Installation art is rare enough, but sound art installation is rarer still, since galleries are all about visual art.  I happen to be a huge fan of sound art in galleries, even if I hardly ever encounter it (or perhaps BECAUSE I hardly ever encounter it), so it’s with great excitement I announce that on my Sat. Oct. 29 Lower East Side gallery tour, one of our 7 stops will be an extraordinarily inventive sound art installation.

With sound art, the viewer typically sees nothing in the room except speakers, if that.  Because of its unconventional and commercially risky nature, sound art is a tough sell for galleries, so in an entire year there may be only one or two sound art exhibits out of around 2500 Chelsea gallery shows.

The particular Lower East Side gallery we’ll be visiting as part of the tour is New York City’s – and perhaps the world’s – only gallery that specializes in sound art.  It’s a small gallery space, comparable in size to many L.E.S. start-up galleries.  The room will be empty except for 12 speakers of various sizes, types and brands, spaced out in a seemingly haphazard fashion around the room – on walls, ceiling, and even the floor.  The artist has uploaded both recorded and digitally synthesized sounds into a computer, which then randomly parcels out the sounds to the speakers.  There are times when all the speakers are silent, and other times when almost all of them are producing sounds simultaneously.  The gallery employee turns on the piece at noon, and then the artwork plays continuously for six hours without ever repeating itself.

We’re not talking music here.  We’re talking SOUNDS, some of them familiar, others exotic and even bizarre.  And the random juxtaposition of the sounds is the most fascinating – and unpredictable – part.  The piece was designed with the size and acoustics of the particular gallery in mind.  Therefore, if and when someone buys the piece (the gallery is selling three editions of it), the artist needs to re-tailor it to accommodate its adopted space.

Of course, the tour will include a wide variety of artforms in the other galleries we visit: painting, sculpture, photography, and the like.  But nothing can prepare you – not even this blog – for the utterly fresh and original sound art installation that you’ll experience, should you be adventurous enough to join us that day in the edgy Lower East Side galleries.

Rafael Risemberg, Ph.D.
Founder and Director
New York GalleryTours