Sound As Design

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Levels of Nothingness, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum



Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (born Mexico City 1967) is a rising star who creates interactive installations which translate movement, bodies and voice into sound. Based in Montreal, his work Levels of Nothingness was featured at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in September.

Here’s the scenario: You walk into a room, grab a microphone and speak (saying whatever you want). Then, the fun begins. Lozano-Hemmer’s wild creation collects your vocal pitches, tones and traits and turns everything into specified colors. As the room’s collective language builds up, spotlights swing and shoot different hues and textures in all directions. Words and voices become pure color and emotion.

The piece creatively uses temporary architecture to make art that blurs the usual boundaries we associate with forms such as sound. Not many people walk around everyday thinking about the color of their voice or if a bright red emits a different sound than a dark red.

Notably, Levels of Nothingness corresponded with the museum’s much-touted Vasily Kandinsky retrospective. It’s clear that Kandinsky’s work – particularly his 1912 essay “Yellow Sound” yields a huge influence on Lozano-Hemmer’s art (as he recontextualizes the relationship between sound and vision into a true 21^st century framework). This is a world where both sound and colors are based around computers. The stricter palate that Kandinsky once dissected has exponentially multiplied in size.

Lozano-Hemmer’s use of technology, which includes robotics, projections, sound, sensors, internet and cell-phone links is always derived from or generated by the public.

by Helen Varola

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Levels of Nothingness, from the Solomon R. Guggenheim museum

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer (born Mexico City 1967) is a rising star who creates interactive installations which translate movement, bodies and voice into sound. Based in Montreal, his work Levels of Nothingness was featured at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York in September.

Here’s the scenario: You walk into a room, grab a microphone and speak (saying whatever you want). Then, the fun begins. Lozano-Hemmer’s wild creation collects your vocal pitches, tones and traits and turns everything into specified colors. As the room’s collective language builds up, spotlights swing and shoot different hues and textures in all directions. Words and voices become pure color and emotion.

The piece creatively uses temporary architecture to make art that blurs the usual boundaries we associate with forms such as sound. Not many people walk around everyday thinking about the color of their voice or if a bright red emits a different sound than a dark red.

Notably, Levels of Nothingness corresponded with the museum’s much-touted Vasily Kandinsky retrospective. It’s clear that Kandinsky’s work – particularly his 1912 essay “Yellow Sound” yields a huge influence on Lozano-Hemmer’s art (as he recontextualizes the relationship between sound and vision into a true 21^st century framework). This is a world where both sound and colors are based around computers. The stricter palate that Kandinsky once dissected has exponentially multiplied in size.

Lozano-Hemmer’s use of technology, which includes robotics, projections, sound, sensors, internet and cell-phone links is always derived from or generated by the public.