Recreating Tony Smith's Die with Black Speakers

My next scheduled exhibition Admission will be at the Rio Gallery downtown Salt Lake City December 4, 2009--January 7, 2010. Admission features myself and artist Marc Bradley Johnson. Marc is showing a seven foot cube constructed of doors and I am showing my first speaker piece, a reconstruction of Tony Smith's Die made of black speakers.

A few weeks ago I had the ground breaking, corner-speaker setting, and foundation building ceremony. Below is a picture of the crude beginnings.

In The Speakers 003 (Die) project, I am using speakers and sound to further unveil the references to anthropomorphism in Minimalist artist Tony Smith's Die.^[1] I am reconstructing Smith’s Die out of black speakers and giving the cube a voice. The dimensions of mine and Smith’s Die correspond to those of the human body as depicted in Leonardo da Vinci's drawing, Vitruvian Man (72x72x72).^[2] Both Smith and myself are interested in the ways physical objects, as well as our spatial proximity to those objects, shape our self-perception.^[3] My work contributes to this focus on perception by adding a new dimension—sound. This piece, then, will both literally and theoretically delve into the phenomenological essence of man, which I take to be consciousness.

By giving an object an audible voice, I seek to fill the “hollowness” of which Die was convicted by critic Michael Fried.^[4] Whereas most art gives to its audience, Fried criticized Die for sucking the soul of the viewer. The audio portion of my piece ties to this notion of a storehouse of human consciousness, or as I see it, a sort of black box recorder of humanity. The speakers will be relaying messages that humanity has collected and maintained as important to civilization, representing something essential to mankind, quotes from throughout history—ancient to contemporary. This piece will thus further blur the line between the so-called “non-art” and “art”, “object” and “essence.”^[5] Delivering visual and aural elements at the same time, The Speakers 003 (Die) will educate the artist and the patron about the elements of human perception—one of the most central elements being consciousness.

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[1] Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood: 1967, (published in Harrison, Charles, P. J. Wood. Art in Theory 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas: 2002) 845.

[2] James Meyer. Minimalism: Phaidon, 2000, 172.

[3] Judith Collins. Sculpture Today: Phaidon Press Inc., 2007, 5.

[4] Michael Fried, Art and Objecthood: 839.

[5] Ibid., 836.