Staalplaat Soundsystem, The Ultrsound of Therapy. Courtesy Cornerhouse
Kay Carson opened her ears to aural art at the Cornerhouse.
Cornerhouse in Manchester is enjoying a sonic boom with three separate installations by Bob Levene, Staalplaat Soundsystem and Helmut Lemke.
Running until July 30 2006, The Space Between: Experiments for Speakers, The Ultrasound of Therapy and Klangeln VIII are all sound based but diverse enough in treatment to provide a well-rounded and stimulating foray into aural art.
The Space Between explores sound's relationship with its environment. Experiments with Microphones (2005), a triptych of screens, firstly invites the listener to register the change of tones in Testing Microphone, where Bob Levene counts to 10, while jumping up and down and shouting the numbers into a very tall mike.
Bob Levene, Testing Microphone. Courtesy Cornerhouse
Here - and in Exercise Video, with Levene grunting and panting into the microphone while doing bending exercises - there are definite shades of Bruce Nauman, the rhythmically repetitive sound and activity dominating the scenes.
Spinning Hum shows Levene singing a note which is recorded and played back. She sings along to it, recording the resulting harmony and repeating the process, note by note, until she has created a discordant vocal latticework. As she swings the tape recorder, we are reminded of the Doppler effect - the movement changes the frequency of the sound waves, just like an ambulance siren changing tone as it zooms past.
This sonic manipulation is echoed in the Experiments for Speakers video projection (2006) showing an open road where, for what seems like an endless amount of time, nothing happens... but the more closely you listen, you can hear, for example, the low rumble of an approaching tractor until finally -and slightly out of sync - it reaches our eyes.
Bob Levene, Experiments for Speakers. Courtesy Cornerhouse
What works best is Levene's claustrophobic shot of bees flying back and forth across a screen. As we look at the swarming insects, we realise it is not the sight of them which has us recoiling, but the sound. Try just looking, with your fingers in your ears, then closing your eyes and just listening and you'll see what I mean; it's the incessant, menacing, buzz that gets to you.
In a strange concoction of low-tech meets hi-tech, Staalplaat Soundsystem's The Ultrasound of Therapy takes the art of noise to an entirely personal level. The gallery is disguised as an old-fashioned hospital ward and, dubbing themselves the duty doctors, Robert Dahlke, Geert-Jan Hobijn and Lynn Pook ask visitors to complete a diagnostic chart, from which they prescribe a suitable sound. This is administered via headphones as you lie in one of the beds.
The most charismatic offering of the trinity, though, is from Helmut Lemke. Klangeln VIII - a composite of klang and angeln - the German words for sound and fishing - comprises fishing rods and lines, hooked up across the ceiling, resembling giant violin strings and bows. If you were to walk in without looking up, you could miss the whole thing. But just the sight of so much intricate string-work poised above people's heads is quite wonderful, before we even consider the sound.
What it does produce is immense in its smallness; mere suggestions of a note here and there, like stolen snippets of conversation floating out of context and across the room. Some strings are operated by opening and closing books wired to the apparatus, providing a little controlled interactivity. But for the most part, the pleasure lies in waiting out the silence until the next delicate tone manifests itself.
