Sonic Sculpture Exhibition invites visitor to explore

Sonic Sculpture exhibition in the Learning Centre and outdoors presents objects which produce sound with the object's form, instead of having sound applied to them.

The works in the exhibition have been built on the Sonic Sculpture course, where students studied various types of music instruments and physical acoustics before fabricating their sculptures from wood, steel, rubber, electronics, and various found objects. Each work invites the audience to investigate a different side of the rich sonic world. The aim was to learn about how sound is produced or modified by vibrating strings, solid rods or bars, air moving through tubes, thin membranes, and hollow resonant bodies. In some cases, these traditional instrument building techniques were combined with motors or electronics. Also a wide variety of historical and contemporary sound art practices was studied, for inspiration about how others have worked with the raw materials.

“The key questions each artist had to answer about their work was: What makes the sound? How do we hear the sound? How is the sound activated”, explains Derek Holtzer, the leader of the course.

The first question has to do with what sort of object is vibrating for us to hear, the second relates to whether we hear the sound directly, if it is enhanced by resonance and acoustics, or if there are some electronics involved to amplify it as a signal sent to a loudspeaker, as with Elena Burtseva, Mahnaz Khanpour Motazedi, and Monica Vlad's "Untitled" work, which uses contact microphones to explore the surface textures of several different materials from our everyday environment. The final question involves how the piece is "played". Anna Björklund's welded-steel music box "Eco sound" was designed to be played by the wind. Other works, such as Juho Luukkainen's "Forks and Landscapes", invite direct interaction through a selection of rubber mallets which the visitor can use to strike the tuning forks. Similarly, the brothers Jimi and Tino Laaksonen present an electro-acoustic situation which exists so long as the visitor holds down a small button and moves a small wooden block across the top of the object. Where these works only produce sound in the moment it is played, those engaging with Viivi Lehto-Peltomäki's "Inside the box / Outside the box" discover that a gentle push sets a process in motion which takes some time to return to rest. In contrast, "Ilmapallokone" by Tytti Arola and Hanna Laeslehto presents us with a fully-automated, sound-making machine where rubber bands holding balloons in place on a steel frame are played like a string instrument.

How to communicate a sound

One of the biggest challenges when creating works such as sonic sculptures for public installation and interaction, is how to communicate the way a visitor can actively experience the work. “I think this is best done in the form of the object itself, rather than with text or images separate from the work. The other, enormous challenge is to engineer objects to survive the strain of audience interaction and  - particularly for the sole outdoor work in the show - the elements themselves. It never fails to surprise artists how different the audience's concept of "gentle interaction" is from their own. I think, apart from the lessons on form, aesthetics, and acoustics, this might be one of the greatest knowledge take-aways from the course as a whole for them”, says Holzer.

Holzer has taught other instrument-building courses in the Aalto Media Lab for eight years, and the work has always been limited to small, table-top constructions which can be constructed using hand tools, or more recently with the small-scale laser cutters and CNC machines of the FabLab. Now in the Aalto Sculpture Department, the participants had access and instruction in large-scale wood- and metalworking equipment. “One of the most exciting parts of the workshop was seeing the participants explore new tools and techniques. The segment on MIG welding was highly stimulating for several of the artists, and their trajectory from absolute beginner to confident craftsperson with this technique was amazing to follow”, tells Holzer.

Workshop artists: Tytti Arola, Anna Björklund, Elena Burtseva, Mahnaz Khanpour Motazedi, Jimi Laaksonen, Tino Laaksonen, Hanna Laeslehto, Viivi Lehto-Peltomäki, Juho Luukkainen, Monica Vlad

Date: 17.11.–1.12.17
Venue: The Harald Herlin Learning Centre galleries and outdoors, Otaniementie 9, Espoo