Alvin Lucier, Stefan Rummel and Pierre Berthet feature in this summer's exhibition from Lydgalleriet. This time, it's all about vibrations, strings, stripped-down speakers, and elevated sound objects. For the third time, the curator Carsten Seiffarth returns to Bergen to create an exhibition for Lydgalleriet.
Suspended ten metres up in the air, near the ceiling of Korskirken, hangs Alvin Lucier's classic work Music on a Long Thin Wire from 1977. The installation was first exhibited in Albuquerque and has since been shown many times, but never before in Scandinavia.
The piece is a meditation on the overtones of a wire that stretches the entire length of the church, from north to south. The space fills with a faint drone that builds up in the giant string beneath the church roof. Composer Alvin Lucier is the creator of one of modern music’s most iconic pieces, I Am Sitting in a Room. His works bring us closer to the essence of sound, exploring the properties of materials, where physical laws are as much parameters of understanding as musical frameworks. By allowing natural phenomena to play out in his installations and compositions, he leaves the field of interpretation entirely open.
In the courtyard at USF Verftet hangs the exhibition's second installation, Pierre Berthet’s Extended Speakers. The installation makes use of a familiar sound phenomenon that many might have tried as children, namely making telephones out of two tin cans and some string. Berthet has stripped down ordinary speakers, removing the membrane to expose the magnet at the back. He then attaches steel wires to the magnet, which are connected to an empty paint can, so that the sound emanates from the paint can, much like the aforementioned string telephone.
Stefan Rummel's new work Articulated Chambers is exhibited inside the gallery space at the corner of USF Verftet. He also uses strings in his work, but here they are strings that do not produce sound, specifically silicone strings. Like a blend of a chameleon's tongue and a spider's web, the silicone strings are attached to various vibrating elements in the gallery space, including a large bass speaker. The installation is a further development of an installation where two large boxes were placed on a dock by the river Maas, which flows through the city. The boxes were large enough to enter, and while one was placed on the dock, the other floated on the water. In Bergen, both boxes are built into Lydgalleriet. The floating box is now in "dry dock" and stands on large springs. The water's membrane has been transferred to another elasticity with new properties, evoking thoughts of playground equipment and cartoons. The sounds heard are recordings from Bergen that the artist himself made while staying here.