memory untitled
Dean Linguey |
listening and forgettingMemory is mapped and mechanised in a feedback system and re-presented as an immersive speaker-forest. Layers of contemplation and interaction dissect, unfolding another version of the real. Dean Linguey Dean Linguey’s recent work at Seventh Gallery sounds and looks so good that I wish I’d made it myself. The front room of the gallery contains "the speaker forest." A group of speaker drivers, attached to aluminum strips running in gentle curves from floor to ceiling, produces a feedback drone. Out back in the rear gallery, a rectangular frame suspends two large steel plates, which in turn hold guitar strings in tension. Suspended under the strings is a guitar pickup. Give it a tap and it swings back and forth, causing the distant drone of sound from the front room to pulsate—the two rooms are connected, one feeding the other. This is a deconstructed guitar, and up front is a deconstructed amp. But exploring rock iconography isn’t the point here. Memory is an oblique title, at odds with the sound of the work. Ooccasionally it flies off into a feedback squeal, but the sound field in the front room, during my visit, is static. The piece has a living quality about it—humming with sonic life. But it’s a drone life—with existence but without temporality and thus, without memory. Memory is a central characteristic of human consciousness, and we provide it in this work. In sound installation, a tension exists between the stasis of objects and the temporality of sound. Linguey has stated that tension clearly, but the experience feels relaxed, as the sound hangs in time and space. Perhaps there’s a metaphor: the machine that hums along mindlessly; the life that hums along without memory. Bruce Mowson Bruce Mowson is a sound and video artist undertaking a PhD in Fine Art at RMIT. |
Dean LingueySeventh Gallery, Melbourne, May 22-June 2 |