(Acoustic Projections) collection of lamps i made this year, will be on display tomorrow evening @referencepoint180 7-11 pm. I will also be playing guitar for @byssuleman at 9pm
Box With No Sound (2025)
Sculpture/Installation
Scrap MDF with print, plywood, mirrored acrylic, metal handle, transducer, amplifier, light dynamic resistor, raspberry pi, recorded sound.
Duration: 15:00
Dimensions: 56.3*58.7*76.2 cm
Washing machines, refrigerators, air conditioners & purifiers, dishwashers, kitchen fans, and blow dryers; every appliance in our homes and around the city makes some varying form of hum, buzz, rumble, or shriek. They are necessary noises, but most often distracting and inescapable, sometimes even painful. Even when we want to, there are certain sounds that we simply cannot turn oN. Box With no Sound corrals these noise-scapes and fuses them into one elusive kitchen cabinet. The noise will continue to sound until you seek it out. But how much control can we ultimately assert over these sounds, and should we even try? Is the primary annoyance the sound itself or the lack of control?
These questions are brought to the fore through the immediate feedback response of conversing with the box. Cybernetics, which is the study of adaptive systems that form through feedback organization, provides a theoretical lens through which to critique noise pollution in the urban environment. Box With no Sound draws reference from a classic cybernetics problem of the “black box”: with only inputs and outputs and the task of understanding or mimicking its output behavior, essentially developing a control over it without necessarily understanding the internal reasoning behind such behavior.
Mycelium Affect: watch with your ears and listen with your eyes.
This is an unsanctioned public sound installation within Frieze London/Regents Park that ran October 11th & 12th, the two busiest days of the fair. The piece, entitled Mycelium Affect is a sonic imagining of the mycelium network in the park and its affective potential. The auto-tuned narration guides an educational meditation, melodically weaving from organic base to network of electrical currents and communication. Seven trees spread along the main throughway between Frieze and Frieze Masters function as “sites of respite” (Jordan Lacey) in which passersby can momentarily enter an alternative real. For those traveling the whole path, the multitudinous encounters reveal a sense of interconnectedness among the trees.
The placing of ambient music in a space like this has serious implications and can lead to unintentional control over the affective environment. “…functional Muzak (or Mood Music’ as it is now called) easily locates itself in public spaces, unlike rupture points that aim to diversify. The programmed sounds of Muzak are expressions of dominant affective forces, and are thus complimentary to the political hegemony of space” (Lacey). Given the proximity to Frieze, a hegemonic fortress in the art world, the distinction between moodifying the space and presenting sites of reflection is imperative. The spacing of the trees (one every approx. 150 m) ensured that the installation functioned as a site and node within a network rather than an aesthetic convoy of Muzaks.
“Sounds that appear become even more powerful when suddenly disappearing, and leave in our perceptions a residue of their existence.” (Lacey)
Some of the most noticeable reactions from people took place when I would shut down each tree in the evening. People glanced around as if searching for something they weren’t aware had existed.
Original composition and installation by Me
In collaboration with @meddymb365 and @zoozdrink
