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Thursday, March 01, 2001
I had been waiting for the building at the southwest corner of Resaca Place and North Taylor Avenue to become interesting. When I moved to the Mexican War Streets a little more than two years ago, its north-facing side was buckling. I never saw anyone coming or going, and the storefront windows were slatted so you couldn't see in. The wooden Caruso Beer Distributor sign above the windows was the only allusion to a past.
Fortunately, the future existed in the plans of the Mattress Factory Museum, and the future has arrived, as it so often does. The property was tied to the museum's purchase of gallery space in the mid-'80s and was rented out as income for a while. It was a mess of hacked-up space, so the more recent decision to turn it into an artists' residence meant months of construction commotion.
Now when I pass by, I see a big bowl of fruit on a table near the windows. On this morning, the wood-block kitchen table is set for nine. I sit across from Junko Wada, a dancer, who dips a spoon into cereal more elegantly than anyone I have ever seen eat anything.
Someone sets a plate of cut-up mango on the table, then plates of muffins and cheeses appear, and a coffee pot, and soon we are all nibbling and sipping and laughing. I almost want to cry with joy because these are artists -- the kind who inspire you to imagine the sound of blue, or of pepper -- and they are living here, near me, if only for a few more days.
Blue doesn't sound like anything unless you can pick up its nanoseconds of wavelengths, but a sound artist would explore the possibilities, from ideas most of us wouldn't form. "Visual Sound," which opens Sunday at the museum, features the work of most of the people sitting around the kitchen table this morning.
After breakfast, I make the three-minute walk to the museum to get a picture of this oxymoronic idea. What does sound look like, what does a look sound like ...? I have considered these ideas before, and it's always like wandering down a street marked "No Outlet." Probably because I am searching for a best answer where there is none.
Qin Yufen, one of the six artists in residence for "Visual Sound," has covered all but the borders of her space, from ceiling to floor, with barbed wire. It is tangled like the brushy growth of a Southern marsh, and she has messed with it ad nauseam. The sound that accompanies it will evoke a sense of violence. Akio Suzuki's pyramid of waxed paper will merely imply sound, which is not what you'd expect from a man who blows through holes in rocks and pats his face like a drum to produce sound.
Christina Kubisch asked for basement space with its walls of stone. She has traced the borders of stones with multicolored wiring. One wall of wires will carry natural sounds, such as insect noise, while computer sounds travel along the opposite wall. The wires suggest a variety of shapes and leave empty spaces so that the sound will include silence and have a sort of shape.
"The sound is a choreography between the two sides," says Christina, who by training is a musician and has been a sound artist-in-residence in many cities. At breakfast, she asked, "Have you a botanical garden here? In every city, I visit the botanical garden."
Christina was edging toward being a sound artist before many people had ever heard of such a thing. Her Pittsburgh housemates -- most of whom live in Berlin -- were gravitating in the same direction at the same time. "We all met in the '80s and all had the same idea of getting away from the traditional. We all left our origins."
Akio was first an architect. Now he blows through holes in stones. He found a stone shaped like an ear on a beach in Japan, and it's a focal point of his installation.
Back at the old beer distributorship -- whose sign will be restored to the plain frieze above the windows -- things have quieted considerably. The only construction left is to pour the sidewalks. Hans Peter Kuhn says the only sounds he hears, at night, are two people discussing a divorce on the sidewalk down from his window and an early riser with a reluctant car battery.
The exterior bricks still have to be painted. The chosen color is light chocolate, which struck me immediately as ugly. But I hadn't thought about what it might sound like. That could make all the difference.
Diana Nelson Jones receives e-mail at djones@post-gazette.com.