“Sound and Vision” at the Art Institute of Chicago

Published in Time Out Chicago / Issue 279 : Jul 1–7, 2010 

The first sight “Sound and Vision” presents is a blank screen accompanied by a droning, metallic scrape and clatter. As you imagine what the sound’s source might be, artist David Hammons suddenly appears onscreen, kicking a bucket down the street. Though Hammons’s video, Phat Free, speaks to the way our senses often operate on disparate channels, he also draws parallels between sight and sound, his shaky cinematography echoing the rattle of the bucket against the sidewalk.

The transpositions between art and music that the show’s photographs and videos attempt are never smooth; their resulting unevenness and humor are what make the work worthwhile. There’s an element of chance in John Baldessari’s Songs: 1. Sky/Sea/Sand: The “song” is a series of snapshots of a red ball tossed into the air, with the photos arranged along the gallery wall like musical notes, depending on the ball’s position. Cory Arcangel’s Untitled (After Lucier) compresses YouTube footage of the Beatles’ 1964 performance on The Ed Sullivan Show into twitching blobs of gray pixels. It’s as if music’s attempting to free itself from the sight of the four men onstage, but audio and video both grow comi-tragically unintelligible.

Other works engage our senses to appeal to our emotions and memories. Moyra Davey photographs the worn spines of her record collection as if they were portraits of old friends. Christian Marclay’s big, blue photogram of unravelling cassette tapes, Mashup, best sums up the earnest endeavors of “Sound and Vision” to explore the line between art and music: The show ends up more jumbled and incongruous, but also more charming and intriguing, than when it began.