Public and Strongly Visual

Like 5 Graves to Cairo and Transmission, Laura Maes’s Spikes (2017) and Bill Fontana’s MicroSoundings (2017) were situated in public spaces on campus. Both were located in transitional spaces, an entryway and entrance, bridging the indoors and outdoors. This was particularly true of Spikes, which consisted of five solar panels mounted to the exterior of Thayer School of Engineering’s Cummings Hall (fig. 8) and connected to 200 small circuits boards attached to the ceiling of the entryway. Suspended on ten brass rods making five circuits (each circuit connected independently to one solar panel) the circuit boards made a clicking sound often described as resembling the calls of crickets or tree frogs. The circuit boards also had LED lights that would blink as they were activated. With no battery, Spikes was completely responsive to the environment. On sunny days, when the voltage was high, the clicks would be loud and fast. On cloudy ones, they were slow and quiet, and the work would fall silent at sunset. Patterns would emerge out of the random clicks, only to shift and degrade as quickly as they formed. The work had a rhythmic, almost natural quality, which seemed akin to the handmade quality of the electronics. The dark wires connecting the circuit board and brass rods had a linear, drawn effect against the white paint of the ceiling (fig. 9).

Spikes was for many the most accessible work in the exhibition, and prompted some of the most positive responses we received. Sonically and visually it asserted itself as something to be listened to and looked at, and was less abstract than some other works in the show. The memorable sound was engaging—particularly in the contained architecture of the entryway (figs. 10 and 11)—and reminded many visitors of the natural world. With its strong visual component, Spikes readily attracted attention from passersby—although we do not know how many stopped to read the label and therefore understood how the work operated, or realized that it was even a work of art at all. In classes and on tours, Spikes was the work from Resonant Spaces that audiences most often mentioned having noticed previously, even if they were not quite sure what it was. Notably, it was the only work that remained up after the exhibition closed. At the request of the Thayer School of Engineering, Maes agreed to keep it installed through the 2017–2018 school year, which also marked Thayer’s 150th anniversary.

Located on a silver slatted structure at the entrance of the Class of 1978 Life Sciences Center, Bill Fontana’s MicroSoundings (figs. 12 and 13) received a similarly positive response. As one approached the building’s entrance, the adjacent structure (originally constructed to control light pollution) came alive with sound: rushing water, low gurgling, or varieties of thumping and hammering. The sound samples themselves, recorded by Fontana from laboratories⁹ and mechanicals inside the building, had a lot of movement, and they played from six speakers arrayed on the interior of the structure. These recorded sounds would alternate with amplified sounds from the ambient environment heard through two additional speakers mounted on a light pole. This ambient sound was captured in real time by two accelerometers attached to the interior of the slatted structure. MicroSoundings painted a sonic portrait of the building made up of the work inside it, the machines that circulated its air and water, and the people and things that vibrated it during daily life.

Fontana’s MicroSoundings also had an interactive component: during the ambient sound part of the piece, visitors could bang, rub, scratch, or otherwise vibrate the poles of the structure and hear the resulting sound amplified through the light-pole speakers (fig. 14). This aspect of the work was not fully apparent until it was installed. Unfortunately, the all-weather didactic sign we had prepared for it had to be ordered well in advance, so the text did not invite the audience to touch the piece. While this interactivity was a key part of the tours and school groups that visited MicroSoundings, it was missing from the experience of those who encountered the work independently.

Both Spikes and MicroSoundings were widely noticed and engaged with by exhibition visitors as well as passersby. Their locations, at the entrances of buildings, allowed for a large number of people to hear them en route to other destinations. However, it was their strong visual components—Maes’s beautiful array of circuit boards and Fontana’s adoption of an existing architectural feature—that particularly captured attention and invited sustained engagement. People were also able to hear them in a more superficial way, without stopping to focus, as they moved about their day. That quality is shared with Kirkegaard’s Transmission, but not with Lucier’s Five Graves to Cairo. The entryway locations of Spikes and MicroSoundings also made them uncontroversial. They did not disrupt offices, classrooms, or study spaces. (Fontana’s work was faintly audible from the inside the building in the stairway and became familiar to folks who used that space multiple times a day, but no one complained about it while going up and down the stairs.) One Dartmouth student recalled,

I personally immediately connected with the installations at the LSC [Life Sciences Center] and in Thayer because of how well they fit into the spaces. I had class in the LSC about twice a day and passing by the installation was always an interesting experience. It reflected the sounds inside the space well and actually made it sound like it was projecting the sounds from the labs. I went with a few students inside the space as well and everyone had a lot of fun interacting with the installation and the accelerometers. In terms of the Thayer installation, I thought the clicking and the circuitry also reflected the nature of the building well.¹¹