The Singing Ringing Tree – Mike Tonkin and Anna Liu of Tonkin Liu
The Singing Ringing Tree is an architectural project under the Panopticon project by Mid Pennine Arts. Constructed with galvanised stainless steel pipes, the Singing Ringing Tree is a sculpture that overlooks Burnley in England, and creates sounds using natural winds that blow across the sculpture. Through clever variations in the width as well as curvature of the pipes, the architects allowed the sculpture to have an aural range of seven octaves.
I feel that this piece of art is a stroke of genius as the artists were able to bring about an aural experience to something as natural as wind which would otherwise have been ignored as environmental noise. Not many notice the subtleties in the sounds that winds make, and this sculpture is about to shed light and bring attention to artistic and aesthetic potential in a force of nature that was once latent.
The Whispering Room – Janet Cardiff
http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/inst/whispering_room.html
The Whispering Room is an installation by Janet Cardiff, which consists of 16 speakers in a dark room where a video plays. Through the 16 different speakers, a different voice is heard in each one and across speakers, certain dialogues can be heard. By walking around the room, the audience would be able to make out a story by carefully listening to the conversations that the individual speakers have.
I feel that this piece was innovative and incredibly immersive as it requires the audience to move around the room and interact with the speakers. By forcing the audience to paint a picture in their head through the information that they receive from the speakers, Cardiff creates a unique environment where audiences are able to immerse themselves in a story that she has created, making them want to find out more, and they would only be able to do so through multiple listens of the numerous voices. Her idea to use sound and dialogue as a means to tell a story instead of simply playing a video with audio truly captures the essence of art in sound.