Lesley Flanigan (NY) / Julian Hackett (IRE) / Sharon Phelan (IRE)


5 June – 15 June
Preview 4 June 6 – 8pm
At Monster Truck Gallery, 4 Temple Bar, Dublin 2
(Lesley Flanigan will perform Amplifications on June 15th)
Limited places, (€5 Cover Charge) booking advisable: sharon@monstertruck.ie
Organised by Sharon Phelan
Monster Truck gallery is pleased to announce the first exhibition in its new Temple Bar gallery. The Sound-Sweep is a group exhibition that brings together three artists whose works explore the physical materiality of sound.
The title is taken from the 1960 short story by J.G. Ballard, where the main characters – Mangon, a sound-sweep and Madamme Giaconda, a former opera singer, conspire to have her perform again. Since the introduction of ultrasonic music, Madame Giaconda’s operatic voice has been rendered redundant. “After an audible performance of most symphonic music, walls and furniture throbbed for days with disintegrating residues that made the air seem leaden and tumid, an entire room virtually uninhabitable.” [1] It was Mangon’s job to vacuum these sonic residues.
The story offers an interesting twist on the resonating frequencies of materials and space as it lingers in the air, only audible to those with exceptional auditory powers. Madame Giaconda’s upcoming performance hints towards a sonic revival that may bring down the walls of a building as with the battle for biblical Jericho.
Leading up to a closing performance by Lesley Flanigan, artists Julian Hackett and Sharon Phelan will install recent work that challenges cultural binaries such as subject and object in favour of more interconnected and contextual frameworks through the use of sound. Both pieces use very low frequencies that are sculpted through mediums such as water, as in Hackett’s piece Question Concerning Heidegger, and the multiple bass drums and toms heard in Phelan’s Music for Drums and Bass.
To mark the closing of The Sound-Sweep Lesley Flanigan will perform Amplifications on June 15th at 8pm, a project for speaker electronics and solo voice. Approaching electricity as material that can be seen, heard, and touched, Flanigan builds her own wooden instruments out of loudspeakers and electronics, and then pairs the electric rhythms and tones of their feedback with the warmth of her own voice. In doing so, she sculpts a strange sonic atmosphere that includes noise, voice, the action of amplifying, and using speakers as something more than just a vehicle for sound.
[1] Ballard, J.G. (2002) ‘The Sound-Sweep’ in The Complete Short Stories(London:Flamingo)

Lesley Flanigan

Title:

Amplifications: for speaker feedback instruments and voice

Statement:

Introducing her first solo album for speaker electronics and voice, Lesley Flanigan performs Amplifications, exploring both the physical and sculptural nature of electronic sound. Moving among a cluster of wires and microphones, she builds compositional frameworks that grow and break apart. Her speaker instruments, employing a built-in microphone, create pulsing tones through their own feedback, which Flanigan samples and weaves into her own vocal patterns. The result is music that hovers somewhere between noise experiments and lyrical song, resonating with organic transparency.

Biog:

Lesley Flanigan is a New York-based sound sculptor, composer, vocalist, and performer. She studied sculpture at the Ringling College of Art and Design, and received a masters in media technology from the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. In addition to her solo work, Lesley Flanigan also performs as a member of Bioluminescence, a collaboration with video artist and composer R. Luke DuBois. She has wielded a soldering iron as a guest performer in the circuit constructing noise group, the Loud Objects and continues to sing in the contemporary music scene, recently as a soprano in Tristan Perich’s “Lit”.

www.lesleyflanigan.com

Julian Hackett

Title:

Question Concerning Heidegger

Statement:

Question Concerning Heidegger is an interactive piece that draws from German Philosopher, Martin Heidegger’s essay ‘The Question Concerning Technology’. Developed in response to this text, the piece aims to represent the relationship between human subject and natural object (e.g. water) through the medium of sound.  By shifting the power of sound, which controls and manipulates the structural form of water over to the viewer, through the positioning of their body, a mode of revealing is allowed to occur. The mode of Enframing, as Heidegger called it, reveals an essence of technology that views the world as resource. A view essentially that drives humanity to obtain a quantifiable and controllable knowledge of the world that can either prove problematic or potentially rewarding.

Biog:

Jules Hackett is a multimedia artist based in Dublin. He works with installations, digital media and live visuals. Having graduated from GMIT with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art Sculpture in 2008, he’s currently undertaking an MA in digital art in the National College of Art & Design.

Sharon Phelan

Title:

Music for Drums and Bass

Statement:

Music for Drums and Bass is a site-specific sound installation exploring audio feedback. The sound generated is based on the relationship and close proximity of a contact microphone and a subwoofer mediated by a drum membrane. The physical characteristics of the drum along with the room become partners in the composition where acoustical events gradually unfold, as various parameters – from dynamic, environmental to pre-determined – are changed.

Biog:

Sharon Phelan is a Dublin-based artist and curator. She graduated from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin with a degree in Fine Art & History of Art in 2008 and is currently completing an MPhil. in Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College, Dublin. Sharon is on the editorial panel of the open-access journal Interference, a biannual online publication concerned with the role of sound in cultural practice. The journal is in association with GradCAM and will be launched later this.

www.sharonphelan.com