Gender in Sound Art - Thomas Begin and Ellen Moffat

Last Friday night I attended the opening in the PAVED gallery. The room consisted of two guitars on a stand in the center of the space laid down like a table with a bass above, attached to the ceiling with the playing surface parallel to both guitars. Each guitar had a couple of elastic bands that were tied to the strings, and using a maze of brightly coloured yarn stretched across the room it became in interactive abstract sound piece by the audiences interaction with the yarn pulling out notes from the playing surface of the instruments.

The work itself created this reverberating constant sound that changed tone as it bounced off the elastic bands, creating a chain reaction that resulted in an abstract reverberating sound. The work predominantly engaged the male audience; the only female bodies I observed had a comfort level with the equipment that I do not possess, yet the men seemed uninhibited in their interaction.

Seeing this work coincided with my reading of Bradon LaBelle’s Seeing Ursound: Heldegarde Westerkamp, Steve Peters and the Soundscape, which discusses the existence of background noise and the sounds of the environment as artistic performance. Westerkamp looks at the existence of sound as a fleeting experience, one that gets lost with the changing environment and a meeting with Ellen Moffat during class to see her work, discuss sound artists and the do a sound walk in the city.

Moffat offered us one tangible work to show us the interactive nature her soundwork takes. Using a board that you walk on to activate four speakers set into a mirroring board facing upwards and containing various organic materials, the frequency of the speakers vibrating the contents, creating an organic yet technological sound. (Shown Below) Our discussions of capturing the environment and inserting it into a different environment such as a gallery space created a new environment, one transmitted through man made means. The interaction of the piece seemed a lot friendlier towards non technological people, allowing a less elite interaction with the sound creation. The design lent itself to bodies and was less intimidating that Begin’s design, though that was probably more because of my naïve fear of musical equipment. I was interested in the technology that created the interactive platform for the audience. It reminded me of a genderless play; I felt a child like glee, of a time where I was unaware of gender differences but just a body, in this case merely a mass to activate the pressure sensitive equipment.

I also enjoyed her play with the mixture of technology and natural materials. The speakers activated them in a way impossible to nature, yet acting in very natural ways as if falling or blowing in the wind, only contained in their tiny speaker bowl. The sounds gave a feeling of human interfered nature, of bringing the outdoor environment indoors creating a different ambiance with the inclusion of technologically produced sounds.

I didn’t feel a particular gender in either Begin’s or Moffats work because of their dependence on an ungendered interaction, but because of their similar nature of interactivity, sound and technology they gain a gender construction in comparison to each other. I can feel the masculinity in Begin’s piece, perhaps because of the presentation of the piece and the attention to detail in creating an installation of artwork rather than an environment. Begin’s work was constructed as a means to activate sound through equipment, whereas Moffats work paid more attention to the detail of design and connection to natural materials. Does that define the gendering of the work? Does the attention to detail indicate femininity? Does her connection to nature evoke femininity? Do the works themselves gender the space they are located in?