NEW YORK -- Although there were plenty of black-clad attendees sipping gratis wine -- and one briefcase-toting man wearing a winged, silver lamé coat -- no art was on view at the reception for multimedia artist Jody Elff's latest installation at Manhattan's Moving Image Gallery on Thursday night.
What drew the crowd was the promise they would provide data for Elff's real-time sound sculpture.
Elff orchestrated the piece, titled "Re.Sound," via a Macintosh G4 tower placed behind mysterious black curtains. Using Max, a graphical programming environment for music and media applications, he allowed the G4 to autonomously translate the ambient noise generated by movement and sound into musical responses.
The result: a witty, spontaneous interpretation of the self-conscious social dynamics of a New York City art opening. Gallery openings are often conceived of as intimidating, see-and-be-seen events.
Elff's ever-changing sound sculpture, to be featured through Jan. 31, addresses our collective indifference toward music. It also provides a forum in which artists and critics can express their views on conceptual media art -- particularly those that center on sound and music.
Elff feels music has grown so increasingly ubiquitous, from jingles on TV to Muzak in elevators, that we've grown immune to its effects. In fact, at the opening, Elff often disappeared behind the black curtains to jack up the volume.
"I don't want anyone to start ignoring the sound sculpture," said Elff. "If people think they're here for a social event, they're missing the point."
The energy in the high-ceilinged gallery was palpable as microphones picked up noise that, when compressed, triggered corresponding sound files stored on the computer's hard drive.
Low sub-tones throbbed from large concert-quality speakers as people mingled. The deep sounds swelled loudly as more attendees arrived -- making each entrance theatrical and causing the floor to vibrate slightly.
The digitized sound of piano keys and conversation tinkled from small, wall-mounted speakers, as in a well-timed soundtrack.
And two real cymbals, the only physical instruments utilized in the production, sounded without ever being struck.
Signals from software engines flowed to a simple software oscillator, generating a tone below the range of human hearing. The tone was slowly fed to tiny speakers mounted against each cymbal -- hung on ceiling lights -- causing the cymbals to shake as if possessed.
A colorful projection of a digital spectrograph -- a standard imaging tool that measures frequency analysis -- was cast onto the gallery's floor. A last-minute decision by Elff, the image served as a reminder to attendees that the musical responses were live.
Elff seemed slightly disappointed that one of his speakers blew right before the event started.
"Equipment failure is a risk with multimedia art," he said with a sigh. "That's reality."
Some audience members were surprised by the elegance of the unique piece, a far cry from the sometimes chaotic, audience-participatory events known as "happenings" held in the 1960s by artists such as Allan Kaprow.
Elff's piece also represents a departure from more recent, artist-centered performances like those by Atau Tanaka, a well-respected Japanese musician/artist who creates MIDI music that interprets his body's internal sounds.
"I assumed Elff's sounds would be more random," said Rich Deas, an art director at Scholastic. "I didn't expect to hear a piano that was on a beat. I thought this would be an obscure rambling. This is better."
Others were disappointed that the piece wasn't more cutting edge.
"The sound seems imposed, rather than an interpretation of what's going on," said Daniel Aycock, director of The Front Room, a Williamsburg, Brooklyn gallery that shows conceptual media art. "A lot of artists are working with sound. This doesn't seem so experimental."
Indeed, about half the artists in the Whitney Museum of American Art's upcoming "BitStreams" show, one of the art world's first major exhibitions to showcase work made with new digital tools, are sound artists.
And venues like the New Museum's Media Z Lounge, Manhattan's first institutional gallery dedicated to media art, regularly feature events like John Kilma's recent public performance of "glasbead," a musical interface he initially created for the Web.
"Sound may be more easy for curators to identify with," said Michelle Thursz, director and founder of Moving Image Gallery, which opened in late 1999 and is dedicated to showing only new media art.
"Musicians like John Cage laid down the road decades ago for an art context. Sound is something that broader audiences will accept and identify with in a gallery, unlike Web art."
Others believe the use of sound by digital artists like Elff signifies more than a trend.
"I wouldn't say it's a trend. New media tends to blur the boundaries between various genres: Visual artists make music, architects make websites, engineers become performance artists," said Mark Tribe, founder of the nonprofit new media art organization and website Rhizome.org.
"Some of the best sound is being done by these genre-bending visual art renegades. It just goes to show that what counts these days is not mastery (but) innovation and fresh perspectives," said Tribe.
