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A series of sound installations exploring sensory perception, tactile experience, and language
Slought is pleased to announce "Sound Vault," a series of sound installations exploring sensory perception, tactile, experience, and language. The series begins with "The Plato Songs," an audio installation for three headphones in the Slought vault by artist Chris Mann, adapted from the recent installation at Engine 27, New York. In conjunction with the exhibition, Slought is also pleased to present "dunno how to get there but wouldn start from here," a live performance by Mann on February 19, 2004.
"As 'law' was also the word for 'music,'" Chris Mann explains, "Plato's The Laws was, like the lost sixth analect of Confucius, his text on music. And as The Laws was the out-of-town tryout for The Republic, it seems timely to pry into those early models of conversation theory, the cybernetics of The Dialogues. 'The Plato Songs' is the bookend companion piece to my earlier work "Or, Yellow" on Ludwig Wittgenstein and Cab Calloway." He continues, "Language is the mechanism whereby you understand what I'm thinking better than I do (where 'I' is defined by those changes for which I is required)."
For more information, download "Double standard" and "An a," two of Chris Mann's poetic texts that are featured in the exhibition.
Next in the series is "That Which is Known and Unknown (for Chris Rice); What Was and Will Not Ever Be Again the Same as it is Different", a subharmonic sound installation by Thomas C. Moore from September 11-November 6, 2004. This two-month exhibition confronts the visitor with a low-level sound composition featuring a range of mild to intense subharmonic vibrations (caused by variations in the amplitudes of the sound waves). These pockets of intense vibration are enhanced by the vault's non-dampening steel enclosure.
A sound wave (e.g., someone talking) is a small pressure wave that travels through the air. The energy generated from the pressure waves is passed from molecule to molecule, finally exciting your eardrum and causing vibrations in the internal structure of the ear. Human ears are capable of detecting sounds in the range 25-17,000 Hertz (vibrations per second). Sounds below this range vibrate too slowly for humans to hear, but are able to be felt with the body. Using frequencies from the lower end of the audible spectrum, T.C. Moore's work explores the impact of sound on human sensory perception as it engages the body rather than the ear: sound as tactile experience.
As sound frequencies approach the level at which the brain operates (between 1 and 13 Hz), exploitation of low-frequency sound makes possible cognitive warfare and mind control using acoustical, optical and electromagnetic fields to interfere with an enemy's biological processes. Overexposure to low-frequency sounds (50 Hz or lower) can result in immediate reduction of cognitive performance, reduced perception, lessened memory performance and a heightened sense of discomfort. Certain low, partially audible frequencies cause humans to experience nausea, and have been used to incapacitate persons in counter-terrorist and crowd control settings.