Soundtracks at SF MOMA

Last month in October, I had a chance to visit my sister who lives in San Rafael at the same time my mom would be visiting. The way flights worked out, I arrived a day before my mom did to start the long weekend. Usually my sister would work a half day on Friday, but with the wildfires that were going on everything was thrown off, and so I had to find a way to entertain myself for a whole day on my own. This was no problem – I headed to see the new exhibit combining modern art and sounds and music called Soundtracks at SF MOMA, running until January 1, 2018.
Soundtracks at SF MOMA Soundtracks at SF MOMA

The Soundtracks exhibit includes 20 artists located on the 7th floor of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art as well as distributed on a few other floors of the museum. From the first floor you can even trade in your ID for special EMF amplifying headphone and take an auditory walk outside the museum along a mapped route for a few blocks.

While some of the works are a little bit more traditional in that they are displayed on a wall or on tables/pedestals, others explore how sounds and art intertwine in space. These tended to be towards my favorite art pieces because it made you experience how depending on where you are standing, there is a change in how you perceive the art both in how you see and hear it. Let me share my favorite pieces from Soundtracks at SF MOMA during my visit.


Soundtracks at SF MOMA, Moth in B-Flat (2015) by Anri Sala Soundtracks at SF MOMA, O Grivo art pieces of Cantilena, 2017
When you first enter the exhibit, you are greeted by an upside down drum that automatically beats to its own drum-beat (Moth in B-Flat by Anri Sala), the first hint that you will soon be experiencing the familiar with the unfamiliar.

Then, you walk through an area of low-tech mechanical “orchestras” that also play on their own, composed of cranks, wheels, wires, electrical motors and other bare bone materials connected to timers. You get to see and hear mechanical squeaks and turns and bells together in a new musical perspective. You can see an example of the experience at the SF MOMA website of O Grivo’s Cantilena here, and also get a hint from my video below (apologies for vertical orientation since this was for my Instastories)

Some were simple concepts executed thoughtfully, like Camille Norment’s Lull where a woman’s singing is punctuated by a swinging microphone’s encounter with a speaker that produces an effect that is soothing and disruptive with its play of harmony and dissonance.

Or the contemplative atmosphere of an installation of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s clinamen v.3. Here porcelain bowls circulate gently on water, and when the bowls meet create a bell like sound. The title clinamen is derived from the Latin word used by the Roman philosopher Lucretius in his poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) to describe the unpredictable swerve of atoms, and so the variation within clinamen v.3 is also supposed to model this.
Soundtracks at SF MOMA, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's clinamen v.3. Soundtracks at SF MOMA, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's clinamen v.3.

In Sergei Tcherepnin’s Stereo Classroom Chairs you can literally feel the vibrations when sitting in the chair of a composition. While you are sitting there, the exhibit also shares space with Christina Kubisch’s Cloud where visitors put on headphones and depending on where they are standing by the red electrical wire sculpture, hear the sound of different magnetic fields.

Christina Kubisch is also the artist who created that mapped outdoor San Francisco walk with headphones I mentioned earlier, which is a fascinating experience of hearing what you cannot see and thinking about the everyday electrical hums we don’t hear. It’s also sorta a fun scavenger hunt trying to find the places your headphones will tune in!
Soundtracks at SF MOMA, Sergei Tcherepnin's Stereo Classroom Chairs where you can literally feel the vibrations when sitting in the chair. Soundtracks at SF MOMA, Christina Kubisch's Cloud where visitors put on headphones and depending on where they are standing by the red electrical wire sculpture, hear the sound of different magnetic fields. Soundtracks at SF MOMA, Christina Kubisch's Cloud where visitors put on headphones and depending on where they are standing by the red electrical wire sculpture, hear the sound of different magnetic fields.

In a listening exercise art and sound interactive installation, three speakers play classical music such as Mozart or Wagner but playing the whole production of the piece in a super condensed version that somehow, you can still recognize bits and pieces, in the installation Sphere Packing (2013 and 2014) by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. There’s something very intimate too, about leaning in by yourself for with a stranger to be able to hear the quiet speakers (you generally have to be inches away).
Soundtracks at SF MOMA, three speakers play classical music pieces such as Mozart or Wagner but playing the whole production of the piece in a super condensed version that somehow, you can still recognize bits and pieces, in the installation Sphere Packing, 2013 and 2014 by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

In Rafael Lozano-Hemmer‘s other piece, Last Breath, the rhythmic sounds of a paper bag as it inflates and deflates using a medical bellows simulates breath.

In another bringing together of listening and art, on the 2nd floor you can sign up for a live personal soundtrack to accompany you for 15 minutes as you browse the nearby art on that floor. Seriously, you put on headphones that connect to a guitarist who follows you around and plays music!
Soundtracks at SF MOMA, sign up for a live personal soundtrack to accompany you for 15 minutes as you browse the nearby art on that floor. Seriously, you put on headphones that connect to a guitarist who follows you around and plays music! Soundtracks at SF MOMA, sign up for a live personal soundtrack to accompany you for 15 minutes as you browse the nearby art on that floor. Seriously, you put on headphones that connect to a guitarist who follows you around and plays music!

Besides Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s clinamen v.3., the visitor favorite is probably the media art and performance piece by Ragnar Kjartansson, called The Visitors. This is a long piece – it is pretty likely you will walk in on the middle of the hour long performance. It starts with 8 musicians setting up each in a separate location of a landmark estate with their own camera and instrument, and then simultaneously collaborating with each contributing their track all to the same song while being apart. The repetitive lyrics grow in emotion over time, and all the individuals finally come together at the end and walking away across a field like a drunken party. Yes, the artist is the one in the bathtub.
Soundtracks at SF MOMA, Ragnar Kjartansson, called The Visitors. This is a long piece with 8 musicians setting up each in a separate location of a landmark estate with their own camera and instrument, and then simultaneously collaborating with each contributing their track all to the same song while being apart. Over time, the repetitive lyrics grow in emotion and all the individuals finally come together at the end and walking away across a field like a drunken party of friendsSoundtracks at SF MOMA, Ragnar Kjartansson, called The Visitors. This is a long piece with 8 musicians setting up each in a separate location of a landmark estate with their own camera and instrument, and then simultaneously collaborating with each contributing their track all to the same song while being apart. Over time, the repetitive lyrics grow in emotion and all the individuals finally come together at the end and walking away across a field like a drunken party of friends

Each screen feels like it’s own perfectly framed visual and musical performance. You cannot see all the screens at once, you have to continue to walk around with the music for each instrument becoming more distinguished when you are standing in front of that screen. But you can hear and see it is also part of a bigger whole. As the people gather at the end and walk off to the horizon, the viewers in the room too gather together from the multiple screens to the final one.

I probably spent a couple hours on the Soundtracks exhibit as a whole in addition to a couple hours at the museum including lunch at the restaurant here, In Situ. I am going to share the details of the culinary exhibit that is the food of In Situ on my Friday post. There were more Soundtracks art pieces then I shared in this blog – I just pointed out some. Of those that I shared, which fascinate you? Would you go see this exhibit, or have you already seen it?

For more activities I have enjoyed in the Bay Area, I also posted about taking my mom to two places in the Bay Area once she arrived – check out my visit to the Museum of Ice Cream and also our visit to the Jelly Belly Factory and going on the Factory Tour. On a previous trip to the Bay Area last year we looked at the floating houseboats of Sausalito.

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