Donna Legault’s work features floor-length chains attached to speakers, which dance to sonic vibrations in the air.
Sound turns physical with the Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery’s new exhibit, Cymatic Imprints.
Running until March 4, the installation by Ottawa artist Donna Legault takes over the entire space of the gallery.
Legault says visitors are seeing the visualization of sound.
“I’m transforming sound into something we can see and appreciate in a different way, but it is always with the intention of directing peoples’ thoughts or attentions back to the sound itself.”
Thirty suspended speakers, 30 beaded metal chains and 30 piles of white sand use the power of sound to create an unexpected sight.
The smallest, imperceptible hum causes the chains hanging from each speaker to draw patterns on the pile of sand below. A forceful stomp causes the chains to react frantically.
Hanging microphones capture the different sounds in the gallery. All sounds are transformed into an inaudible frequency so the speakers react to the sound without reproducing it.
Legault uses the software Pure Data to program the exhibit and code the type of inaudible sound she needs. She says it is important to place limits to the sounds so visitors can see the difference when sound “becomes more brilliant.”
“Speakers aren’t designed to function in the frequencies that we can’t hear. I am sort of pushing them to their absolute limits,” says Legault.
According to Legault, sound has always been of interest to her. She says even when working with more traditional forms of sculpture like wood or metal, she was always concerned with the element of sound.
“I was taking readings of sound and imagining how water or sound or air moved through a space,” says Legault.
Legault says her fascination is a direct result of working as a sculptor, becoming more concerned with what people could not see, feel, or touch than what they could.
“All the things between, what we consider empty space, and it’s not empty at all. It’s actually full of all sorts of stuff going on and one of those things is sound.”
“What’s really interesting about this show is the interactive feature,” says Meaghan Haughian, the gallery co-ordinator. Haughian says she is fascinated with the way the piece responds to the visitor, making for a unique experience every time.
“So often in galleries there is work you can’t touch and that’s the norm. You are engaging in certain ways but there isn’t the same physicality to the work that it is responding to you,” as there is with Legault’s piece, says Haughian.
Though the gallery has had large installations before, Haughian says it has never had a show such as this.
“It is unlike any other installation that I’ve experienced and I would assume for most people, it would be the same for them.”
Lisgar Collegiate student Makhaila Burke says she walks through city hall all the time to check what exhibits the gallery has on.
“The fact that it’s sound activated is really cool,” says Burke. She says she likes the idea of being part of the art because “it’s never constant and you are making art and not even trying to.”
The gallery will host an artist talk on Feb. 12 at 2 p.m. A small corner of the space has been reserved for another sound piece that Legault has been working on, which she says should be installed by then.
“With so many people and children coming through here, I think it’s going to be lots of fun and a really great show for the public,” says Haughian.