The Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is pleased to present What sound does a color make? a travelling exhibition organised by Independent Curators International (iCI), that explores the fusion of vision and sound in electronic media. Opening on 20 May 2006 the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery is the only Australasian venue for this exhibition.

Curated by Kathleen Forde What sound does a color make? connects the recent boom of digital audiovisual art to its pre-digital roots, presenting ten contemporary works by an internationally diverse group of artists. The exhibition includes a selection of single-channel videos from the 1970s and features several sensuous new media environments that fascinate both technophiles and general audiences alike, heightening awareness of human perception and cognition.

For some people, a stimulus to one of the five senses evokes the sensation of another sense, as when hearing a sound produces the visualisation of a colour. For contemporary audiovisual artists, the possibilities inspired by this phenomenon, known as synesthesia, have expanded with the advent of recent digital technologies that translate all electronic media, whether sounds or moving images, into the zeros and ones of computer bits.

United by similar and overlapping premises, the works in the exhibition are widely divergent in their results. They range from large-scale immersive installations with moving forms that morph to corresponding tonal compositions, to discrete DVD stations inviting viewers to access electronic music pieces in different combinations with videos. One of the recent works, by Jim Campbell, is a portrait of a male colleague who uses sound in his own art. In Campbell’s work, an LED grid is activated by playing a recording of that mans voice, and the gridded lights resemble pixels that gradually build up an image of the man, with his voice’s high tones representing white and the low tones representing black.

Another contemporary work is an interactive installation by D-Fuse, a London-based collective of artists and musicians, which layers different music soundtracks onto dynamic video clips, creating a distinctive audiovisual experience. The earlier works from the 1970s, by such pioneers of video art as Nam June Paik, Steina Vasulka, and Gary Hill, place the current interest in synesthetic media art in a broader historical context, offering a unique perspective on this phenomenon.

The exhibition will encourage a high degree of individual engagement and self-reflection, as well as further thought about the ways that visual and aural stimuli are electronically, digitally and perceptually connected.

The presentation of What sound does a color make? adds to the Govett-Brewster’s record of stimulating, experiential exhibitions, beginning with the Gallery’s 1970 opening exhibition Real time a light and sound environment by Leon Narbey. Len Lye also had an interest in human cognition and perception, and many of his films and sculptures shown at the Gallery since his first exhibition in 1977 use light, sound, colour and movement to elicit changes in the physical and perceptual state of viewers.

What sound does a color make? is showing at the Gallery from 20 May – 23 July and features work by: Scott Arford, Jim Campbell, D-Fuse, Granular-Synthesis (Kurt Hentschlager & Ulf Langheinrich), Gary Hill, Thom Kubli, Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) in collaboration with D-Fuse, Fred Szymanski, Atau Tanaka, Steina Vasulka, Woody Vasulka, Stephen Vitiello, Nam June Paik, Jud Yalkut.

Also showing at the Gallery is Old brain new media;Len Lye from 13 May – 9 July; David Clegg’s project Archive destruct: New Plymouth from 13 May - 11 June, and Leonie Smith’s project …version 1 … from 15 June - 9 July.

-ends-

Notes to Editor:

What Sound Does a Color Make? is a traveling exhibition organized and circulated by Independent Curators International (iCI), New York and curated by Kathleen Forde. The exhibition and tour are made possible, in part, by grants from The David Bermant Foundation: Color, Light, Motion; The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; and Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V., Stuttgart; and by an in-kind donation from Philips Electronics North America.

Independent Curators International (iCI)
iCI is a dynamic non-profit organisation committed to enhancing the understanding and appreciation of contemporary art through its innovative traveling exhibitions and publications.  iCI brings challenging artworks to a wide range of museums, giving diverse audiences in the United States and abroad the opportunity to experience new art.

Visit iCI’s web site: www.iCI-exhibitions.org

For additional information or visual materials, contact:

Cressida Gates
Communications Co-ordinator 
cressidag@govettbrewster.com
+64-6-759-6717