I recently visited the 'Sonic Arcade: Shaping Space with Sound' exhibition at the Museum of Art and Design in New York and it was pretty ear opening. As the name suggests, there was a real focus on the spaces in which the instillations took place and how the audience and exhibits interacted with one another physically.
Naama Tsabar's Propagation (Opus 3), is a guitar like structure on the wall of one room, the wall has a cavity behind it, the guitar strings are amplified through speakers focused into the wall cavity essentially making the room the resonant chamber for the instrument.
Julianne Swartz created blown glass sculptures and found their resonant frequencies using small speakers tucked away inside each piece, they were spread around the room and seemingly randomly resonated. The effect was a beautiful set of sculptures with a physically engaging quality.
In one room you're invited to put on headphones and play on 4 different synthesizers, This part of the exhibition called 'Subject to Gesture' and was curated by Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe. The Museum website has an interesting interview with him talking about his take on sound 'For Lowe, voltage is an unpredictable, malleable and living material whose manipulation is capable of carving the air with sound.'
