MA Sound Arts graduates of London College of Communication Final Show
Curated by Electra and IMT
IMT Gallery, Unit 2/210 Cambridge Heath Road, London, E2
27- 30 November 2008
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Comprising of ambitious works by nine artists who employ sound as the principle media of their practice, Audio Forensics demonstrated the breadth of engagement with sound in the arts, and how it can be re-evaluated in the context of an increasingly noisy world. The artists who exhibited were Libero Colimberti, Jan Hendrickse, Simone Izzi, Nitin Lachhani, Luc Messinezis, Maria Papadomanolaki, Vytis Puronas, Mark Shorey and Mark Wright.
Sound art encompasses a wide range of forms and concerns and has its precedence across many creative fields, yet, as these artists demonstrated, the acknowledgment of sound's significance in the arts is becoming of greater importance as technologies develop, and as the public become ever more aware of the interactions between sound, space and artistic practice.
Some of the works make one aware of interactions with sound that are overlooked, such as the effect of sonic frequencies on the body in Shorey's work. Others, such as Messinezis's collection of sonic curiosities, in an audio equivalent to the Wunderkammer, or Lachhani's extraordinary 3D sculptures of sound waves, translate sound into contexts more familiar in the visual arts presenting experiences that are at once recognisable and alien. Other work acknowledges the importance of music in sound art, whether Hendrickse's use of air currents to play both musical and non-musical instruments, or Colimberti's subversion of the use of music and the sound effect in film. As a whole the exhibition provided an extraordinarily comprehensive inquiry into how sound, and its manipulation, influences our experience and understanding of our environment.
The accompanying symposium, in which key note speakers Davis Toop, Musician and Research Fellow at London College of Communication and Steven Connor, professor of Modern Literature and Theory at Birkbeck, addressed issues of sonic practice raised by Audio Forensics.
Audio Forensics was an exhibition and symposium presenting the final work of the first MA Sound Arts graduates of London College of Communication. The groundbreaking work in the exhibition demonstrated the high level of critical debate in sonic disciplines fostered by the university's Department of Sound Art and Design since 1998. The exhibition was co-curated by Electra and IMT.
Image: courtesy of IMT Gallery
