Earmarks II: Sound Art at MASS MoCA and Downtown North Adams

EARMARKS II SOUND ART AT MASS MoCA AND DOWNTOWN NORTH ADAMS

EARMARKS II As a museum, MASS MoCA is more like a turntable than a box, with a freewheeling program of music, theater, poetry, film, and dance alongside its changing roster of temporary installation, new commissions, and long-term exhibitions. So it is perhaps no surprise that MASS MoCA has been long committed to sound art—art that activates urban landscape, architectural space, and the space of our mind. One of MASS MoCA’s very first exhibitions was called EarMarks, which took place years before MASS MoCA opened, occupying a footprint that stretched from Windsor Lake and Natural Bridge State Park, on the outskirts of North Adams, through the downtown business district, across MASS MoCA’s campus, and west to Stone Hill, behind the Clark Art Institute.

Several of the works from EarMarks are still with us, most notably Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger’s Harmonic Bridge, Christina Kubisch’s Clocktower Project, and Walter Fähndrich’s Music for a Quarry. Over the years, those works have been augmented by other sound-centric

works, including Stephen Vitiello’s All Those Vanished Engines, Zarouhie Abdalian’s Chanson du ricochet, and Julianne Swartz’s In Harmonicity, the Tonal Walkway.

In conjunction with the 2017 opening of Building 6, MASS MoCA will add two additional works to this group: Craig Colorusso’s roving Sun Boxes and Corrugarou, a building-sized musical instrument installed on Main Street, North Adams, by Andrew Schrock and Klaas Hübner of New Orleans Air Lift.

Taken together, these eight works comprise a veritable museum of sound art, and are certainly the largest assembly of sound-related art on long-term “listen” anywhere in the world.

This map will help you find the work. But use your ears too.

You’ll be surprised and delighted at what you hear—and think—along the search.

Zarouhie Abdalian, Chanson du ricochet, 2016 Outdoors, near B17, 19, and 25; open seasonally, May–October A voice, reverberating from the brick walls of small outbuildings that define a grassy courtyard, reads a list of tools as though reciting an incantation. Through the transformative process of rhythm and articulation, Zarouhie Abdalian’s sound installation Chanson du ricochet (2016) allows us to hear each term anew— whether familiar (trowel, reamer, ruler, mop) or highly specialized (jeweler’s rouge, blocking pin, snap link, hammerstone.)

Abdalian is interested in memory and boundaries and the way that they are articulated through both the built environment and our perceptions of it. She created an earlier iteration of Chanson du ricochet for Prospect.3 New Orleans, for which she used shaped mirrors to highlight original building materials, accompanied by a recording of a voice reading a list of tools. At MASS MoCA, she created a new iteration of the work for the 2016 exhibition The Space Between, responding to the history of the museum’s site as a factory for printed textiles and electrical components. Abdalian placed transducers on the interior surface of windows in an oft-over-

looked portion of the museum’s campus, transforming the industrial buildings into speakers that give voice to the labor too often erased from view. Names of tools ricochet along the road taken by trucks carrying materials for new artworks being made at the museum, inviting visitors to consider the processes by which art—and, by extension, other goods— are made.

Conjuring links between the site’s history and current use, Chanson du ricochet summons the buildings’ industrial origins, and points towards its continuing re-inhabitation as a site of artistic production, suspending us between past, present, and future.

Chanson du ricochet was originally installed as part of The Space Between (2016), which was made possible by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in support of MASS MoCA, the Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art, and the Cultural Council of Northern Berkshire, with additional support provided by the Awesome Without Borders chapter of the Awesome Foundation.

O + A (Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger), Harmonic Bridge, 1998 Route 2 underpass at Marshall Street; daily, 8am – 10pm Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger collaborate on sound works that explore the natural resonance of space, sifting through background noise to isolate and amplify the harmonies found within. For MASS MoCA, they created Harmonic Bridge, which began with the attachment of two 16-foot tuning tubes to the guardrails on the north side of the Route 2 overpass next to MASS MoCA. The length of the tubes determines the precise pitch of the sound they capture, a result of the shifts the sound waves make as they travel the length of the tube (much like a pipe organ).

Inside each tube, a microphone is placed at changing intervals. These locations emphasize different harmonic ranges resulting in a variation of the C-note timbre. The difference in timbre between the two tuning tubes is analogous to that between a cello and a violin playing the same note: though the pitch is the same, the sound is slightly different.

