Extensions is an exhibition with three sound installations that are based broadly on the “extensions”. This theme of sound art has its origins partly in the work of art with long strings or cords from artists such as Terry Fox, Paul Panhuysen and Gordon Monahan, and has been established since the early 1970′s. Often the speaker boxes and objects connected by wires to produce sound and mechanical effects.
For the exhibition in Lydgalleriet three artists were chosen to highlight the various artistic positions in sound art, because of their artistic standpoint. While Pierre Berthet from Liege in Belgium has a background music and performance, Stefan Rummel from Berlin is an visual artist par excellence, where the material is sound. And Alvin Lucier sees himself as a composer of contemporary music.
Pierre Berthet presents for the first time in Norway “Extended Speakers”. It hangs in the “Borgården” at USF Verftet. The installation uses a familiar sound phenomena that everyone probably have tried when they were children, namely to make phones out of two tin cans and some wire. Berthet has stripped conventional speakers of the membrane, so the magnet behind is exposed. To the magnet he has attached steel wires which in turn are attached to empty paint cans, and the sound emerges from these buckets, much like the aforementioned line phone.
Stefan Rummel developed “Articulated Chambers” at his residence in Maastricht. This residence was part of the EU network “Resonance”, where a select few artists were given the opportunity to develop new works to tour the network. Rummel’s installation at Lydgalleriet is a new version of the one installed at a pier in Maastricht, now in dry dock in Bergen. With his room-in-room installation in the gallery space, he examines different experiences of space on the basis of the former shipyard area in Bergen.
The two sammenbundete boxes of wood is both inversive membranes and extended listening with the sounds of the city of Bergen. In their motion triggers their different energies mechanical stimuli in the room.
In Korskirken Hauke ​​Harder has realized a classic of art works with long metal strings: “Music on a Long Thin Wire” by the American composer and sound artist Alvin Lucier. This is one of his major works, in which he examines the aesthetic qualities of a physical phenomena. The sound of the installation is an oversized monokord in the form of a single piano string, which is stretched under the ceiling of the church. This long string is attached to a sine generator and a magnet. Their vibrations are amplified and transmitted via four speakers in the room.
The three works presented here, “extended installations”, are in the classic sense, sound art: auditory, site-specific installation art.
Carsten Seiffarth, Curator