Sometimes it is a Murmur, Sometimes it is a Pulse: Part One
On Saturday, March 5, 2022 during sunset, Los Angeles-based composer/performers Byron Westbrook, Celia Hollander and Jeremiah Chiu created a sonic intervention with Gradually/We Became Aware/Of a Hum in the Room. This is the first activation of “Sometimes it is a Murmur, Sometimes it is a Pulse;” the second phase of the project which was installed on High Desert Test Site’s “Andy’s Gamma Gulch” site in Pioneertown in 2014.
During their hour-long performance, Westbrook, Hollander and Chiu simultaneously gave a distinct voice to each face of the 3-sided structure, responding to both the bold colors of the work as well as the changing hues represented in the landscape. The audience was invited to navigate the environment and explore different points of visibility and audibility within and around the structure as the light changed during sunset. Unexpectedly, the performance almost exactly coincided with a brief snow storm.
Jeremiah Chiu is Los Angeles-based artist, musician, educator, and community organizer. Chiu’s hybrid practice often operates under his studio moniker, Some All None, where projects lie at the intersection of art, music, technology, and publishing. As a musician, Chiu participates in the electronic and experimental music communities in Chicago and Los Angeles and is currently an artist on International Anthem Recording Co. In addition to Some All None, Chiu is an Assistant Professor at Otis College of Art & Design, faculty member at Art Center College of Design, and a resident DJ at Dublab. Chiu’s work has been exhibited/performed at The Getty Center, LACMA, Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center, The Chicago Cultural Center, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, amongst others.
website: someallnone.com
Instagram: @jeremiahchiu
Celia Hollander is a Los Angeles based composer and artist working with audio, scores, performance, installation and text. Her work critically engages ways that audio and the act of listening can shape temporal perception and question cultural infrastructures. Her work has been performed or installed at institutions and venues including MOCA, The Getty, Skirball Cultural Art Center, Various Small Fires, Human Resources and Zebulon. Her discography includes releases on Leaving Records, Recital and Noumenal Loom and she is a resident dj on Dublab Radio. She holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts where she studied music composition.
Website: celiahollander.com
Instagram: @ceellliiiia
Byron Westbrook is an artist and composer based in Los Angeles, CA. He works with both music performance and installation formats with a focus on architectural qualities of sound and the potential for audio to generate visual and social spaces. Westbrook’s work has been presented by international institutions such as the Walker Art Center, ICA London, Rewire Festival and MaerzMusik Festival. He has recorded releases with Important Records, Root Strata, Hands in the Dark, Ash International and Umor Rex. Westbrook holds an MFA from Bard College and has recently been visiting faculty with Pratt Institute MFA, Columbia University Sound Arts MFA, and International Center of Photography’s New Media Narratives program.
website: byronwestbrook.com
Instagram: @byronwestbrook
Change is constant, this configuration of material and these round windows enframing distance and rocks are temporary. Everything is temporary. 2675 revolutions of the Earth and counting, 7 years and 8 months of cycles: day to night, closing in on 8 trips around the Sun, nearly constant wind. The time stretches out, long silences punctuated by occasional visitors, the sun and moon arc through the sky, seasons pass. This continuity is difficult to measure, so short in the larger scheme but long enough for cycles to be established: the habits of animals, a certain readjustment of vegetable growth, scattered paths from parking area to structure, innumerable ways of being have developed in this brief time. There’s no simple way to say it, language is already unstable: your red and my red are already different; we each look out the portal from a different viewpoint; I can never see you from where you see me; it’s not getting bigger you’re getting closer; gradually we became aware of a hum in the room.
The building listens continuously: to light, to sound, the movement of air, animals, minerals, that hum of vegetable life. We listen for songs within the vast expanse of what is already there.
The title of the project emerged from music so it seems fitting that this new phase should begin with a shared experience of sound; to experience the mutuality and alterity of sound against that backdrop of silence. We invite you to join us for a new series of activations, “Sometimes it is a Murmur, Sometimes it is a Pulse”, meditating on transformation and continuous difference. The ear is always open.
All images this page by Sarah Lyons and video by Elena Dao Jing Yu.
Links:
<<Sometimes it is a Murmur, Sometimes it is a Pulse @ HDTS >>
<<Sometimes it is a Murmur, Sometimes it is a Pulse on Byron Westbrook’s Website>>