PROGRAM THREE: SOUND MACHINES
Just as the image was central to the age of mechanical reproduction, sound is a core element of the age of digitality. The enhancement and clarity of sound by computational means has opened new vistas for the performance and distribution of traditional music, for the creation of new synthetic rhythms, and for the capture of the faintest of natural sounds. The electronic ability to recombine sound with finesse and precision permits artists to represent the natural, human, and virtual surround of tone, noise, vibration, pitch, intonation, timbre, and reverberation. The variety and intensity of sounds and their inscription in culture constitute an extensive Contact Zone of sensual experience with all Programs in this exhibition. Even the most silent, photographic CD-Rom is surrounded by the soft noise of the machine driving it. Artists in this grouping foreground sound as a primary object of creativity and inquiry. Users of these pieces will be confronted by the grain of the voice and its disrupted rhythms of speech, by the soothing embrace of synthetic music, by the shock of sound and its relation to traumatic loss and recovery, as well as by their immersion in the ceaseless noise of information.

Martin CASEY, Born with a Broken Tongue, 1999 (Ireland/S. Africa)
Christof MIGONE, Metal God, 2000 (Canada)
Brad MILLER & McKenzie WARK, Planet of Noise, 1997 (Australia)
Norie NEUMARK, Shock in the Ear, 1998 (Australia)
OVER DUB UNIT (Tetuzo HIRAI, Kounosuke MIHARA, Tastuo TAJIMI), In Three Small Fantasies, 1999 (Japan)
Michael SY, Star Maps (USA)