MoMA Presents SOUNDINGS: A CONTEMPORARY SCORE Beginning Today

The Museum of Modern Art presents Soundings: A Contemporary Score, the first group exhibition at MoMA to single out sound as a form of artistic expression, and one of the first of its kind in New York. The exhibition is on view beginning today, August 10 to November 3, 2013, in the third-floor Special Exhibitions Gallery and other locations around the Museum. Soundings features the work of 16 contemporary artists working with sound, from the United States, Uruguay, Norway, Denmark, England, Scotland, Germany, Australia, Japan, and Taiwan. With a broad understanding of art, architecture, performance, telecommunications, philosophy, and music, these artists move comfortably among mediums, while listening and hearing remain central to their practice. Soundingsis organized by Barbara London, Associate Curator, with Leora Morinis, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance Art, MoMA.

At a time when the experience of sound is increasingly private-delivered through earbuds and headphones-Soundings is a communal exploration of how and what we hear, and what we might make of it. Sound art, still a relatively undefined territory, satisfies artists' urge to pioneer new forms. They inventively link sound both to the other human senses and to a variety of rich metaphysical and philosophical projects, and their works run the gamut from immersive tuned environments to sound-emitting objects to conceptual schematics on paper. The works include architectural interventions, visualizations of otherwise inaudible sound, an exploration of how sound ricochets within a gallery, and a range of field recordings of everything from bats to abandoned buildings in Chernobyl to 59 bells in New York City to a factory in Taiwan.

The artists in the exhibition are Luke Fowler (Scottish, b. 1978), Toshiya Tsunoda (Japanese, b. 1964), Marco Fusinato (Australian, b. 1964), Richard Garet (Uruguayan, b. 1972), Florian Hecker (German, b. 1975), Christine Sun Kim (American, b. 1980), Jacob Kirkegaard (Danish, b. 1975), Haroon Mirza (British, b. 1977), Carsten Nicolai (German, b. 1965), Camille Norment (American, b. 1970), Tristan Perich (American, b. 1982), Susan Philipsz (Scottish, b. 1965), Sergei Tcherepnin (American, b. 1981), Hong-Kai Wang (Taiwanese, b. 1971), Jana Winderen (Norwegian, b. 1965), and Stephen Vitiello (American, b. 1964).

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, with texts by Barbara London and writer Anne Hilde Neset, and an artists' interview section coordinated by Leora Morinis.Soundings is also accompanied by evening music events, a film program, and a Sound Lab in The Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Education and Research Building.