forms of paper

sound installation
2001
los angeles public library, hollywood branch
part of the exhibition "six degrees - art in the libraries"

sound file is a short excerpt of  the entire piece

‘forms of paper’ was created for the exhibition ‘six degrees – art in the libraries’ – a group exhibition of site specific works for a number of public libraries around los angeles.

the soundwork was created using electronically manipulated sounds of book pages being rubbed, scraped, turned, etc.

the sound was playing through 10 speakers that were placed on a small pedestal in the center of the library upon a series of paper ‘drawings’ made from folding discarded discarded pages from science books, and then working with them with a hole puncher, to create kind of rorschach blots from the design of the holes. each piece of paper was unique.

the work was playing very softly within the library space continuously for one month, and for the most part there were no complaints, in fact, it seemed as if the soundtrack made the library feel even quieter than usual (perhaps rather than trying to be louder than the added sound, people lowered their own voices so as not to overpower the sound).

there were a few responses, none more wonderful than someone putting several little light activated electronic “cricket” toys to improvise with my work.

the piece was eventually released on richard chartier’s line label, and in 2012 it was re-released as a high quality digital download that was remastered by bernhard gunter around 2002, after i was unhappy with the initial release. the line sight also offers a free download of a pdf describing the installation in detail as well as a history of the lowercase sound “scene”… available here