Pengpai News reporter Huang Song

Clear Dreams: The Journey of Sound "was recently exhibited to the public at the West Bund Art Museum in Shanghai. As a collaborative project between the West Coast Art Museum and the Pompidou Center, the exhibition showcases nearly 15 pieces/groups of new media collections from the Pompidou Center, along with audiovisual installations and sound sculptures by Chinese artists, to broaden our understanding of "sound" as a medium and its own potential.

So, what is' sound art '? What kind of works can be included in the category of "sound art"? What is the relationship between "sound" and space? With these questions in mind, Pengpai Art interviewed Marcella Lista, the curator of "lucid dreams: the journey of sound," from the New Media Art Center of the Pompidou Center National Museum of Modern Art. She is also the curator of the first special exhibition "Observation - Pompidou Center New Media Collection Exhibition" at the West Coast Art Museum in 2019.

The History of Exhibitions and 'Sound Art'

Pengpai News: In 2019, you planned the first special exhibition of the collaboration project between the West Coast Art Museum and the Pompidou Center, "Observation - Pompidou Center New Media Collection Exhibition," which focuses on the impact of new media on culture; In the past five years, "lucid dreams" will feature "sound" as its special exhibition theme. What are the differences in the concepts conveyed by the two exhibitions, from visual art to sound?

Rita: Two exhibitions aim to specifically focus on media based works and attempt to explore contemporary issues through these media. In the special exhibition 'Observation', we consider how media provides tools for observation and profoundly changes our 'way of viewing'. From the use of "visual machines" such as telescopes, microscopes, and cameras as intermediaries, resulting in delays and displacements in the perception process, to a new perspective that emphasizes "specialized" gaze, including issues such as scientific review, medical examination, and surveillance, as well as the cultural and practical exploration of real-time transmission and reception of electronic signals by artists in the early stages of image art, and the use of images to observe things, places, and people.

The current exhibition, on the other hand, focuses on the auditory field from a completely different perspective. 'lucid dreaming' is another perception and state, more like a metaphor, used to explore multi-level consciousness. In most cultures, visual perception is the dominant feeling and is easy to analyze. However, hearing can balance our sense of foothold and spatial orientation, and it perceives the world we live in different ways.

Pengpai News: How is "sound art" defined? When can it be traced back to the earliest? What is the difference between "experimental music" and "sound art"?

Rita: The starting point of this exhibition is not "sound art". This concept was created as an art discipline or category in the late 1970s, when the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York aimed to legitimize the artistic practice of exploring sound in space. It is worth noting that MoMA held an exhibition called "Sound Art" in 1979, and at the same time, Roselee Goldberg published a book titled "Performing Arts: From Futurism to the Present" in the same year (which has been reprinted and reprinted multiple times since then).

This reflects the vision of academia, museums, and later the art market to attract attention to experimental art forms, provide institutional recognition for time-based art from the performing arts field, and consider the cross impact between these art forms and visual arts.

I believe that these influences and dialogues have long existed in art history and are the main features of avant-garde and modern art. Marcel Duchamp envisioned a "sound sculpture" in his notes in 1913, and in the same year, Luigi Russolo issued the manifesto "The Art of Noise" and began making specific instruments to tune the primitive noise in the city.

Like "experimental art," the concept of "experimental music" is not a label or category, but rather a summary of the exploratory stages experienced by art practices throughout the 20th to 1970s. This exploration is both inward (centered around the self reflective mode of the media ontology) and outward (by expanding the materials, techniques, themes, and processes of art forms, thereby transcending established norms of specific art practices).

That being said, this exhibition is neither about sound art nor experimental music.

Pengpai News: What is the relationship and difference between visual and auditory arts? What kind of works can be included in the category of "sound art"? Many of the artists participating in this exhibition are also visual artists. How can we define their sound works?

Rita: As an art historian and curator, I don't think it's necessary to refer to categories such as "sound art," "performance art," "video art," or "digital art. This classification simplistically assumes that current art practice is defined by the medium used, which I believe is not the case.

In fact, my work so far has been exploring artistic practices, works, and contexts that go beyond classification authority. In the exhibition at the West Coast Art Museum, artists utilized various elements such as space, sound, imagery, technology, sculpture, and light. Among them, some come from the music field, some have received training from art schools, some are outstanding composers who use materials from the visual arts field to create, and some have self-taught themselves based on their experience in one or more of these fields. In this exhibition, what attracted me was the gathering point of the selected artworks - viewing "sound" as a moving carrier that encompasses the concepts of displacement and a journey.

Pengpai News: The West Coast Art Museum has mainly exhibited visual art works in previous exhibitions. This time, "lucid dreams: the journey of sound" focuses on sound. What are the differences in presentation and perception compared to visual works?

Rita: Technically speaking, showcasing works that contain sound has always been a challenge. The sound flows like a liquid. That's also why it's interesting, it's difficult to restrict or stop, creating an atmosphere that we can hardly control.