As traffic passes by, its noise resonates inside the tubes. Highpitched sirens and voices generate higher harmonics, while the low rumble of trucks creates low ones.

The sound is then carried from the

microphones down the tubes to a control room, where the tones are amplified and transmitted to the concrete cube speakers under the bridge. There are no electronic effects added: the sounds have been simply extracted from the traffic noise above. The pedestrian under the bridge hears one layer of tuned

sound from the speakers mixed with sound from actual traffic under the overpass on Marshall Street. The work requires that we focus our ears on the bridge as an instrument, and tune ourselves to the harmonies built into our environment.

Julianne Swartz, In Harmonicity, the Tonal Walkway, 2016 John Cage/Merce Cunningham Bridge Julianne Swartz’s In Harmonicity, the Tonal Walkway was inspired by a chart she found in a 19th-century music pedagogy system called the “Tonic Sol-fa” School, developed by John Curwen. Swartz was interested in Curwen’s idea that each of the seven notes of the diatonic scale was associated with a specific “mental effect.” She applied this “Curwen Method” to a new sound work for MASS MoCA, based on the sound of the human voice.

To build In Harmonicity, Swartz started by recording 24 people individually: 16 amateur singers and 8 professionals (including singers from the ensemble Roomful of Teeth), ranging in age from 7 to 75. She first asked participants to listen to specific tones and read the “mental effect” that Curwen linked with that tone. She then asked them to listen to the tone again and determine their own mental or emotional association.

Lastly, she instructed them to sing individual notes, using any syllabic/ consonant-vowel combination that they wished. Swartz used these single-note sounds to make a composition.

The soundtrack for In Harmonicity is made up entirely of singing, spoken word, and sustained microtones of voice, the latter of which is created by digitally isolating a tiny kernel or recorded sound (such as a quarter sec-

ond) and looping it until it becomes a sustained tone. These sustained tones, especially at low frequencies, vibrate the long, narrow bridge where the work is installed, recalling mechanical or industrial sounds. Schwartz’s composition uses the bridge’s 150+ foot length to “throw” sound back and forth and make aural illusions with distant and proximate spatial harmonies. The sounds are constantly in motion, and listeners’ perceptions of the work change as they walk or stand still, creating effects of harmony and disharmony, concord and dissonance — the emotional states created by listening to voices join together.

Site-specific, 20-channel sound installation; 13:40-minute loop Sound consultant: Bob Bielecki Courtesy of the artist Featuring the voices of Estelí Gomez, Cameron Beauchamp, Eric Dudley, Martha Cluver, Thann Scoggin, Elisa Sutherland, Eliza Bagg, Stella Prince, José Chardiet, Nicolas S. Eugst Mathews, Isabel Vazquez, Lulu Hart, Maria Sonevytsky, Edwina Unrath, David Moss, Sue LaRocca, Jennifer Odlum, Molly Odlum, Frida Balloghi-Smith, Marshall McConville, Jenny Monick, Junah Sibony, and Elodie Sibony. Special thanks to Brad Wells, Director, Roomful of Teeth, and Ben Senterfit, Director, Community Music Space, Red Hook, New York.

Walter Fähndrich, Music for a Quarry, 1999 Natural Bridge State Park; daily, at astronomical sunset The marble quarry at North Adams’ 48-acre Natural Bridge State Park was once mined for architectural decoration, gravestones, hearthstone, mantles, and even a 28-foot tall pillar at the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, statehouse. A mill was built on site in 1810, and after switching ownership multiple times, it was destroyed by fire in 1947. The site then operated as a privately run tourist attraction before the Commonwealth of Massachusetts bought it in 1985.

The site of the quarry has now been given over to nature yet still retains its shape from the past mining, which carved out a 100-yard diameter semicircle in the rock façade.

In Music for a Quarry by Walter Fähndrich, clear tones call across the natural amphitheater of the marble quarry nightly from ten speakers, equally spaced along its circumference. Working with the latitude and longitude of the quarry, a computer program begins the music at the same solar time (rather than clock time) each night. The start time (near 8 or 9pm in the summer and 4 pm in the winter) changes as the spatial

relationship between the earth and sun changes. The first tone appears at the precise moment of astronomical sunset, a moment that is both permanently fixed and changing daily.

