Astro Turf (1999)

Astro Turf installation

Sound art installation

Astro Turf is a sound composition addressing movement and temporality in urban spaces inspired by the writings of French philosophers Henri Lefebvre and Gaston Bachelard, looking into the interplay between unstable, fleeing and incoherent processes as part of everyday life. Lefebvre points to the need for new approaches to the unpredictable, information, play, and the use of the imaginary (Lefebvre 1996), and the lived experience of the city and architecture (Bachelard 1994).

This sound piece was created as an installtion for the elevator at the gallery space, Art in General at Walker Street in New York in 1999. The composition played while the elevator was ascending or descending the four floors of the gallery, moving vertically in space, juxtaposing a vertical listening experience with a horizontal sonic abstract narrative.

Awards

Astro Turf was awarded Best Sound Art at the CYnet Art exhibition in Kunsthaus, Dresden, Germany in 2000. In the Jury were Dr. Klaus Nicolai, Dresden; Iska Jehl, Professor Kunsthochschule München; Jens Heise, Institute for New Media, Frankfurt; Dr. Christa Schneebauer, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; Thomas Gerwin, ZKM Karlsruhe.

Exhibitions

2006
Daily Noise, Leroy Neiman Gallery, Columbia University, New York, USA

Spring in Havana, International Electroacustic Music Festival, National Museum of Fine Arts, Habana, Cuba

2004
Stasis_Space, Chicago, USA

VI Salon Internacional de Arte Digital, Centro Cultural Pablo de la Torriente Brau, Habana, Cuba

2003
Hearing Place, International Symposium of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, The Australian Sound Design Project, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia

Pulse Field, International Sound Art Exhibition, Georgia State University Galleries, Atlanta, USA

Aether Fest, International Festival of Radio Art, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Electric Rainbow Coalition Festival, Dartmouth College, NH, USA

Sonidos Fijados , Barcelona, Spain

2002
Radiotopia; Open Air, Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria

art@radio on the River Hull, Hull Time Based Arts, Hull, England

2001
Micromuseum, medi@terra 2001, De-Globalizing / Re-Globalizing, Travelling Exibition, Greece, Slovenia, Germany, France

File sound art, Custard Factory, Birmingham, England

Collective Jukebox 3.1, Salons de Musique. the Contemporary and Modern Art Museum of Strasbourg, France

2000
CEAIT 2000, Experiments in Art, Information and Technology, California Institute of the Arts, USA

The VII Brazilian Symposium on Computer Music, Curitiba, Brazil

Sonic Residues, Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, Australia

1999
Art In General, New York, USA