Jess Rowland: The Other Side of Air: Notations for Interactive Sound and Life This In Find We

Jess Rowland’s practice considers the materiality of sound through combining paper-printing techniques with loudspeaker design. As a result, Rowland’s approach to sound is both compositional and sculptural, as sound seems to emanate from the paper in an almost magical way.

The Other Side of Air: Notations for Interactive Sound (2017, fig. 10) carries this idea further by reconfiguring essential loudspeaker components in unexpected ways. For two of the four objects, visitors must use a stethoscope, modified with a neodymium magnet affixed to the membrane, to gradually move along different conductive wires carrying sound signals across heavy rectangular vellum sheets. The experience is individual, as only one person can experience the complete work at a time. Alluringly, the sound appears to come from nowhere. The visual component of the work consists of crisscrossing conductive and light-reflective metal shapes affixed to what appears to be staff paper. The allusion to musical notation cannot be missed, yet the way the score becomes a sonic phenomenon through the interaction of the deconstructed speaker components is playful and unexpected.