DJs and curators perform similar tasks: they select pieces, whether art or music, and tie them together within a narrative. A good curator applies a rigorous forward motion to the thesis of his exhibition, the way a DJ’s set creates a propulsive drive. Roland Smart is not a DJ. He is also not a traditional curator.
In fact, right now, Smart, the former curator of Davis Square’s short-lived Ÿber-hip Gallery Bershad, is taking a sabbatical from curating while working as an emergency medical technician. But with "Boom Box: The Art of Sound," which will open next Friday in the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts, he’ll be taking a sabbatical from his sabbatical. As the BCA’s guest curator for "Boom Box," Smart will present Boston’s thumping, crackling, pulsing, humming sound-art milieu, a scene where art and music collide, where the visual and the aural bleed together with echoes, shadows, and reflections of influence.
The way visual art and sound influence each other provides the conceptual framework of Smart’s show. The process of the painter, for example, is an autonomous one. "We all have this romanticized image," he explains, "of the artist alone in a studio with a finger on the zeitgeist translating it into painting." Whereas sound media "have a totally different association. Music is a collaborative media. Bands work together."
Smart let the sound-art process influence his curatorial process, and he worked together with the artists he chose for "Boom Box." Unlike a traditional curator, he selected "not works, but artists — artists who would get together and create a show, artists who wanted to work with a group, artists who would embrace the collaborative process." And he stepped back from the usual role of curator, conductor, or DJ by giving these artists an atypical amount of responsibility.
He defines the resulting show as "a cross-section of what’s happening, a contemporary update" of the sound-art scene. The works in "Boom Box" "gravitate toward, or take advantage of, sound-based media." David Webber’s "AO2000," for example, is an interactive sound machine. A combination of Picasso’s Cubist guitars and a hacker’s basement operation, this heap of keyboards, computer screens, musical instruments, wires, nodes, attachments, tape, and plugs takes audience-location information and uses the data to make music. It’s a haywire reinterpretation of musical chairs.
With "Envoy," Tracey Cockrell explores the relationship between language and sound by turning an old Remington typewriter into a musical instrument. Typewriter keys become piano keys and the musical score is a text. Smart mentions the merging of phonics and linguistics.
And then there’s Ross Goldstein & Seth Barger’s use of Joseph Pompei’s "Audio Spotlight." Pompei, a graduate of MIT’s Media Lab, developed a device that, Smart explains, "defies the logic of sound." How? Think of a flashlight. In a dark room you can see only what’s illuminated within the beam; if it’s aimed at someone’s hand, you can see fingers, palm, and wrist, but the elbow remains in darkness. The "Audio Spotlight" works the same way. Point the column of sound at someone and that person will be the only one to hear it. The sound is illuminated, so to speak, only for the person at whom the beam is aimed; if you’re not in the beam, you can’t hear the music. Pompei combined the beamlike nature of ultrasound with elements of audible sound; the result, says Smart "is one of the most unusual sensations, one of the most bizarre experiences." In other words, you have to hear it to believe it.
"Boom Box: The Art of Sound" opens next Friday, January 17, with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m., and runs through March 9 in the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts, 539 Tremont Street in the South End. Call (617) 426-5000.