In this exhibition, exhibition designer Isabelle Raymondo defined the exhibition with two main themes - the concept of journey and displacement, and the construction of dreamlike spaces. A lucid dream is not a dream that takes us away from reality, but rather allows us to view it in different, expanded senses and consciousness. In the exhibition design, she put forward some wonderful ideas to achieve this. Firstly, she broke the original square pattern of Exhibition Hall 3, where the exhibition is located, and visually created a diagonal grid, introducing a different sense of space and designing an unusual exhibition flow. Secondly, she abandoned the "black box" exhibition style that is usually dominated by video and sound media. The choice of light gray for the exhibition hall walls, the transparency of the glass partitions, and the use of semi transparent curtains all create an atmosphere of ambiguity in the space, creating a state of "daydreaming".

Pengpai News: The works of this exhibition also extend to the Huangpu River outside the West Bund Art Museum. What is the relationship between "sound" and space and environment?

Rita: The beauty of sound lies in its integration with the environment. We will start the exhibition with an extraordinary masterpiece by Bill Fontana. This artwork is located outdoors, gradually displayed on the stairs leading from the Huangpu River to the second floor of the art museum. Bill Fontana studied music composition with John Cage in New York in the 1960s. He began his exploration of what he called "sound sculpture" early on, by surrounding a building's terrace with loudspeakers and broadcasting these sounds in real-time through a speaker in a room of the building, without the audience knowing the source of the sound. The sound produced by his works is a mixture of urban soundscapes and object resonance, as well as specific harmonics echoing from the shape of the object itself.

In the works exhibited at the West Coast Art Museum, Fontana brings together two voices. A bell from Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. After the fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in 2019, the bell stopped ringing. The artist collaborated with the public institution responsible for the protection and restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris to begin creating the church bell inside the bell tower. Another sound comes from the Dachstein Glacier in Austria, which is melting due to global warming. At these two locations, artists installed seismic accelerometers, an extremely precise sensor device used to detect earthquakes before they occur. These sensors can amplify sounds that the human ear cannot capture. There is a very strong idea in Fontana's works that we cannot see the source of sound, it is distant, separating the auditory (ears) from the visual (eyes). Therefore, we experience sounds with specific characteristics, but we are not always able to recognize them (unless from the title of the work). Outside the West Coast Art Museum, they blend perfectly with various sounds from the river, especially the sound of boats.

Another noteworthy work is "The Sound Temple" (2021) created by Chinese artist Sun Wei, who is currently based in Chengdu. This is an electronic artwork that is experienced through acoustic chambers and is based on the frequencies favored by ancient temple acoustics. Here, the nomadic nature of sound is once again reflected. This is a set of three electronic music pieces that visitors can enter and listen to under three suspended acoustic canvas covers. These sounds are arranged by the artist in some way (not simply reproducing the original sound, but re tuned versions of the 256 Hz and 432 Hz frequencies recorded on-site and collected online), and transferred to different locations and environments to reconstruct the sound landscape of the temple.

One thing I really appreciate is being in the grand atrium of the art museum designed by David Chipperfield, which is like an echo chamber of other older buildings, specifically designed for meditation and experiencing the perception of time on a longer scale.

Sound Art and China

Pengpai News: In this exhibition at the West Coast Art Museum, Chinese artists and their sound art works also accounted for a considerable proportion (nearly 1/4). How were they selected?

Rita: In fact, the use of sound in art has a long and important history in China. As a medium presented in exhibitions, it has become increasingly important in the early 21st century. In Shanghai, the "Rotation: Chinese Sound Art Exhibition" held during the "West Bund 2013 Architecture and Contemporary Art Biennial" is an important moment for a comprehensive examination and presentation of Chinese sound art creation. Sun Wei was also one of the participating artists in the 2013 exhibition.

Another artist who participated in the 2013 exhibition, Wang Changcun, used the traditional method of on-site recording in his work "Waterfall" (2013), combined with the static noise of analog television.

Yang Jiahui and Ye Hui have both received training in music composition, and their current artistic practice includes installation, video, and performance. Especially Yang Jiahui, over the past 20 years, he has become one of the leading figures in China and even the international stage, using sound as a medium to promote its development in conceptual art and multimedia installations, and has written a large number of solid theoretical articles. Liu Chuang and Tao Hui have a background in visual arts, and the works they exhibit here revolve around the social function of music. In addition to the astonishing power demonstrated by the individual works of Chinese artists, they also explored some common concerns in this exhibition along with the collections of the Pompidou Center.

Pengpai News: I have noticed that the audiovisual installation work "Waterfall" by Chinese artist Wang Changcun is currently on display at the Duolun Art Museum in Shanghai. How do you view the different interpretations of this work in these two exhibitions?

Rita: I am very pleased to have visited the "Listening Road: Contemporary Chinese Sound Art Practice" exhibition curated by artist and sound art scholar Yin Yi at the Duolun Modern Art Museum during my stay in Shanghai. Before this, I realized that we were all interested in showcasing the same work by Wang Changcun. Therefore, we collaborate with artists to present two different versions of the artwork.