During this 15-minute period, the burden of comprehending the physical space shifts slowly from the eye to the ear as the sounds are traced to their sources.

Directions: Proceed straight out of MASS MoCA’s parking lot, through the traffic light and onto St. Anthony’s Drive. At end of street, turn right onto Holden Street and an immediate left onto Rte 2+8. At fork (0.9 miles), bear left onto Rte 8 towards Clarksburg. After .5 mile, turn left onto McCauley Rd. Visit aa.usno. navy.mil/data for astronomical sunset times.

This installation was supported by the Zuger Kulturstiftung Landis & Gyr, the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, the canton of Zug, Bank Leu Ag, the Swiss Center Foundation, the city of Zug, the Emil and Rosa Richterich-Beck Foundation, Pro Helvetia (The Arts Council of Switzerland), and Drs. H. and H. Medicus.

Christina Kubisch, Clocktower Project, 1998 Courtyard B MASS MoCA’s clocktower was originally a three-story external stairway and fire exit, built in 1882 by textile-printing mill Arnold Print Works. A fourth story and clocktower spire were added in 1892, as the mill prospered. During Arnold Print Works’ tenancy, and through the years that Sprague Electric Company occupied the site (1933-1986), the bells of the clocktower marked every quarter hour of the working day for thousands of employees and townspeople.

Today, the renovated tower still houses the original carillon bells and clock mechanism; the sounds, however, are from Christina Kubisch’s Clocktower Project. Kubisch — a

Berlin-based composer and sound designer — was moved by the fact that the clock had not kept time, nor had its bells rung, since Sprague Electric Company vacated the site in 1986. Kubisch believed that the absence of the bell sounds was keenly felt by the residents of the city, so she restored the clocktower as an instrument in preparation for MASS MoCA’s opening in 1999.

Kubisch recorded a database of sounds based on her own playing of the bells—ringing them with their clappers, or hammering, brushing, and striking them with various implements. She installed a series of solar sensors around the tower to relay information about the intensity and

location of the sun to a computer inside the tower. This computer interprets the solar information and combines Kubisch’s repertoire of bell sounds in precise response to current sunlight conditions. Thus, a sunny summer morning generates bright metallic tones, while a gray winter afternoon evokes soft,

melancholy sounds. A passing cloud changes everything.

The Clocktower Project is supported by the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, the Goethe-Institut Boston, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Mary & Henry Flynt, and Solarex.

Stephen Vitiello, All Those Vanished Engines, 2010 Boiler House; open seasonally, May – October Stephen Vitiello created All Those Vanished Engines especially for the MASS MoCA Boiler House, a relic from the industrial past of the site, which once heated the factory buildings that now make up the museum. Starting with the inherent resonance of the pipes and metal drums in the space, Vitiello built a layered sound environment that can be explored throughout the first two floors of the building.

The narrative (and title) for All Those Vanished Engines comes from a commissioned text by Williamstown novelist Paul Park. The story serves as the thematic structure and blueprint for Vitiello’s installation. The text provides a possible reading of the building as a façade for a secret, experimental project to explore the industrial production of sound. Told by two narrators visiting a fictional worker in the Boiler House (voiced

by Vitiello and John Sprague, a member of the Sprague family that once owned the site), Park’s story recalls the fictionalized history of a

building haunted by its past. Park writes: “After all, sound was what had animated the entire structure, in memory, and in the actual past, and was still animating it, for example, right now.”

In Vitiello’s hands, Park’s text brings back the audio of the Boiler House’s “vanished engines,” mixing ambient sound with haunting excerpts from the story. An everchanging soundscape follows viewers through the space, and at any given moment sounds alternate between moments of clatter and calm. This is a space to spend time in, exploring the building’s unique character as Vitiello’s audio washes over you.

Jeremy Choate, lighting design; Paul Park, text; Bob Bielecki, sound engineer.

All Those Vanished Engines is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund.

Klaas Hübner and Andrew Schrock for Music Box, a project of New Orleans Airlift, Corrugarou, 2017 Main Street and Marshall Street (Northwest corner), North Adams Seen from a distance, Klaas Hübner and Andrew Schrock’s Music Box at first resembles a slightly surreal guard tower, its perforated metal sides slashed by large fan blades.

