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The Rice Thresher
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Maria Stalford thresher staff
Evoking summer, light and play, three inflatable swimming pools rest in a diagonal line, their bright blue tiered rings rising serenely into the softly lit white gallery space. Each of the pools is partially filled with water and outfitted with a small noiseless swimming pool pump. A host of wine glasses and porcelain bowls floats in each pool, moving with the currents of the water created by the pumps. As the objects knock into each other at varying speeds and from different angles, they emit an array of sounds, from barely audible clatter to loud, resonant clangs. Boursier-Mougenot means for the set-up to be simply and easily grasped by visitors and he has concealed no technical maneuvering - what you see is what you get. For all its simplicity and spareness, however, the installation exerts a mysterious and enchanting pull. The cacophony of noises is unpredictable and ever-changing, each cluster of sound seemingly untraceable to any locatable interaction of objects. Quiet lulls are sometimes followed by series of clangs that sound as full and choreographed as peals of church bells. Affected by the pumps and the movement of other objects, the path of any given object seems almost impossibly difficult to predict. It is easy to become immersed in wholly experiencing the sounds and following the motions just as they unfold. Science types are likely to be as equally drawn to the installation as art lovers, as Boursier-Mougenot has carefully exploited principles of acoustics to shape the range of sounds produced. He selected the blue and white Chinese crockery with a sound frequency analyzer in hand and has modulated the temperature of the water with small heaters because the objects' collisions sound louder and more resonant in warm water. For their "Good Vibrations" acoustics class, Computational and Applied Mathematics Professor Michael Carroll and Musical Composition and Theory Chair Arthur Gottschalk will team-teach a seminar in the gallery on the convergence of science and art represented in the installation. For a pamphlet accompanying the installation, Carroll ruminated on how Boursier-Mougenot's installation evokes for him the Greek idea of the music of the spheres and the much later elucidation of physical laws by scientists such as James Clark Maxwell, concluding that "art and science are not so far apart. C‚leste Boursier-Mougenot's exhibition illustrates and celebrates this." A sound installation exhibited in a space usually reserved for visual arts, Untitled (Series #2) extends the traditional categories of visual art and music while collapsing the boundaries between the two fields. Boursier-Mougenot challenges the traditional conception of art in that his installation has nothing to do with discrete, finished, unique art objects handworked by the artist. Rather, the formula for its peculiar assemblage of everyday articles could be infinitely repeated by any person, artist or non-artist alike. While recursiveness is standard fare in music (musical notation allows for compositions to be played again and again, by different musicians), what is repeatable in Untitled (Series #2) is not the sequence of notes itself, but rather the mere conditions for their production. This sound installation diverges further from traditional conceptions of music in that it is played neither for nor by anyone - the sounds are created autonomously and continuously rather than by the activity of musicians in the span of a particular, determined composition. The centrality of chance occurrences in the creation of the sequence of sounds and its utter exclusion of narrative and literary structures rides on the innovations of John Cage and other 20th-century experimental musicians. For Boursier-Mougenot, the concert hall is an inappropriate venue both for contemporary music and for the different sense of temporality that engenders it. Indeed, the appointed time and duration of the traditional concert can seem quaintly formal by comparison with the stop-and-start pervasiveness of music in everyday life by way of Walkmans, car sound systems and music piped into stores and shopping centers. In this way, Boursier-Mougenot finds galleries more welcoming environments for his work because they allow people to come, stay and go as they please. Moreover, while visitors are not allowed to touch the pools themselves, the artist encourages them to rearrange the gallery's many caf‚ chairs to find the spot that pleases them most. The placement of chairs then becomes a kind of temporary living record of visitors' unique, personal experiences of the installation. Similarly, by leaving the installation untitled, Boursier-Mougenot allows visitors to determine their own experience of the work and to come to their own interpretations of its significance. Indeed, he has said, "It is the visitors' presence and their own experience of apprehending my works which gives the works meaning." In the broad tradition of Cage, Marcel Duchamp and their many artistic progeny, Boursier-Mougenot has relieved everyday objects from their functionality and allowed them to sing out their other, more transcendent possibilities. This was the message of Cage's infamous "silent" compositions - captivating music (and art of all kinds) may be found anywhere, if only we can free ourselves enough from rigid expectations to truly listen for it.
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