A sonic canvas

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  I Keep Falling at You by Shilpa Gupta (below) was the only sound sculpture by an Indian artist exhibited at the Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art exhibition at ZKM | Media Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany

  

  Pic by Shrutti Garg

Try to imagine a cacophonic mix of construction sounds, blaring horns in a giant traffic jam and the creaky whirring sounds of an ageing fan. Now, go one step further, strain your ears carefully, and figure out if these sounds can be put together and result in a work of art.

You might say that modern-day artists are turning just about everything into works of art. And now a handful of young artists are fashioning works of art out of mundane sounds that most of us wouldn't normally give a second thought to.

Tune your ears to Shilpa Gupta's I Keep Falling at You. Gupta's piece was the only 'sound sculpture' by an Indian artist exhibited at the Sound Art. Sound as a Medium of Art exhibition at ZKM Media Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany recently. It consisted of thousands of microphones hung from the ceiling like a gigantic bunch of black grapes, and from it came words that Gupta had recorded in her own voice. In the background played construction and marching sounds.

Or, look at — or rather, listen to — Bangalore-based musician Abhijeet Tambe who took part in Auditions, a sound residency at New Delhi's KHOJ International Artists' Association earlier this year. Tambe stitched microphones into his cap so that he could record the sounds of old Delhi. He then interspersed these sounds with a fictional first person narrative to create a sound art piece titled Flying. And he played this work using a surround sound set-up with four speakers, placed in such a manner that the listener — or art lover — stood at the centre of a square with the speakers pointing inwards towards him.

'My definition of sound art is fairly brief and very simple — it's an art form that uses sound as a medium,' says Tambe, whose involvement with the art form began with his Blackbox project last year. It involved recording sounds from public places like markets, and even conversations with his family and friends, which he wove together into a story. The works were put out as public installations in Bangalore's old Russell Market and on a local bus too.

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  The KHOJ International Artists' Association's residencies provide a crucial platform for artists doing sound art. Photograph courtesy Khoj International Artists' Association

Meanwhile, Desire Machine Collective's Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya's sound work Trespassers Will (Not) Be Prosecuted travelled even further to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York last year and to Rome and Berlin before that. It had no visual element whatsoever. Instead, there were just speakers and sensors in this interactive installation which played sounds from the sacred forest of Mawphlang, Meghalaya.

The work comprised two layers. One, an ambient sound layer, played sounds from the forest — like that of crickets, birds, frogs, water — in a 30-minute loop. The second interactive layer had sensors placed outside the museum that were activated when someone passed by. 'We've had strange comments from people at times, like 'Where is your work?',' says Jain.

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  Surabhi Saraf's works have won her international acclaim. Check out the artist's work at https://soundcloud.com/surabhisaraf/5-illuminen-excerpt

It must be said, that until a few years ago, many artists knew nothing about sound art. In fact, Gupta, whose I Keep Falling... work was preceded by her famous Singing Cloud installation in 2008-09, points out that she first used sound in a work way back in 1999. But even she only heard of 'sound art as a genre' after KHOJ's first sound art residency in 2006.

Charu Maithani, who curated KHOJ's Auditions: Sound Residency 2013, the third of its sound art residencies, says: 'Internationally, the roots of sound art can be traced to the early decades of the last century, when new sounds and mechanical devices radically expanded possibilities in the visual arts and music.'

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  Melbourne-based Dylan Martorell (below) showed his installation (above) at the recently concluded Kochi-Muziris Biennale

  

  Photographs courtesy Kochi Biennale Foundation

Yet it's only with the advent of new media practices — like video art and installations — that artists have started paying attention to sonic practices, she says. Even so, sound was more of a by-product of new media works earlier. 'It wasn't bracketed like it is today,' says Maithani. But now artists are conceiving works as sound art itself.

In India, Khoj's sound art residencies have played a key role in promoting the genre. Internationally too, the medium got a shot in the arm when the prestigious Turner Prize was awarded to the artist Susan Philipsz for her sound installation in 2010.

So today, everyone from established artists like Anita Dube to young stars like Shilpa Gupta to experimental artists like Tambe and Desire Machine Collective are working with sound.

Dube, for instance, had a multimedia installation with sound at the recent Kochi-Muziris Biennale. The biennale also had a pure sound work by the Melbourne-based artist Dylan Martorell, which proved to be one of the biggest hits with the crowds. Martorell essentially went around Kochi recording 'the hidden sounds of Cochin life'. He then created a touch-based work with various instruments suspended from the ceiling and also floor-based objects. When touched, these instruments and objects then released these hidden sounds.

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  Trespassers Will (Not) Be Prosecuted (2012) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, by Desire Machine Collective was inspired by sounds collected in a forest in Meghalaya. Check out the work at http://vimeo.com/47727176

On the other hand, the artist Budhaditya Chattopadhyay has even created a work from silence. Chattopadhyay made a recording in a silent environment and used digital technology to translate the resonant frequency of the reverberating space into a multi-channel work. 'It was literally developed from nowhere, from 'silence', so to speak,' says Chattopadhyay about his first sound installation Passage (2008) and its expanded form Passage to the City (2009-12), which he showed in Florence.

Chattopadhyay traces his involvement with sound to his childhood, when he'd spend hours listening to classical music on tapes and record players. This led to his fascination with different sound textures and tonal qualities — and silence too.

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  Bangalore-based musician Abhijeet Tambe began by interlaying sounds from public places like markets and conversations with his family and friends to form a story

Meanwhile, San Francisco-based Indian artist Surabhi Saraf's involvement with sound art began with the KHOJ residency in 2006. 'At KHOJ, I was fascinated by the sound of an ageing ceiling fan in my studio. So I recorded its sound and created multiple short loops highlighting the inherent rhythms and patterns of this ever-evolving sound,' she says. Saraf performed live on the residency's closing night, creating a piece by mixing all the pre-composed tracks with the live sound of the fan. And she used six speakers spread across the KHOJ premises, creating an immersive soundscape that the audience could explore as they moved around the building.

In the last five years, her work has included sound pieces comprising her own compositions as well as studio and field recordings (of sounds like the whirring of vintage fans or the pouring of grains into bowls), which she employs in live performances. What's more, she has even created her first experimental sound album, Illuminen, a part of which she performed at her first solo show at Mumbai's Galerie Mirchandani plus Steinruecke in February.

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  Instead of recording sounds, Hemant Sreekumar generates them using mathematical formulae and then uses them in live performances. Check out his work at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmNxwHKG6V4.

  Photographs courtesy Khoj studio, New Delhi

It was also the gallery's first sound-based exhibition, and its owner Ranjana Steinruecke says: 'The audience's response was phenomenal. Art enthusiasts are always searching for new dynamic forms, and sound art is just one way of accessing such work.'

Meanwhile, artist Hemant Sreekumar too has been using sound and visuals in what he calls his 'data art'. He basically works with the 'excess energy' radiated when a machine is running, like the noise of a refrigerator in an empty room. He then reformulates these using mathematical formulae to make the sounds louder and to filter out other elements.

His 'main matrix' or motif is the noise of a traffic jam. 'Just as a stone sculptor starts with a big piece of granite and then chisels out what he needs, I too chisel out the sounds that I need from traffic noise,' explains Sreekumar. But he doesn't record these sounds. Instead, he generates them using mathematical formulae and then uses them in live performances.

Clearly, sounds most people wouldn't give a second thought to have now become the new raw material for art. And as more and more artists explore and experiment with the genre, it seems like art enthusiasts will soon have more to listen to.