The Sense of another Dimension
Over the course of a week I made over ten hours of field recordings at the 2004 Whitney Biennial. I concentrated on the public tours they offer but also included sounds of the museum as work place, conversations between museum visitors,
and my daily ride to and from the museum.
I then sampled these recordings; adding beats and including the “sound granules”, clicks and pops that were the by-product of my recording process, to create pieces of glitchy electronica. I then sampled these songs and created cell phone ringtones
available at www.susanrobb.com
The Sense of Another Dimension explores the idea of "authorized speech"; in this case the Whitney docent tours, and how their words seem impartial yet are used to uphold certain values regarding what is art.
In these songs I am folding the docents' voices in on themselves, re-ordering their speech so they themselves appear to be critical of the museum, speak about the wonders of the natural world, speak of culture’s fear of nature, and in some cases
talk about particular works at the Biennial in a way that I believe describes them more accurately then their scripted explanations.
By including the sound detritus, the clicks, pops, and street noise, I mix the cultural institution back into the everyday in order to create a conversation between authorized and unauthorized speech, between inside and outside the institution. I then strengthen this conversation between the sanctioned and unsanctioned voice by offering these pop songs as ubiquitous cell phone ringtones; turning the cell phone into a transmitter
of affordable, populist,mobile art; broadcasting sonic interjections about culture and
the everyday.