The Sound of Art: Collaboration Creates New Audience Experience

In a collaborative installation featured in the Fine Arts Building Gallery throughout the month of March, Music Technology and Composition Professor Scott Smallwood created a series of sound works to create a sense of atmosphere for gallery visitors.

16 March 2010

In a collaborative installation featured in the Fine Arts Building Gallery throughout the month of March, Music Technology and Composition Professor Scott Smallwood created a series of sound works to create a sense of atmosphere for gallery visitors.
Companion pieces to Maria Whiteman's drawing and intermedia exhibition entitled De Anima, Smallwood created three sound pieces which help represent the mysterious relationships between animals and humans. Adding a sense of synesthetic juxtaposition between the visual work and the audience's aural experience, the pieces - one of which features found objects such as aluminum flower pots - aim to emphasize the gaze of the animal.
Smallwood's work deals with real and abstracted soundscapes based on a practice of listening, improvisation and phonography. Ranging from sonic photographs, studio compositions, instrumental pieces, and improvisations, the resulting pieces are textural explorations of space and time.

As a performer of electronics, computers, handmade instruments, and percussion, Smallwood has played with a variety of improvisers including Cor Fuhler, Joe McPhee, Phil Gelb, Todd Reynolds, John Butcher, Mark Dresser, and Pauline Oliveros. His instrumental compositions have included performances by Network for New Music, Ensemble SurPlus, the Boston Sound Collective and the Brentano String Quartet. He has collaborated frequently with video artists, dancers, and other artists, and for the past ten years has maintained an active collaboration with composer and sound artist Stephan Moore as the duo Evidence.

Smallwood's work has been presented and broadcast worldwide, including recent presentations at the Kitchen in NYC, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, the 2006 Sonic Circuits festival in Washington DC and the Kulturhaus E-Werk in Frieberg, Germany. Media has been released on Autumn Records, Deep Listening, Televaw, Simple Logic, Static Caravan, and others. He is currently creating an ensemble of solar powered instruments, preferably to be played while cross-country skiing.

Hear Smallwood's pieces in the Fine Arts Building Gallery through March 27, 2010. The FAB Gallery is open Tuesday - Friday from 10am - 5pm and Saturday from 2pm - 5pm.

"Bird," 2010
Media: solar-powered electronic circuits, recycled materials

"Fins of the Elements," 2010
Media: electronic circuits, aluminum flower pots

"Hidrain," Date: 2009
Media: two-channel audio