Open Sound 2016

Exhibition Details

Jay Bundy Johnson's interactive artwork in our TechLab, Being still (life) shows us who we are, invites visitors to ask, "What does a thing sound like?"

The artist builds elaborate sculptures from the electronic insides of consumer products made over the past half century. For this exhibit, he deconstructs electronic objects and mechanical devices—including toys, speakers, VCRs, microchips, and magnets—and reassembles them in an array of sculptural compositions inspired by “still life” painting. Using buttons, the visitor interacts with the resulting three-dimensional wall mural of circuit boards, motors, gears, speaker cones, lightbulbs, and wires to create fleeting soundscapes of things past.

Sound Thinking 2016
Resonant Things: Sound and Objecthood on Canada's West Coast

 This year’s Sound Thinking symposium examines some of the artists working in Canada—with a particular emphasis on the West Coast of Canada—and their respected object-oriented artworks that incorporated sound as crucial elements in their presentation and/or everyday objects as part of sound/music performances.

This symposium considers the reasons for why so much of the sound sculpture and acoustically driven installations of the past half century have frequently been left out, and/or misrepresented in the dominant art and cultural histories. The discussion also engages and reappraise some of the ideas, theories, and conversation that have intersected with sound/object based art practices in the 1960s and 1970s along with more recent ideas and histories that seek to situate sound art and other art that incorporates sound as a key aspect of their experience.

Participants: DB Boyko, Lee Hutzulak, Jay Bundy Johnson, Brady Marks, Dave Leith

View the program and participant bios.