand 5 p.m., the computer plays a short pre-set concert,

but at other times the brief compositions changewith the quality of light and time of day. This use ofunpredictable changes in the weather, coupled withan algorithmic function in the program that preventsthe mini-compositions from repeating, marks theinfluence of the American composer and artist JohnCage on Kubisch’s work.

The fading daylight, registered by the solar panels,causes the Clocktower Project to fall silent in theevenings. At the same time, the four faces of the clockbegin to glow faintly and remain illuminated throughthe night. Kubisch coated the 42 -diameter clock faceswith a phosphorescent paint and placed black lightsbehind the faces. The cool blue-white light quietlymarks the transformation of the tower when the bellsounds have ceased.

Since 1991, Kubisch has made a number of haunt-ingly beautiful synaesthetic works, culminating inthe Clocktower Project, that allow her audience to‘hear the light’. Many of her recent installations havefocused on the transformation of light into soundusing solar panels and ultrasonic devices. Kubisch’sthoughtful investigation of the historical sound chara-cter of the MASS MoCA site, and creation of a com-plex, technology-rich work, typifies MASS MoCA’ssymbiotic approach to site-specific art.

7. WALTER FAHNDRICH’S MUSIC FOR AQUARRY, 1999

In Music for a Quarry, clear tones call acrossthe natural amphitheatre of the Hoosac MarbleQuarry from ten speakers, equally spaced along its

Figure 4. Christina Kubisch’s Clocktower Project.

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circumference, for fifteen minutes of twilight everyevening. Working with the latitude and longitude ofthe quarry, a computer program begins the music atthe same solar time (rather than clock time) eachnight. The start time (near 8 or 9 p.m. in summer, near4 p.m. at the winter solstice) changes as the spatialrelationship between the earth and sun changes. Thefirst tone appears at the precise moment of astronomi-cal sunset, a moment that is both permanently fixedand changing daily. During this fifteen-minute period,the burden of comprehending the physical space shifts

Figure 5. Location for Music for a Quarry.

slowly from the eye to the ear as the sounds are tracedto their sources.

Walter Fähndrich has made Musik für Räume(Music for Spaces) in Switzerland, Austria, Germany,France and the Netherlands, though Music fora Quarry is his only work in America. At each site,whether a Gothic church, art gallery, or outdoorspace, he seeks to create and introduce sounds thatrely on the inherent acoustic qualities of the spaces,such as the clear echoes and fractured surfaces in theHoosac Marble Quarry.