Caramoor presents unprecedented sound art exhibition In the Garden of Sonic Delights

KATONAH, N.Y. - Nov. 22, 2013 - PRLog -- November 11, 2013--Katonah, NY--Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts announces today an unprecedented, large-scale outdoor sound art exhibition, In the Garden of Sonic Delights running from June 7 – November 3, 2014. Curated by Stephan Moore and in development for more than five years, the exhibition will include fifteen works and reside at multiple venues throughout Westchester County and the mid-Hudson Valley, featuring a full slate of new works from artists Laurie Anderson, Ranjit Bhatnagar, Bob Bielecki, Betsey Biggs, Eli Keszler, A. Taylor Kuffner, Annea Lockwood, Francisco Lopez, John Morton, Stephan Moore, Bruce Odland, Ed Osborn, Scott Smallwood, Suzanne Thorpe, Trimpin, and Stephen Vitiello.

Seizing this opportunity to showcase the Hudson Valley’s cultural vibrancy, Caramoor will collaborate with five acclaimed organizations within the community to present unique, site-specific works—Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (Peekskill), Jacob Burns Film Center (Pleasantville), Lyndhurst (Tarrytown), Neuberger Museum of Art of Purchase College (Purchase), and Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture (Pocantico Hills).
Each organization will partner with an artist, working closely together to transform an artistic vision into reality, creating 15 semi-permanent works. Ten of these pieces will be presented at Caramoor. Artists will approach their specific site through the lens of its utility (how the public engages with it), exploring its natural and human made sounds, and/or its acoustic properties, while incorporating their own auditory elements which range from spoken word, to electronics, to music. Some of these explorations include a mechanically played gamelan, solar interactive instruments, a tricked-out hammock accessorized with vibrating bass actuators that experiment with infra-and-ultrasonic sound, and a house made of piano harps, plucked and scraped by robotic devices. As the seasons change throughout the exhibition, so will the audience experience; a specific work encountered on a hot summer day will differ from that same work experienced on a cool fall evening, due to variations in moisture, temperature, wind and light.

“Sound Art is one of the most compelling art advancements of our time,” said Paul Rosenblum, Caramoor’s managing director. “We are proud to be at the forefront of this exciting movement by initiating this exhibition, and presenting it to a wide audience.”

Whether a sonic work takes the form of an acoustic environment, a performance piece or sound sculpture, a recording or a sound walk, sound art stimulates and sensitizes the ears to the world of sound, just as one’s visual consciousness can be altered or attuned by a painting or sculpture. It engages and transforms surroundings by creating situations that galvanize perception, participation, awareness and reflection. Caramoor and the collaborating organizations are ideal settings for In the Garden of Sonic Delights, providing inspiring environments, engaged and artistically curious audiences, and progressive approaches to modern technology, invention and culture.

“Like painting or sculpture, sound art can be narrative or expressive, representational or abstract,” Mr. Moore said, noting that unlike those fields, “it benefits from the history of both art- and music-making without having a long history of its own to contend with. The richness and flexibility of sound art allows for it to be as engaged in the realms of music and art as it can be to recent discoveries in perception and acoustics.”

Keeping with Caramoor’s commitment to the community and education, exhibition works will be accompanied by public discussions, performances, workshops, a digital guide, a catalogue and a map for conducting self-guided tours.

ABOUT THE CURATOR: Sound artist Stephan Moore has been working at the forefront of the contemporary experimental audio world for the past 15 years as a curator, improviser, composer, programmer, theatrical sound designer, loudspeaker builder, radio technician, installation artist, live sound engineer, and teacher. He is currently the vice-president of the American Society for Acoustic Ecology. His creative work manifests as electronic studio compositions, improvised solo performances, sound installation works, sound designs and scores for modern dance and theater performances, software development, and the design of multi-channel sound systems for unusual circumstances. He develops performance software in Max/MSP and builds point-source Hemisphere loudspeakers for use in his performance and sound installation work, which he also sells through his company Isobel Audio. Currently based in Providence, RI, he is a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University in the Experimental Multimedia and Electronic Music program.

From 2004 to 2010 Moore was the Music Coordinator of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, where he collaborated and performed with such celebrated composers and musicians as Gavin Bryars, John Paul Jones, Sigur Ros, Sonic Youth, Christian Wolff, David Behrman, and Takehisa Kosugi. He also oversaw the performances of several works by John Cage, David Tudor, Brian Eno, Radiohead, and others. In 2010 he collaborated with Animal Collective to create Transverse Temporal Gyrus, a 40-channel sound installation at the Guggenheim Museum with visual elements by Danny Perez, for which he later created both a downloadable version of the piece, which is algorithmically generated at each playing, and artwork for the limited-edition vinyl release. Other notable projects include sound design for the National Science Foundation-funded planetarium show, The Molecularium, a flexible sound distribution system for multi-media artist Toni Dove's production Lucid Possession, and acoustical modeling for the Constellation Center in Cambridge, MA.

Since 2006 he has served as a guest curator of ISSUE Project Room and is a founding member of their artistic advisory board. He curated their month-long Floating Points Festivals from 2006-2010 using the permanently installed 16-channel array of his Hemisphere speakers, which included performances by such diverse and revered artists as Francisco Lopez, Joan La Barbara, Morton Subotnick, Vito Acconci, Maryanne Amacher, John Butcher, Tim Hecker, Zeena Parkins, Tony Conrad, Lee Ranaldo, Pamela Z, and many others. Other curatorial activities have included the 2010 Mixology Festival at Roulette Intermedium and the Experiments in the Studio concert series at the Merce Cunningham Studios (2007-2009). Ongoing collaborations include the Xenolinguistics performance project with video artist Diana Reed Slattery, a number of evening-length designs for the choreographer Yanira Castro, sound and technical design for the Nerve Tank Theater collective, and installation and performance projects in the electronic improvisation duo Evidence.