11 Sound Installations You Can Enjoy at Home
Connect with your sense of space with help from these videos of sound art from around the world
The closure of galleries and art spaces around the world makes it difficult for sound art followers to experience sound installation art. But, thanks to the diffuse archive of sound art available online and the medium of video, it’s certainly not impossible.
Indeed, many people in quarantine are turning to sound online to bring the outside world into their homes.
So, here are 11 compelling videos of sound installations to help you enjoy from home the sense of space and experience sound art brings.
Please note, there are many more works of sound installation resources like this online — this list provides you with a snapshot of what’s out there. There’s no doubt that sound installation art is better when experienced in person. And perhaps this new period we find ourselves in will even lead to more sound artworks that make use of virtual reality.
For now, and until art and gallery spaces reopen, I hope you enjoy this snapshot to get you started into your own online research.
I recommend full screen and headphones.
1. The Forty Part Motet — Janet Cardiff, 2001.
Janet Cardiff’s mesmerising sound installation, The Forty Part Motet, puts one voice (recorded singing a part for Thomas Tallis’s 1573 motet ‘Spem in Alium’) per speaker. Speakers are then distributed around a room in a circle. The result is an immersive experience.
As part of the work’s exhibition at KQED in San Francisco, this video preview of the exhibition was made to give you a taste of what it’s like to experience.
2. ad/ab Atom — Ryoichi Kurokawa, 2017.
Ryoichi Kurokawa’s ad/ab Atom is a four-channel sound and seven-channel HD display audiovisual installation that loops every eight minutes.
This preview of the installation, released on Ryoichi Kurokawa’s Vimeo channel, gives you three minutes to explore the work.
3. Game of Skill 2.0 — Christine Sun Kim and Levy Lorenzo, 2015–2016.
Christine Sun Kim created the concept and Levy Lorenzo designed and built this installation, Game of Skill 2.0, originally in MoMA PS1 in Queens, New York, in 2015–2016. Gallery participants are invited to make sound in the interactive installation by rubbing a handheld device along wall-to-wall strips of velcro.
You can see the work in this video from Christine Sun Kim’s Vimeo channel.
4. datascape — Ryoji Ikeda, 2017.
Measuring 100 metres long and four metres high, datascape by Ryoji Ikeda is on display permanently at ICC in Sydney, Australia.
This video gives you a three-minute window onto the audiovisual installation.
5. Lowlands — Susan Philipsz, 2010.
Susan Philipsz made sound art history when in 2010 she won the Turner Prize with Lowlands, an installation in which the sound of her own voice singing Scottish folk songs plays by the River Clyde in Glasgow.
Get a sense of the installation in this short film, produced by 47 Film.
7. Wild Energy — Annea Lockwood and Bob Bielecki, 2014.
Pioneering soundscape artist Annea Lockwood co-produced this sound installation with Bob Bielecki at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in 2014.
Enter into leafy upstate New York and see/hear the work for yourself.
8. Times Square — Max Neuhaus, 1977/2002.
Max Neuhaus’s Times Square takes you to the busy soundscape of New York City. In 2017, filmmaker Charles Eppley created this video of the installation.
Feel what it’s like to stand in the centre of Times Square with this video.
9. At the Edge of Wilderness — Hildegard Westerkamp, 2000.
Sound artist Hildegard Westerkamp worked with photographer Florence Debeugny to produce this video of her 52-minute long installation At the Edge of Wilderness in an abandoned mining community.
This video lets you hear five minutes of the original installation.
10. River Sounding — Bill Fontana, 2010.
Connect with the history of the River Thames in River Sounding by Bill Fontana. In this video, made by Sound and Music, you walk around the Lightwells and Deadhouse of Somerset House, London.
11. Morske Orgulje (Sea Organ) — Nikola Bašić, 2005.
Let the waves of the Adriatic Coast lap up against your feet in this video of architect Nikola Bašić’s Sea Organ in Zadar, Croatia. Underwater pumps use the energy of the waves to displace air in pipes, creating a sound like an organ. The resulting sonic texture is as soothing as the view.
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Article written by composer Oli Gudgeon.
