Manifest (what have we here), a site-specific commission, spreads six channels of sound throughout the expanse of a soaring atrium that connects two buildings and three floors with a hefty industrial staircase. The work features a collection of voices emanating from stairwell landings. They mumble to themselves as they each formulate very different proposals for “total” works of art to fill the atrium, drawing inspiration from familiar tropes in contemporary art practice. Individual voices periodically break through the chatter to announce their ideas, which unfurl distinctively up, down, and across the narrow expanse through both visual and experiential description. The evocative delivery of each proposal explodes the boundaries of the ancient tradition of ekphrasis — the rhetorical description of a work of visual art — as each speaker gradually becomes a sonic embodiment of the work they describe.

Manifest (what have we here)
2016
six-channel sound installation