Highly Conceptual Sound Art That's Also Interesting To Look At? It's Possible.

SYNAH via Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon 

It is almost too obvious to mention that sound art can be unexciting to look at. Sometimes this is because the visual component of a piece is irrelevant, sometimes it's because we only have so much attention to go around. Even in some cases where the artist gives more thought to the visual components of her piece, its looks aren’t as important as its sounds. This definitely isn’t true of Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon’s work, which pays attention to every portion of your experience.

Gordon's immersive works are as arresting to the eye as they are to the ear. The way her installations are presented, the objects that make the sounds you hear are prominently displayed and carefully arranged in the exhibition space as objects worthy of your gaze. For example, the three installations in her exhibition "No Touch" featured carefully arranged speakers accompanied by objects made of felt, foam, and fabric that are designed to amplify, distort, and absorb the sound waves coming from the speakers as they bounce around the room. These pieces of acoustic material have pleasing textures and shapes--they look like beautiful minimalist sculptures.

Searching For Vespers by Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon

No Touch by Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon

Untitled Fantasy #2 by Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon

By including sound-altering materials that are too beautiful not to look at, Gordon’s works draw our attention equally to what we see in a space and what we hear in that space. As a result, we start to notice the way that the things we see alter the sounds we hear. This red material to the left reflects the sound of the speaker and makes it feel bright and harsh; this material to the right absorbs the sound and makes it feel muffled. Even the building materials—carpeting, ceiling, drywall—change the sound. Everything we can see in the space affects what we hear.

One of Gordon’s installations explores this idea further by taking the materials used to build the gallery itself and making them into things that produce sound rather than only altering it. For 2013’s "I'm Not Judging You I'm Judging Me," she made clever use of devices called tactile transducers (also known by the more evocative name "bass shakers") to create low-frequency vibrations strong enough that they could be felt by anyone standing in the room. She attached them to the windows, which effectively turned them into speakers.

I'm Not Judging You Judging Me by Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon

Not far away from the windows, she erected an eight-foot high Plexiglass wall around a felt sculpture and a speaker. Because it's close to the sound-producing windows, the Plexiglass wall vibrates and produces a sound of its own. If you stand near the Plexiglass, you can hear that sound. You might also hear the felt sculpture absorbing some of that sound or the speaker producing a tone that mixes with the sound, changing it. The amount of each thing you hear depends on where you stand.

I'm Not Judging You Judging Me by Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon

According to the essay that accompanies the installation and describes the layout, the effect of Gordon's careful placement of objects is that she has "tuned" the gallery. She has used the relationships between all the objects in the room to create a specific set of sounds and noises. Imagine that what you hear is the room speaking—it's no coincidence that Gordon has called room noise "a communication from architecture."

Gordon's installations, far from emphasizing sound over all else, engage all of the body's senses. They
use sound, sight, touch, and movement to immerse us in an experience that draws our attention to the

relationships between everything in the room.