Upon entering the structure, however, visitors find themselves within a two-story playable musical instrument. By turning the cranks in the structure’s base, visitors can set the fans in motion. Changing the speed at which the cranks are

turned alters the pitch and volume of the harmonic tones that the instrument produces, as wind hums through the ridged tubes attached to the fans’ blades.

Hübner and Schrock met through New Orleans Airlift, an artist-driven initiative founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2008. Airlift encourages collaboration between international and local artists and the community, often pairing artists

and encouraging them to generate new public work. Airlift introduced Hübner and Schrock—who had both previously created work that involved fans—for Music Box (2011 – 2012), an installation of playable public art projects which allowed visitors and performers to experiment with musical composition in an entirely new way.

The musical architecture projects, which started with Music Box in New Orleans, have since spread around the globe, from Atlanta, Georgia, to Kiev, Ukraine. Corrugarou is one of three such projects planned for North Adams, the other two of which will be located at TOURISTS on Route 2. Hübner and Schrock fabricated the work at Morrison Berkshire in North Adams before transporting it downtown and assembling it onsite. The structure—fashioned from

discarded materials and industrial hardware—is a communal space for sonic exploration and play, where visitors are invited to create their own sonic improvisations.

Corrugarou is presented by TOURISTS (touristswelcome.com) and was built in North Adams with the skilled assistance of Jim White, Dick Pellerin, Ed Therrien, and their staff at Morrison Berkshire, with the generous support of George Apkin & Sons in honor of Philip Apkin and Benjamin Apkin.

This installation is part of the North Adams Exchange (NAX) programming, which was made possible by support from the Barr Foundation, The Educational Foundation of America, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust, Franklin County CDC, and First Hartford Realty, with in-kind support from Karen Brooks Hopkins.

For more information on NAX, visit http:// explorenorthadams.com/nax/.

Craig Colorusso, Sun Boxes, 2008—ongoing Various locations throughout North Adams, summer 2017 Craig Colorusso’s Sun Boxes is an off-the-grid, sound-based installation that responds not only to the physical environment, but also to the time of day and weather conditions. The 20 small, wooden speaker boxes are equipped with solar panels but no batteries, so that they respond immediately to changes in their environment.

If a cloud obscures the sun, the soundscape goes quiet. As the sun rises, the volume increases—as it sets, the soundscape slowly fades into silence.

Each box plays a looped recording of a different note from a Bb Major 6 chord being played on a guitar, each with a different duration.

As the piece progresses, the tones continue to overlap in new ways, creating a slowly shifting composition. Participants can listen for hours without hearing a pattern repeat; it would take over a year of constant sunlight before one would hear the same combination of tones, an impossibility on this planet.

Colorusso chose a Bb Major chord because he wanted something uplifting: a traditional major chord is comprised of the first, third, and

fifth notes of the diatonic scale (the diatonic scale is the one that schoolchildren most often learn – do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti-do), and is often associated with joy in Western music. By using a Bb Major 6 chord, however, Colorusso added a “tinge of dissonance”—a “shimmer of something out of focus” which adds depth to the otherwise bright sound of the chord. This depth, Colorusso says, acts as an invitation for listeners who wish to follow their thoughts beyond the simple joy of the experience of solar-powered sound.

Sun Boxes will roam throughout North Adams in May and June 2017.

Please visit massmoca.org for more information.

Sun Boxes is part of the NAX programming, which was made possible by support from the Barr Foundation, The Educational Foundation of America, Bloomberg Philanthropies, The Robert W. Wilson Charitable Trust, Franklin County CDC, and First Hartford Realty, with in-kind support from Karen Brooks Hopkins. For more information on NAX, visit http://explorenorthadams. com/nax/.

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1 Zarouhie Abdalian, Chanson du ricochet, 2016

6 Christina Kubisch, Clocktower Project, 1998

2 O + A (Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger), Harmonic Bridge, 1998

7 Klaas Hübner and Andrew Schrock for Music Box, a project of New Orleans Airlift, Corrugarou, 2017

3 Julianne Swartz, In Harmonicity, the Tonal Walkway, 2016 4 Stephen Vitiello, All Those Vanished Engines, 2010

8 Craig Colorusso, Sun Boxes, 2008—ongoing (roving, summer 2017)

5 Walter Fähndrich, Music for a Quarry, 1999

Cover: Craig Colorusso, Sun Boxes, Artfields, Lake City, SC, 2014

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