Light and Sound Installation, 2000

group show 2000 1/2 - going forward looking back
Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA (US)

Fluorescent Tubes, Loudspeakers, Electronics, Wood
Dimensions 7m x 3,65 m x 3,20 m

The Installation makes use of the museums own huge moveable separation walls. Ten of these eighteen walls were used for this part of the installation which was situated at the opposite end of the space, near the entrance.

These ten walls stood very close to each other with the wide sides in one line. Between any two of the walls appeared a narrow slit of 3,65 x 3,20 meters depth resp. height and ca. 10 cm width. At one end of the slit two flourescent tubes were mounted along the slit and wrapped in coloured gels. In front of the tubes a diffusor gel or frosted glass was mounted. At the back side the slits were closed with wooden panels so that was only possible to look into the slit from one side. Also the top was covered, so no light got out at the top. The flourescent tubes lit each slit in a different colour. The whole block of the ten seperating units looked like one monlith with 9 cuts in it, ca 7 meters wide and 3,65 meters deep and 3,20 meters high.

At the front end of each slit a small loudspeaker - just the open system, no box around it - was placed on the ground to be heard from the outside. The nine speakers played back sounds that move from speaker to speaker. While the lights were static the sounds were very active and moving fast along the piece, interrupted by long phases of silence. The movements of the sounds were always in one of the two directions of the line on which the speakers are placed. The sounds were chosen by their acoustic quality rather then by their contents. Their structure was short and impulsive. The volume was not very high, just loud enough to hear it in the neighbourhood of the installation.