Where is that jackhammer?
Why is that college kid holding a giant white horn?
What is that noise?
Assistant Professor of Art Mark Dixon’s Sound as Art FYE students sparked those questions and more while roaming downtown Greensboro on Friday and Saturday night, displaying their semester’s work: a performance art piece called “Mobile Devices.”
“(In ‘Mobile Devices,’ students) carry sound-making devices hidden inside sculptural representations of the sound,” according to the Art in Odd Places website. “Performers mingle around Lewis Street letting their sounds and sculptures interact informally with each other and with the environment.”
First-year Nora Prokosch twirled across Elm Street, swinging her yellow bee-hive-like visualization of a jackhammer.
“Is there really a jackhammer in there?” asked a curious little boy, peeking into the giant whiffle-ball-like sculpture as his Mom tugged him along.
Meanwhile, first-year Harrison Carpenter moonwalked across the street with his rusty-colored rendering of the grinding sound of a stick sliding up a bass string.
When asked what he thought of the racket, one man, jaywalking across Elm Street, replied blankly, “What noise?”
For Dixon, this man’s reaction, or lack thereof rather, may perfectly explain the inspiration for “Mobile Devices.”
“Sounds have become disassociated from their objects,” said Dixon. “Any sound can happen in any setting.”
Over time, as we assume that the wide range of sound heard in a day derives more and more from the same thin slice of technology, we can become normalized to a mobile device-devised din.
Like an old car engine rattling louder and louder, we may not notice the clamor unless something shifts drastically.
“We’re turning the volume up on a fact of contemporary life,” said Dixon.
And thus, through “Mobile Devices,” pedestrians find themselves listening to horse hoofs hopping, a cuckoo clock clattering and pee splattering against a urinal all on a single street corner.
“The reactions of people can be very important in a performance art piece,” said Carpenter.
But if embedded in “Mobile Devices” is a desire to affect onlookers, we must also think about the other end of the feedback loop.
What did spectators get out of “Mobile Devices”?
Some appreciated the art for its sheer novelty value.
“It caught my eye, which is unusual in this busy world,” said city-goer Alicia Warrick.
Still others considered it a sign of Greensboro’s burgeoning arts community.
“Greensboro is being a little more adventuresome,” said Greensboro-native Joy Dascalkis.
Most though, without an explanation provided for them, appreciated the art, but did not understand it.
“I hear noise and I see structure but, outside of that, I don’t see what the connection is,” said Coleman Sistrunk, an Atlanta local visiting Greensboro for A&T’s homecoming festivities.
So what exactly is “Mobile Devices,” including both the performers’ and passersby’s perspectives?
“Is that a unicorn horn?” asked Sistrunk, humorously searching for the meaning of “Mobile Devices,” as he chatted with Prokosch and first-year Gabe Hughes on the street corner.
“Is this a ‘Save the Unicorns’ campaign? Is that supposed to be Bane’s mask? You know what, is that a blue penis?”
As far as the sculptures and pieces’ meaning go…
No and yes.
It is none of those things and all of those things. It is everything you want it to be and nothing you do not make it.
Placing interesting art in public places, no meaning immediately supplied, “Mobile Devices” broadens the circle of creativity, encouraging all to join in and actively interpret their realities.
In the process of this interpretation, the artist and the former bystander collaborate to make something entirely new.
And is that not exactly what Dixon and company want out of their audience?
To thrust back into view sounds and sights previously displaced. To get people to think about the noises they hear. To get people engaged.
Do you see the jackhammer now?
