'Phonosynthesizer' - a sound installation by James Webb at the NSA
by Virginia MacKenny
Entering James Webb's sound installation 'Phonosynthesizer' at the NSA is a curiously ambiguous experience. Confronted by what Webb refers to as the "naked" technology of the piece, (suspended speakers, flex, fishing gut and underfelt), the viewer/listener is presented with the aural results of contemporary technology gone wrong.
Selected ticks, hisses, glitches and audio errors from damaged CDs emanate from a number of speakers. Manipulated by computer, looped and then selected randomly by the CD shuffle function Webb assures his audience that they are unlikely to hear a repeat combination for another thousand years or so.
Thus encouraged to savour the moment the viewer/listener is drawn into a technological 'garden' of sound that is surprisingly organic. The aural 'compost' producing this effect is enhanced in the windowless multimedia room at the NSA which transforms into a subterranean chamber filled with a host of stringy stemmed fungal growths straining upward as the speakers waver on their thin stalks of electrical flex, depositing their spores of sound to the air.
A self-confessed, abysmal failure at the recorder, Webb began to enjoy the errors of his ways at an early age and has since systematically sought out the mistakes and 'distractions' that make the aural life more interesting.
Influenced by John Cage and his idea that noise is simply that which is unwanted or unintended and that silence does not exist, Webb embraces the unnoticed and disregarded sounds around us. His low-pitch installations encourage the listener to hear nuance and varieties of sound. Instead of blasting the listener his work plays lightly, acknowledging and embracing the ambient interference of any contextual sound that might infiltrate the space.
Interestingly what is produced is not, as might be expected, an alienating or irritating experience. Instead Webb's piece is curiously soothing. Apparently undirected, the work encourages free association. Not forced to find an intended meaning one is carried by one's own associative processes. Listening to the sonic hissing and stutter induced memories of the sound of rain in an African night filled with insects - perhaps an apposite evocation for a country caught between the First and Third Worlds.
A highly satisfying experience.
Opens: 6.00pm, June 10
Closing: June 29
NSA Gallery, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood
Tel: 031 202 3686
Fax: 031 202 3744
Email: iartnsa@mweb.co.za
Website: www.nsagallery.co.za
Hours: Tues - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 4pm, Sun 11am - 3pm
