The Erasure of Everyday Time - American University Museum

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The Erasure of Everyday Time, by artist Heather Theresa Clark, is a soundscape hung within an overbuilt commercial scaffolding system. As part of the group exhibition Landscape in an Eroded Field, Clark was tasked with creating a work that reflects the pictorial landscape tradition in the Anthropocene Era. In response, Clark avoids representing landscape with what is visible and in plain sight, and instead uses sound to explore our new reality in the age of climate crisis – the familiar, but ungraspable.

In the installation, Clark uses a series of machines to imitate sounds of nature - water fountains, fans, and multiple record players. The record players play Daniel Levin’s improvisational cello Living. An orchestra is created by placing each set of machines on their own programmed cycle. Sometimes all three sets of machines play at once, while other times, only one or two sets of machines play. Any overlap is serendipitous and by chance. It is unlikely that the same pattern will happen twice.

An adjacent monitor shows a video of traditional Sacred Harp Shape Note singers recorded in an industrial wind tunnel. The four singers sing, and then repeat, the traditional song, Idumea. Adhering to the shape note singing tradition, they first sing the ‘shapes’ (i.e., the sounds that represent each note of music). Then they sing the words. The wind tunnel fans quickly pick up speed.

SOUNDSCAPE CONTRIBUTORS

Music from Living: Daniel Levin Solo by permission of the artist.

Soundscape Contributors: Special thanks to Alberto Gaitán with Nick Beauregard and Tim C. and in-kind donation from Tom Berard

WIND TUNNEL VIDEO

Contributors: Elizabeth Rossano, cinematography; Sean Clute, audio recording; Bill Wolter, audio master; Kerry Cullinan, Constance Des Marais, Scott Luscombe, Moira Smiley, singers

This exhibit is made possible from contributions from Scaffolding Solutions, Denon, Global Industrial, Kanto, Bella Faccia, & Lamps Plus.

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