One artist's soundtrack to life has arrived at the Bell Gallery in List Art Center.
The gallery's new show, "Song of Transformation," displays two sculptural sound installations by composer and artist Joe Diebes that unify visual and sonic elements to create sculpture with a soundtrack.
Diebes described these two works as an experiment testing the abilities of modern technology. "I wanted to see how far I could go to emulate nature with these tools," he said.
The first installation, "Aviary," consists of seven white birdcages suspended from the ceiling of a shockingly white room. Speakers hidden in each cage play a series of digitally manipulated birdcalls. The sounds are randomized through a computer algorithm.
The second, "Sound Field," presents 15 sunflowers on a lawn of black Astroturf. Highly focused spotlights illuminate the flowers in an otherwise entirely dark room with black walls. A mixture of white noises and manipulated Morse code sounds, also randomized through a computer algorithm, play from speakers in the center of each sunflower.
While these works were conceived as companion pieces, this is the first time they are being shown together, said Bell Gallery director Jo-Ann Conkin.
A graduate of Yale, Diebes has studied classical music with pioneering artist and composer La Monte Young, as well as at the Julliard School. But more recently he has been moving away from music in the classic sense and toward the art sphere with his works.
In a lecture at the opening of the show last Friday, Diebes explained that he is interested in the way that music shapes space in a subliminal way. "I'm interested in finding ways that music and sound can suggest the unseen dimensions of physical objects and alter our perceptions of them," he said.
He described a disconnect between the composer and his audience in the way that music is conventionally performed. "Where things get complicated is the act of composing a piece of music, spending a month writing a 10-minute piece. There's a real disconnect between me and the audience and it's hard to see where its emotions are going to go during the performance," he said.
To eliminate the barrier between listener and composer, Diebes decided to move his work from the concert hall, a more controlled environment, to the art gallery, where the viewer has more freedom to direct his experience. "The gallery sets up a completely different mode of reception than the concert hall by operating on the viewer/listener's time frame rather than the composer's," he wrote.
In using a gallery space, Diebes believes that he is exploring a different way to understand music. "I'm a big believer in background music because I'm fundamentally distracted when I listen to music. I listen to it as texture," he said.
In "Song of Transformation," Diebes' combinations of sounds provide a texture within which the viewer can understand the visual elements of the piece more clearly. "I'm not offering a specific viewpoint to be decoded, but I'm setting up a situation where you can think about these things," he said.
Diebes succeeds in setting up a separate "situation" for his audience to consider his sound installations. Both rooms are completely enclosed and leave the viewer feeling isolated and lonely, almost like an intruder in a surreal private world. In "Sound Field," the combination of lighting and sound effects is unsettling.
Despite their occasionally disturbing nature, Diebes' installations provide a unique view of installation art and a calming place to get away from the bustle of college life for a few minutes.
"Song of Transformation" will be on view at the List Art Center through October 30.
