The School of Arts and Humanities opens its spring season by examining the relationship between sound and art with the mixed-media exhibit Sonic Architectonic.
Curated by visual arts faculty member Lorraine Tady, the exhibit features both local and national artists who work directly with noise or frequency, examining what is heard or felt through sound waves, and some who work with images that suggest sound. Other artists in the exhibit anticipate our relationship to sound by addressing our expectations and cognitive reflexes.
96-Tears no. 3 by John Pomara, professor of visual arts in the School of Arts and Humanities.
“In contemporary art, sound is a medium used as a separate tool, or is intertwined with other mediums,” said Tady. “Some artists infuse their own open, hybrid visual forms and multimedia explorations with sound. This exhibit considers these approaches and more.”
Artists utilizing real sound with their visual works or as their artwork include Jill Auckenthaler, who, in collaboration with Sarah Phillips, will display What My Schedule Sounds Like. The work is both an instrumental score for an atonal sound piece and a watercolor and graphite work on paper.
Brad Tucker is creating Bagdad Bass Club, an interactive sound and object installation that combines videotaped music performance, customized audio equipment, handmade plastic records, ambient music and thumping intermittent bass sounds.
Dr. Frank Dufour, assistant professor of sound design at UT Dallas, and adjunct art professor Stephen Lapthisophon, will, in separate works of art, direct sound into the gallery to inhabit and transform the architectural space of the gallery. Lapthisophon interprets Karl Marx through a disembodied voice reminiscent of German lieder. Dufour collaborates with David Searcy and Nancy Rebal to create an interactive soundscape alluding to world peace.
Paul Slocum offers his iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch app Magic Carpet. Visitors are invited to install the free app “carpet lite” to experience the hypnotic and meditative graphics in synchronization with the app’s generative music synthesizer.
Artists who will study sound in various visual ways using painting, drawing, and sculpture include John Pomara, professor of visual arts in the School of Arts and Humanities. Included are computer ink jet drawings by Robert Ortega, who is interested in patterns and “how to graphically relate light wavelength to audio frequency,” and Diane Fitch’s realist paintings of casual living room musicians.
The show opens with a reception on Friday, Jan. 27 from 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. in the Visual Arts Building. Visiting artist Brad Tucker will share a lecture of his work Friday Jan. 27 at 10 a.m. in AS 1.116. The group exhibit will on display until Feb. 18, 2012.
Mezzanine Exhibit: Glean by Kerry Ann Hennigan
Grad student Kerry Ann Hennigin will be exhibiting her show Glean, a series of photographs, in the Mezzanine Gallery of the Visual Arts Building. The exhibit will be on display from Jan. 27 to Feb. 18.