The "Listening Road" exhibition began as a record of three historical exhibitions on the practice of Chinese sound art, namely in 2006 ("Awakening Battersea", London), 2013 ("Speed: Chinese Sound Art Exhibition", Shanghai), and 2021 ("Original Sound: Local Soundscapes of Taiyuan", Taiyuan). [Note: Yin Yi, curator of "Listening Road: Practice of Contemporary Chinese Sound Art," chose Wang Changcun's "Waterfall" because in terms of form, this work is very similar to early video art or new media art; in terms of audio-visual relationship, it is a discussion of human sensory integration ability after audio-visual division.]

As for me, including it in the exhibition 'lucid dreams: the journey of sound' implies the history of synesthesia: since modern times, people have yearned to reflect or create a 'translation' between sound and image - in other words, to 'see' sound or 'hear' image.

In fact, in Wang Changcun's works, there is an unexpected twist in this regard: at first, we thought we heard the "white noise" corresponding to the "snowflake screen" played on a CRT TV monitor (cathode ray tube monitor), but in reality, it was a field recording of a waterfall.

The artist played with an acoustic illusion and hinted at the shape of a waterfall by arranging the display vertically. Artists imagine stacked streams of images as flowing water, which is also highly poetic.

Across from it, "Full Circle" (1978) is a historic work by Gary Hill, a pioneer in experimental video art in the United States. In the 1970s, he created various works that involved visualizing sound input onto video screens, a process that also caught the interest of artists such as Baek Nam joon and Bill Viola at the time. In this exhibition area, a straight line and a circle face each other, which is a playful contemplation about the possible shapes of sound, both technically and in our imagination.

Pengpai News: Around 2010, a series of important sound art events occurred in Europe and North America, including Susan Mary Philipsz winning the Turner Prize, and in 2013, the Karlsruhe Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Germany and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in the United States held exhibitions with sound art as the theme. These events conveyed the message that "sound art is on the rise". After ten years, what is the current development status of sound art? How do you view the current phenomenon of visual artists extensively using sound as a material?

Rita: As I mentioned earlier, to my knowledge, the first exhibition to include "sound art" in its title was held in 1979 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. After this exhibition, many other exhibitions were also held in the 1980s, especially in Germany, where the avant-garde history of music had undergone a strong conceptual shift in the first few decades of the 20th century, particularly in regards to viewing music as a form of spatial art.

Indeed, there is no fixed number of categories and labels. As an art historian, it is more important for me to examine various traditions and their developments, as well as the characteristics of each art research and stance.

For creative materials, I believe that nowadays, the art practice of using sound in a conscious, clear, and eye-catching way is very diverse. I want to say that artistic choices are only interesting when necessary.

Pengpai News: This exhibition has nearly 15 sets/pieces of works from the new media collection of the Pompidou Center. Does the Pompidou Center have a dedicated collection system for sound art? From the perspective of collection, how does the Pompidou Center place sound art works?

Rita: Part of the collection at the Pompidou Center is divided by medium, and part is divided by age. Most of the works in this exhibition have been included in the new media collection. It is interesting that the collection of the New Media Art Center, along with the collection of photography and experimental images, began in 1977 when the decades old French National Museum of Modern Art moved into the newly built Pompidou Center building.

Next to the Pompidou Center, IRCAM (Pompidou Center for Acoustics and Music Research) was created at the same time by French composer Pierre Boulez, who aspired to develop a unique international laboratory for the development of new music technology tools. The famous Max/MSP software, which is still used in experimental music worldwide, was developed there in the mid-1980s.

This cluster of public institutions - the Pompidou Center and IRCAM - boldly innovated the museum collection concept at that time. The current collection of new media art includes videos, sounds, early interactive media, and artist websites, as well as generative algorithm art works and blockchain based art works.

One important criterion of the Pompidou Center's collection system is protection. Each department has specific expertise in this area. But some multimedia works are difficult to apply. For example, in this exhibition, Yuko Mohri's work "Parade" (2011-2017) is first considered a sculpture because it uses very fragile objects. Installing this artwork not only requires the assistance of a new media art team, but also a dedicated electronic and mechanical team within Pompidou that specializes in dynamic works involving motors and digital timers. Overall, in the field of contemporary art, the Pompidou Center has a strong tradition of cross departmental collaboration.

Pengpai News: In the final chapter of the exhibition, "Soundwave Network," the flourishing development of social media is presented. How do you view the increasing trend of social media images entering art creation?

Lishta: The three works in the last chapter of the exhibition explore how human self-consciousness interacts and confronts with the Internet in different ways. I think social media is just a part of this problem, the larger domain is the internet, which is a constantly active, 24/7 augmented reality field. Molly Soda, a young artist from Puerto Rico, creates almost entirely on social media. Since the 1980s, there have been several generations of artists whose works are only displayed online. The innovation is that Molly Soda does not label her works as works of art, although it obviously involves critical exploration of the Internet ecosystem and culture (in a positive sense).

She carefully embedded it into regular platforms and formats, making the work pretend to be another post. For me, this is a thought-provoking gesture: in today's life field of global communication through the Internet, it describes an art form that transcends the scope.

Note: This exhibition will last until September 17th

[Editor in charge: Li Danping]