'Patapreface: How Sound Works
// Drawing + Sound Installation [10' x 4', digital Print], 2014 // Exhibited as part of the group exhibition SONAR: Sound Art Explorations by Edmonton Artists; Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, November-December 2014 //
This large-scale drawing and sound installation turns the gallery wall into a listening surface. Sound is transmitted through the print itself, audible only when visitors press a cup against the wall to listen, touching to hear how sound works. As a ‘patapreface to the exhibition, the diagram touches on how sound is a tricky little sign: constantly fleeing, leaking, and disappearing into difference, organizing itself momentarily, only to disorganize its own forms and content, freeing up an intense material of expression. ‘Patapreface offers a fabulated beginner’s guide to this elusive dimension of sound—its mechanical waves, fundamental frequencies, and double-helices of obfuscatory reflection.
Read Beier & Wallin's (2017) Sound without organs: Inhuman refrains & the speculative potential of a cosmos-without-us. In B. Herzogenrath (Ed.), Sound Thinking. New York: Bloomsbury.
Installation view of ‘Patapreface: How Sound Works at the Art Gallery of Alberta.