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ISEA 2004 Layers of Performance
By by Stanislav Roudavski

People play with “the algorithmically controlled quadraphonic soundscape and its visual manifestations” in Sonic Spaces, an installation by Shawn Pinchback. Photographs by Stanislav Roudavski.

Aboard flight 18.45, London – Helsinki, people scan each other for the happy signs of genius. And no wonder. According to the unflinching authors of the official introduction to the 12th International Symposium on Electronic Arts, “ISEA2004 CRUISE is a great party where you can talk, dance, drink, eat, sunbathe and relax with the most innovative group of people that have ever set on sail.” Modest and convincing if you ask me.

Architecture does sound

Douglas Kahn

The cross talk of the title no doubt refers to the way sounds from the different pieces ‘bleed’ (ouch!) into one another when placed in close proximity. Often, in exhibitions involving sound, ‘cross’ could apply to the antagonism of competing sounds, but here there is no anger, no claims staked, nobody out of control, no rude interruptions. The installation strategy of Cross Talk is to only include works that are so gentle and unobtrusive that, even as they share the same space, they don’t get in each other’s way.

Echigo-Tsumari Triennial 2003, Japan

The recent Documenta 11 and 50th Venice Biennale exhibitions spawned a plethora of critical articles intensifying debate round the phenomenon of globalism – on the one hand the global rise and rise of large-scale biennale/triennale exhibitions, on the other globalism as both curatorial theme and format of these exhibitions. 

Education feature:
training the sound artist

A thrilling sono-cranial re-wire

Bruce Mowson
Nigel Helyer (see interview), whose sound sculpture Meta-Diva won the 2002 Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award, questioned whether there were any courses in Australia which allowed for the study of sound in proper depth, responded by asking “Is there anywhere that teaches [among other sound subjects] psychoacoustics, soundscape concepts and electronics?” Given Australia’s predominantly deaf visual culture, it is typical that sound not be resourced at the level of other cultural practices.

This essay is a version of the exhibition catalogue for Silent Forest shown at the San Francisco Art Institute as part of SoundCulture96.

As a recent transplant to Australia, I welcomed the opportunity to write about this work, to introduce it to the city where I have spent much of my adult life. In framing my comments about Silent Forest, it was important to keep in mind what might be involved for an American audience in viewing this work by an Australian about Vietnam in the United States. It is true that San Francisco is not part of the U.S., but just the same….