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Like most urban settings, the Rotunda Gallery is surrounded by a cacophony of sound—from the wail of the warning alarm at the parking garage across the street, the chatter of students on their way to and from school, the engines of cars and trucks passing through on one of Brooklyn Heights' major thoroughfares. An urban orchestra surrounds the gallery, a space which generally strives to create an atmosphere where quiet contemplation of artwork can occur. Subject to Sound will explore the expressive and formal dimensions of sound through the work of contemporary artists who use sound as a medium.
An evening of performances, Sound Bites, will be held May 4, 2000 at 8pm, showcasing the work of participating artists. Performers will include David Weinstein and Tim Spelios, mixing found and appropriated music and noise with fast and cheap technology; Ken Butler, creating mesmerizing eastern instruments made from household objects, sports equipment and tools; acclaimed keyboardist Kathleen Supové performing Randall Woolf's Adrenaline Revival, for keyboard and digital effects processor; Gene Pool will perform his bittersweet childhood memoir, 200 Times, including a lush musical backdrop created by Tim Spelios from looped CDs and percussion.
Artists in the exhibition include:
Ken Butler, whose interactive, grand piano-sized multi-media assemblage of reconfigured objects, machine parts, and other audio-visual items makes music and projects images at the stroke of a key.
Bill Jones & Ben Neill's Pulse 48 is a set of light and electronic musical instruments controlled by a simple mathematical formula, which produces a fractal pattern in time and space.
Scott Konzelmann teams up with Ken Montgomery to place microphones throughout the ventilation system of the gallery. The collected sounds are filtered and output through a Chop Shop speaker construction, providing the listener a confused ear to the gallery's environment.
William & Kathleen Laziza whose touch/sound sensitive installation mixes common everyday materials with electronic circuitry to produce a cozy responsive environment that includes a wired love seat.
Kevin & Jennifer McCoy's Radio Wonderland installation has Alice and her friends performing William S. Borroughs style cut-ups through inflatable boom boxes.
Ken Montgomery's The Sound of Lamination is a people-participatory activity and interactive experience that produces original, transformed personal objects which will last – almost – forever.
Gene Pool has activated the gallery's wheelchair lift with laser sensors that trigger musical tracks and lights.
John Roach & James Rouvelle team up to create an interactive sound-mulching device, the South Brooklyn Casket Company, from a plastic orange, voice-recording units, a drinking cup, and a few sheets of lumber.
James Rouvelle's array of small sound 'bots are programmed to listen for and respond to each other in ways that cause a continually changing chorus of resonant clicks.
David Weinstein whose 20' x 20' canvas musical score, loaded with interlaced mathematical patterns, forces a re-examination of the interface between composer, performer and audience.
The Rotunda Gallery, housed in an award-winning space designed by Smith-Miller + Hawkinson, showcases the work of Brooklyn artists. The gallery's educational programs reach 6,000 students each year with gallery visits and in-school artmaking projects.
Janet Riker is the Gallery Director; Meridith McNeal is Associate Director. The Rotunda Gallery is a project of the not-for-profit BRIC/Brooklyn Information & Culture, Inc. (Nanette Rainone, President), a leader in the development of arts and communications programs in Brooklyn. Formerly known as The Fund for the Borough of Brooklyn, BRIC benefits nearly one million people each year through its six projects: BCAT/Brooklyn Community Access Television; BrookLynX; the Brooklyn Tourism Council; the Celebrate Brooklyn Performing Arts Festival; the Rotunda Gallery; and the Welcome Back to Brooklyn Homecoming Festival. For more information about BRIC call 718-855-7882 or visit their website, www.brooklynX.org.
Located in Brooklyn Heights, just over the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, the Gallery is also easily accessible by public transportation. It is a short walk from the 2, 3; 4, 5; M; N or R trains at the Court Street/Borough Hall station; or the A, C trains at High Street.
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