The Thousands

The grey area between visual art and music – often referred to as ‘sound’ – is a bit of a neglected field in Adelaide. Sydney has Serial Space, an ARI devoted to Frankenstein hybrid art practices like electrical circuits and rotating fans, echo-y noises, endurance performance and Youtube. That kinda stuff, y’know? Melbourne has a course in Sound Art at RMIT. But in Adelaide sound-niks skulk between sculpture exhibitions and dark basement gigs, rarely surfacing to the light of day.

Every now and then though, sound rears its abstract head. Beneath Morphett St Bridge for the next month one such project will take place: under city sound scapes, a public sound art project curated by Brigid Noone. The project involves a mix of trained musicians, visual artists and a few philanderers like Jason Sweeney who work between the two fields.

For the larger part, popular culture – even in music and art – relies on the tangled maze of language to draw forth some likeness of sticky feelings. But there is an insistent lineage of artists and musicians who persist with the idea that we might be able to feel something before or after or even in between words. Sound art seems to have something to do with these ambiguous but compelling sensations. No words. Just sound art. Under the bridge.