All circuits go for unusual computer-based exhibit for the News-Tribune of Duluth Minnesota, October 1997 By Ann Klefstad
This show is such a great gale of fresh air! It's a little difficult to approach at first (some computer links aren't up, it can be hard to find your way to the projects, etc.), but even if you're stumbling around in the misty reaches of cyberspace looking for stuff, you'll trip over treasures. What Leif Brush, an art professor at UMD, has organized is a great collection of work done by many people in many fields, often fields usually thought of as unrelated. He's presented this work on computer, online. ``endeavor: I ask you'' is not a standard art show, or even visual. Its primary subject is sound. When you walk into the Tweed Museum, you won't see any paintings or sculpture. Instead you'll go upstairs to a computer monitor set to the Web site that's the main part of the show, and you'll click on the parts of the assemblage on-screen that seem inviting. There is a main menu for the Web site; the listings on it are fairly clear. You also can access this Web site from your home computer (or from work, if you're self-employed or have an easygoing boss). But this cyber-show is not primarily about computers, or computer art (bless its heart). It's concerned with ``acoustic ecology,'' which is, according to Barry Truax, ``the study of the effects of the acoustic environment or soundscape on the physical responses... of creatures living within it,'' and remember, we're creatures too). To this end, the works of many individuals who do sound art and sound research are presented in the form of separate Web pages that you can call up. Often these pages make noises. Other attached interests that trail along, attached to this primary concern, are: sound considered and manipulated as separate from music; ethnomusicology; studies of birdsong and animal calls; electronic music; sculpture that makes music, either by wind action or human action; the phenomenology of sound and how the human perceptual bandwidth influences what we think about the world; the history of the relation between sound/music and mathematics, and its links to philosophy; and sculptural installations that use sound. My exploration has been limited by necessity to the Internet portion of this show, and this has been enough to keep me happily busy for hours, but there are many ongoing presentations in which artists will speak or perform live over the Internet to participants. These should prove fascinating, especially if you visit the Web site first and wander around a little. Call the Tweed for the schedule of these events, and for the days on which a computer assistant will be available to help you work the rather unwieldy layout of the Web site. Most of the ``projects'' accessible from the Web site were not purposely built for this show. Often, they are artists' own Web pages that contain photos or recordings or other snippets of their work in various venues, and so do not constitute one's usual notion of an artwork in a show. These bits and pieces, though they can be frustrating (why wasn't I in Frankfurt for that exhibition!), are certainly interesting. Local musician Chris Bacigalupo's contribution, for instance, is an image, changing over the space of a minute or so, of a seated Buddha figure who dissolves into a building behind him. Clicking on this image brings one to Bacigalupo's own Web page, in which he promotes a tiny radio station called Random Radio and some other endeavors of his own. Andra McCartney, a Canadian multimedia artist, offers samples of sound and imagery from several multimedia performances (including, forebodingly, the sound of a snow shovel). Dan Senn shows examples of his Henry Cowell-like instruments, crafted to produce new sound experiences. Nigel Hellyer contributes a fantastic essay on the relation between human bodies, sound, mathematical ratios, and the history of science and philosophy; he also has a rather lovely documentation of his thoughtful installation called ``The Silent Forest,'' exploring the territory of French colonialism and opera, defoliants and bonsai. Some sites are different because they reference something other than the individual's work. For instance, Bill Evans has a link to the bioacoustics research page of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Leif Brush's own page has, along with family snapshots, a link to a great Ren van Peer essay on birdsong and a link to a live audio of his Windribbon aeolian sculpture. This review can really only scratch the surface of what's offered in this array. This is nominally an art show, but it's an art that reaches eagerly for a hundred other disciplines, and for the real physicality of sound. Its interests contain the communicational possibilities offered by cyberspace, but are certainly not contained by cyberspace. This is a great show for polymaths, lovers of noise and silence, musicians, biologists, philosophers, birdwatchers -- and even artists and other folks. Be brave! Try this out. You won't regret it.
Klefstad is a Duluth artist and writer.