(2026)
Sound Installations
Tasked with responding to the content within the Hammer Museum’s Several Eternities in a Day group exhibition, these three sound installations represent sonic studies of the objects and concepts of note from within all of the artists’ works throughout the show.
I. Study for Vertical Earth
Two beneath-ground recordings, one during the day and one at night, resonate inside the opening didactic wall, creating low-range frequency resonances that elevate the presence of Earth throughout the first stage of the exhibition. The guttural recordings are perceived as vibrations emanating from a wall at the exhibition entrance.
II. Study for Concentric and Overlapping Circles
Several layered field recordings from locations of differing volumes utilize directional overhead speakers to sound as if they are evaporating as the noises overlap with one another, drawing the attention of the listener outwards to the surrounding works. The field recordings made for “Act II: Cosmic Abstraction and Communal Form” manifest more subtly as a sonic portal into the second section of the exhibition. Attendees experience a brief burst of frequency as they move through the space, conversing with the moving landscape in Sky Hopinka’s film and the landscape paintings in the section.
III. Study for Angled Outdoor Ocarinas
Two hyper-directional speakers beam recordings out into the final stage of the exhibition. The recordings of ceramic ocarinas, activated not by human breath but by the wind, converse directly with the ceramic objects within the installation space. Ocarinas, small wind instruments made of clay, are found in archaeological sites dating back to the Preclassic Maya period.