Saturday, June 19, 2004
Went to the Victoria and Albert Museum today to check out the Sounds in Spaces exhibition. You put on one of the museum's headsets and follow a map, ten artists have created audio pieces based on fourteen places, their favouritest places in the whole museum apparently. Each piece is on average three to four minutes long, with a few longer, the idea being you look at the items that inspired their works.
Hmmm, as with any of these pot luck things it's much of a mixed bag. The first piece is a track for the Raphael Cartoons gallery by Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins and today was a really bad day to find I've completely gone of her nonsensical lyricless warbling. Like the Patrician and mimes, I want to hang her upside down from a wall opposite a sign saying 'learn the words'.
But this is my thing. When people say something inspired a piece of work I often can't see how, unless they make it explicit themselves. Which is fair enough, the few times I've turned an idea into a story the end result has scarce relation to the founding idea, when you're converting image -> thought -> music it's travelling further. Faultline's three pieces for the Sculpture Gallery are excellent (though I only got to hear two of them, couldn't find the last piece) but when in the accompanying booklet he talks about his music being inspired by the idea of the statues talking to one another I just couldn't see it.
For me the pieces that worked best were the strictly liminal pieces, David Byrne and Leila both submitted three and two pieces respectively that weren't for specific galleries or pieces, but for the inbetween places, the corridors that linked one location with another. One of Byrne's pieces was for the V&A's listed toilets, while one of Leila's tracks were for the top of stairs, split between one gallery below and another above.
We have to assume that everyone involved was honest of course, that they made these pieces for the show, Roots Manuva submitted a track like Massive Attack meets reggae which didn't really have any relevence beyond the title to their chosen location. Only the spoken word pieces by Jeremy Deller and Gillian Wearing could be definitely made up for this exhibition, unless they make a habit of doing spoken word pieces about the V&A just for the hell of it. But there again, Wearing's piece was an interview with a V&A employee about how a particular room reminded him of his childhood school, so therefore wasn't really about this room but the room at his school, the room was noticeable by it's absence. Can you relate to a place by removing it? Or, as we all live in our minds, is there no real difference between the room I was sitting in, the room this guy was talking about, and the schoolroom of his childhood?
This has come out a lot harsher than I intended. It's not bad and helped me see bits of the V&A I hadn't yet come across. Whether it would encourage the more seasoned visitor to look at the museum anew I couldn't say, but for a £5 ticket and a £20 deposit for the equipment it's a different way to engage with the artifacts. Following the route around the museum will certainly keep you fit if nothing else.
This was also the first time I've seen the V&A's Glass Room, three guesses what they've got in there. The beautiful sparkly things quotient was high, especially for the glass staircase, which I have pictures of below...
Hmmm, as with any of these pot luck things it's much of a mixed bag. The first piece is a track for the Raphael Cartoons gallery by Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins and today was a really bad day to find I've completely gone of her nonsensical lyricless warbling. Like the Patrician and mimes, I want to hang her upside down from a wall opposite a sign saying 'learn the words'.
But this is my thing. When people say something inspired a piece of work I often can't see how, unless they make it explicit themselves. Which is fair enough, the few times I've turned an idea into a story the end result has scarce relation to the founding idea, when you're converting image -> thought -> music it's travelling further. Faultline's three pieces for the Sculpture Gallery are excellent (though I only got to hear two of them, couldn't find the last piece) but when in the accompanying booklet he talks about his music being inspired by the idea of the statues talking to one another I just couldn't see it.
For me the pieces that worked best were the strictly liminal pieces, David Byrne and Leila both submitted three and two pieces respectively that weren't for specific galleries or pieces, but for the inbetween places, the corridors that linked one location with another. One of Byrne's pieces was for the V&A's listed toilets, while one of Leila's tracks were for the top of stairs, split between one gallery below and another above.
We have to assume that everyone involved was honest of course, that they made these pieces for the show, Roots Manuva submitted a track like Massive Attack meets reggae which didn't really have any relevence beyond the title to their chosen location. Only the spoken word pieces by Jeremy Deller and Gillian Wearing could be definitely made up for this exhibition, unless they make a habit of doing spoken word pieces about the V&A just for the hell of it. But there again, Wearing's piece was an interview with a V&A employee about how a particular room reminded him of his childhood school, so therefore wasn't really about this room but the room at his school, the room was noticeable by it's absence. Can you relate to a place by removing it? Or, as we all live in our minds, is there no real difference between the room I was sitting in, the room this guy was talking about, and the schoolroom of his childhood?
This has come out a lot harsher than I intended. It's not bad and helped me see bits of the V&A I hadn't yet come across. Whether it would encourage the more seasoned visitor to look at the museum anew I couldn't say, but for a £5 ticket and a £20 deposit for the equipment it's a different way to engage with the artifacts. Following the route around the museum will certainly keep you fit if nothing else.
This was also the first time I've seen the V&A's Glass Room, three guesses what they've got in there. The beautiful sparkly things quotient was high, especially for the glass staircase, which I have pictures of below...
