Listening Gallery is a challenging art project for those of us who create pieces for it. “challenging” in the sense that the relationship art/audience is open… (like the bird that just flew by… did you notice?) it is not engineered to make you or me aware of its presence prior to the experience. it is also undefined in terms of what we are supposed to do with it.
it will take the average Lincoln Road visitor about 10 seconds to walk by it, so not everyone realizes it is there (except for maybe children in strollers and dogs on a leash)
so we walk by and hear what sounds like a mosquito under the awning. what happens to us? is that art? is it sound art? or when does it become art? at the moment of conception? when we experience it? when it suddenly dawns on us? This is kind of the way i relate to the Everglades. i know nothing about the place or the creatures that inhabit it. so i record it in sound. perhaps through sounding it, i’ll become more intimate with it. isn’t that the purpose of art? sounding something to get to know it more intimately? … is it not?
1:wet season is a piece composed of minute sounds (such as those of mosquitos recorded during my ongoing visits to Everglades National Park since my AIRIE Residency in September of 2013) The piece is presented as part of the exhibition titled, Flight: Aloft in the Everglades, curated by Deborah Mitchell, and presented at Artcenter’s Richard Shack Gallery in partnership with AIRIE. i hope you experience it and enjoy it! Gustavo Matamoros