For anyone locked into the idea that art can only be something painted on canvas or cast in bronze, an exhibition organized by the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs is likely to be a puzzling, even frustrating offering.
Not only are there no paintings or sculptures, there is virtually nothing at all to look at. Instead of the eyes, this show focuses on the ears.
Titled “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” it offers a rare look at the world of sound art, a difficult-to- define realm that crosses into performance art, radio theater and avant-garde composition but has its own distinctive if elusive identity.
The story of modern art has been essentially one of redefining what art can be. In part, that has meant exploiting a dizzying array of new media and moving art off the wall, onto the floor and out of traditional galleries entirely.
It also has meant, in many cases, setting aside the notion of art as a physical object altogether. Beginning in the 1950s and reaching a crescendo in the 1960s and ’70s, artists pioneered such realms as performance and sound art.
This exhibition, curated by Valerie Brodar, associate professor of media arts and director of visual arts at UCCS, explores the evolution of sonic art, ranging from its earliest historical precedents to some of the latest works.
The centerpiece of the offering in GOCA 121, the school’s satellite contemporary art space on the first floor of an office building in downtown Colorado Springs, is a listening room with nothing but 11 sets of headphones mounted on the walls.
Each set of headphones offers recordings of sound segments by a different creator, beginning with 10 seconds of the folk song “Au Claire de la Lune” — the earliest known recording of the human voice.
It was recorded in 1860 by Édouard-Leon Scott de Martinville using his phonautograph, a precursor to Thomas Edison’s phonograph (a couple of that inventor’s early recordings can be heard as well), and is believed to be Scott de Martinville’s voice.
Two of the participating artists are from Denver, including Jim Green, who is well-known for such pieces as “Singing Sinks” (2001) in the lobby restrooms in the Denver Art Museum’s original building.
He is represented in this exhibition by three works, including “Fat Albert” (1978), a kind of quirky three-minute sound documentary of a carnival performer, who is proclaimed by a barker to be “now 800 pounds and still growing.”
The ambient sounds of the carnival can be heard along with parts of an interview, in which the performer, who professes himself content with his job, says, “Thin may be in, but fat is where it’s at.”
Other highlights of the headphone works include Chris Burden’s darkly witty recitation of his “Atomic Alphabet” (1980), in which H is for holocaust and O is for obliteration, and Jacki Apple’s “Terminal” (1980), with its mix of news headlines and electronic music.
Oddly missing among this assortment of mostly monologues and quasi-theatrical productions are abstract soundscapes — wordless collages of pure sound.
Two other galleries are devoted to installations. Here, too, sound is the main attraction, but in the case of Lou Mallozzi’s “Interval” (2006), the speakers, cables and other equipment provide at least some minimal visual element.
But it is really only in Richard Lerman’s five intermingled installations that the visual is given equal standing with the aural. That is especially true in “20 by 24 Polaroid Series” (1986), in which he documented a piece as he constructed it and made the documentation part of the work.
For most of history, art was something that had be experienced with the eyes. But “Breaking the Sound Barrier” makes clear that the ears make equally effective artistic receptors.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“Breaking the Sound Barrier: Sonic Art 1860-2011.”
Art. University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Gallery of Contemporary Art 121, 121 S. Tejon St., Suite 100, Colorado Springs. This exhibition, curated by Valerie Brodar, associate professor of media arts and director of visual arts at UCCS, offers an overview of the still little-known field of sound art. Through April 15. 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Free. 719-255-3504 or
