Syndicate: Announcement: Vanishing Point / MATRIX 193

[ed osborn <edo@roving.net>]

"Vanishing Point" is a  site-specific sound installation that is 
currently on view at the Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley, California) 
as part of their MATRIX program of contemporary art.  As is described 
below, the piece works both physically and conceptually with the 
space of the Museum.  In contrast to much of the high tech and sound 
art work presented nowadays, "Vanishing Point" is a relatively 
low-key piece that alternately occupies and recedes from the 
exhibition space in a perpetually shifting manner.

Information about the work along with other projects in the MATRIX 
program can be found at the Berkeley Art Museum's web site at 
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu.  Documentation of Vanishing Point can 
be found at http://www.roving.net/installations/vanishingpoint.html. 
The piece will be up through May 13.  A description of the piece is 
provided below as is the press release from the Berkeley Art Museum.

------------

Vanishing Point (2001)

Vanishing Point is a site-specific sound installation and made for 
the windows of the main space of the Berkeley Art Museum.  It is in 
part a response to Robert Irwin's "Untitled" (1969), which is part of 
the Museum's permanent collection.  Irwin's piece is one of a series 
of disc paintings that he produced in answer to the self-posed 
question, "How do I paint a painting that doesn't begin and end at 
the edge?"  The painting articulates a limnal state in which its 
contours appear always in flux.  Using that piece as a point of 
reference, Vanishing Point uses sound in the space of the Museum 
windows to articulate similar terrain - one in which the beginning 
and end points of audio events are unclear and one in which sounds 
hover though a series of intermediary states.

The audio content of the pieces is a series of chords and pitch 
relationships derived from the measurements of the windows.  The 
chords drift from one into another via slow arcing glissandi. This 
transformation takes place over the course of several minutes, so 
that the gradually shifting states between the two chords can be 
heard in an extended manner.  The sound in each of these 
transformations fades in just after the glissandi have started and 
fade out just before the pitches for the target chord are reached. 
Thus the actual chords that articulate the space of the piece are 
themselves not heard, but their presence is clearly implied.  Built 
from plain sine tones, the chords are hard to localize in space and 
their physical source appears to shift depending on the location of 
the listener.

The sounds are played through special drivers attached to the windows 
so that the glass panes of the windows themselves function as 
speakers.  This allows the piece to be heard both inside and outside 
the building as it turns the architectural space into a sounding body 
that acoustically articulates its own vanishing point between 
interior and exterior.

? 2001 Ed Osborn
All Rights Reserved


---------------------

Berkeley Art Museum Press Release:


Ed Osborn/MATRIX 193  Vanishing Point

Artist uses museum building as speakers in
new site-specific sound installation

March 18 through May 13, 2001


-  Oakland-based sound artist Ed Osborn will use low-tech gadgetry to
turn the UC Berkeley Art Museum into a sound sculpture as part of his
site-specific installation Vanishing Point.

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum is proud to present
Osborn's work as part of its acclaimed MATRIX Program for
Contemporary Art.  Ed Osborn/MATRIX 193 Vanishing Point will open at
the museum on Sunday, March 18, and run through Sunday, May 13, 2001.

Originally trained as a composer in traditional forms of music,
Osborn made the transition to installation art ten years ago as his
interests began to outstrip the possibilities of conventional
composition.  Today he creates mechano-acoustic sculptures -
sculptures that, when activated, make a noise - using such mundane,
everyday items as fishing rods, model trains, music boxes, rubber
tubing, and electric fans.

Despite their low-tech origins, Osborn's works deal in a
sophisticated array of sound-related physics, including shadow audio
images, transduced movements, sounding ghosts, inaudible artifaces,
sonic depictions and ultrasound sensings.  The content of his works,
however, deliberately draws upon the types of sounds and experiences
that are part of our everyday lives.  Osborn's intention is that his
audience need not possess a complex understanding of how his
sculptures work in order to appreciate them.

In essence, Osborn's sculptures transform one form of energy into
another - for example, motion into sound.  In earlier works such as
Swarm (1998) he combined electric fans with ultrasound sensors that
were triggered by the movement of people throughout the gallery
space, switching the fans on and off in apparently random patterns.
In Night-Sea Music (1998) Osborn made a wall of rubber tubes that
undulated like seaweed as operetta was played through the small music
boxes to which they were attached.  Unlike these works, Osborn's
installation for the UC Berkeley Art Museum, Vanishing Point, will
not have a conspicuous sculptural element.  Instead the installation
uses a series of small speaker drivers attached to windows in the
museum's galleries, magnifying and transmitting the vibration of the
glass to people both inside and outside museum.


Gallery Talk
Curator Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson
Thursday, May 3, 12:15 p.m.
In a talk that will address two strikingly different MATRIX
exhibitions, curator Heidi Zuckerman Jacobson will highlight the
sources and inspiration behind Ed Osborn's Vanishing Point and Ricky
Swallow's For those who came in late (April 21 - May 27).

Credit line
The MATRIX Program at the UC Berkeley Art Museum is made possible by
the generous endowment gift of Phyllis Wattis.

Additional donors to the MATRIX Program include the UAM Council
MATRIX Endowment, Ann M. Hatch, Eric McDougall, and the California
Arts Council.

Vanishing Point was developed in part with support from the DAAD
Artists-in-Berlin Program, the John Simon Memorial Guggenheim
Foundation, and the Oakland Cultural Affairs Commission.

The museum also wishes to thank Earlene and John Taylor for their
support of Ed Osborn/MATRIX 193 Vanishing Point.

About MATRIX
Known for presenting innovative, sometimes challenging work that
might be difficult to show in commercial galleries or more
traditional museum spaces, the BAM/PFA's 22 year-old MATRIX program
demonstrates that art is vital, dynamic, and thought-provoking.  In
the last two decades, MATRIX has presented more than 180 exhibitions,
including artist such as John Baldessari, Jean-Michel Basquiat,
Louise Bourgeois, Willem De Kooning, Richard Diebenkorn, Nan Goldin,
Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, Nancy Spero, and Andy Warhol.  Recent
exhibitions have featured Shirin Neshat, Doug Aitken, Peter Doig,
Tobias Rehberger, and Ernesto Neto.  MATRIX not only provides the Bay
Area with a schedule of cutting-edge exhibitions, but has also
attracted national and international acclaim.

The University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film
Archive is located at 2626 Bancroft Way, just below College Avenue
near the UC Berkeley campus
Gallery Hours: Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday 11 to 5; Thursday 11 to 9
Admission: General admission $6; Seniors and Students 12 - 18 years
$4; BAM/PFA members, UC Berkeley students, staff and faculty,  and
children under 12 free; group tour member $3 (to arrange, call (510)
642-5188); Free Thursdays 11 to 9
Information: 24 hour recorded message (510) 642-0808; FAX (510)
642-4889; PFA recorded message: (510) 642-1124  TDD: (510) 642-8734
Internet address: http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu
-- 
Ed Osborn
Berlin, Germany
edo@roving.net
http://roving.net - all about edo
http://www.auralaura.com - Audio Recordings of Great Works of Art
http://www.soundculture.org - SoundCulture Web Site
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