Inside Vox, photo by Luke Frazier
Sound sets mood in a myriad of ways; think of a great movie soundtrack or a song that sets your heart afire. Think of overhearing a loved one’s raucous laughter and how it delights the ears. Think of the rhythmic crashing roar of waves as you stare over the ocean and the resulting sonic embrace. Sound is an important connection to the interior world of meaning.
In the natural world of the Lowcountry many sounds are muted. You must listen hard at the edge of a saltwater marsh to hear brushy whispers, and the loudest plops in ponds near my house are turtles jumping in. Unlike my last citified neighborhood, it’s possible to sleep with the windows open when the weather is right; it’s a pleasant little treasure.
Sometimes I’ll lie there in the dark and hear the wind pick up a bit and rustle the treetops and it will be a calm balm easing me back to dream land. No such drifty pleasure was possible at 5:30 a.m. on a recent morning. Instead, a bunch of birds went crazy for an extended glory-be it’s great to make noise! symphony. I was surrounded by squawks, screeches, trills, and assorted ecstatic whistles. I had to laugh at how loud it was, and my wife and I compared it to the trains that used to blast their horns outside our windows in Knoxville. It went on for a while but was worth the attention.
In an oddly similar way, a very different kind of sound experience captured my full attention recently at the SCAD Museum in Savannah. I’d been meaning to get down there for some time and finally made the trek. We had a great lunch first at a place called Veratina, and I thought the Shrimp Scampi made the trip a success regardless of what art might come later.
It turns out the multiple galleries at SCAD provided a fabulous array of artwork, notably the expressive drawings and paintings by Christina Quarles and the graceful large paintings filled with colorful beauty and longing by Ken Gun Min. But when I entered the sound installation called Vox I knew what I had come for.
This 8-channel sound installation by Icelandic artist and musician Jónsi (on display until June 22) is an immersive experience of sight, sound and fragrance. The roughly 20 X 15 foot room consists of long rectangular LED light panels on all four walls and a small sitting platform in the middle.
Depending on when you enter the 25 minute loop, you’ll hear Jónsi’s falsetto voice gently inviting contemplation or more roughly declaring contact, existing over tonal palettes that range from natural world ambience to mechanical construction. His voice has been converted into light frequencies that trigger the LED panels as the voice booms through the speakers. At the same time, there are bursts of an earthy and fecund fragrance and wisps of fog pumped in as part of the immersion. It turns out the artist’s family runs the perfumery Fischersund and Jónsi knows scents. He also knows how to create sonic arrangements that folks respond to, if his 500,000 YouTube followers mean anything.
I’m definitely wired to appreciate installation art in general, and soundscapes in particular, but I believe that anyone who is able to relax into the mood of Vox and stick it out for the duration will be rewarded. The experience makes overall sense in its alchemy of what you see, feel, hear, and smell.
I believe that part of the point (and value) of art such as this is that it offers a chance to step outside your normal social interactions and linger inside an artistically realized and fully created space. It’s an opportunity for a new experience, challenging and rewarding at the same time. In some way this immersion reset my emotional concerns and broadened my perspective, as powerful art can do.
Jónsi’s Vox installation reminded me of a James Wade passage written from the perspective of a dying character who felt himself caught up in a “swirling rotation of the never before and always has been.” I let expectations go in that scented little room filled with flashing lights and a powerful voice and stepped into a larger context of life on Art’s terms.
Light and sound will be part of our lives until darkness and silence finally overtake us. But until then, there are ample opportunities to be engaged by creative acts, and Jónsi’s Vox installation at SCAD is now calling.
