Pillowsongs is a sound installation exploring sleep and rest as a space for listening. Up to eight different CD soundtracks are mixed into speakers embedded inside pillows on beds installed throughout a darkened exhibition space, lit only dim blue light-bulbs. Listeners hear these sounds by resting their heads on the pillows – resulting in a very intimate and ‘inside your head’ listening expetrience. The soundtracks combined field recordings, electronic drones, voices and short-wave radio transmissions. The programming of the CD tracks changed from day to day.
The slowly reconfiguring sound textures, dark lighting, and restful means by which the audiences engage with the work, engage listeners in a highly intimate, and hypnotic hypnogogic listening experience. Listeners often report a high degree of uncertainty as to which sounds where coming from the pillows, and which sounds had emanated from outside the gallery space. Falling asleep can be an appropriate way of interacting with this work, given our ability to perceive sounds whilst in certain stages of sleep.
Lying on the rough cotton sheets the inevitable association of light illuminating the darkness to traditional representations of transcendence is thwarted. Instead an overwhelming sense of the temporality of life marked only by fleeting sensations, thoughts and lingering memories is evoked. Implicitly the long hoarded pillows, vestiges of the artist’s past refer to the passage of time and the materiality of the body’s seeping flesh. These ideas are intensified by the physicality of the muffled vibrations of the sound transmitted through the pillows and the gradual awareness of the residues harboured in the crumpled linen of those who have visited the installation before. A strangely intimate and disquieting proximity revealed by the lingering scent of strangers, a stray golden hair and a damp smear on the pillow.
2001
First Draft Gallery, in the group exhibition ‘Suspended’, curated by Vicki Clair, Sydney, New South Wales,
Australia.
Acknowledgements
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body (New Media Arts Board), and by Contemporary Arts Services Tasmania (CAST).
Pillowsongs
Audio excerpts (stereo remixes)…
Pillowsongs Mix #1
Pillowsongs Mix #2
Pillowsongs ‘Shifter’ Mix
Pillowsongs ‘Glass’ Mix
The slowly reconfiguring sound textures, dark lighting, and restful means by which the audiences engage with the work, engage listeners in a highly intimate, and hypnotic hypnogogic listening experience. Listeners often report a high degree of uncertainty as to which sounds where coming from the pillows, and which sounds had emanated from outside the gallery space. Falling asleep can be an appropriate way of interacting with this work, given our ability to perceive sounds whilst in certain stages of sleep.
Review by Mary Knights, Artlink magazine, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1998
Dates
1998
Sidespace Gallery, Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
1999
Temple Gallery, Prahan, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Gallery 4A, curated by Melisa Chiu, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
2000
24 HR ART, curated by Cath Bowdler, Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia.
2001
First Draft Gallery, in the group exhibition ‘Suspended’, curated by Vicki Clair, Sydney, New South Wales,
Australia.
Acknowledgements