GATING
How does the way we understand things that we hear differ from the way we understand things that we see? Sight and hearing are the two senses we rely upon most to engage with the world. Sight, of course, is the pre-eminent sense- it aids our movement, memory and ability to form opinions. We place such importance on sight that the logic of vision, the idea of seeing, permeates the way we think and the way we articulate our thoughts. Our physical and intellectual dependence on sight has in turn privileged those cultural forms that favour vision. Cultural forms which rely on faculties other than sight even make concessions to vision. Recorded music, for instance, placates our sense of sight with music videos and the images that recording artists construct for visual media such as television and magazines. In fact it is difficult to think about any cultural form without vision coming into the picture. We may experience sound using our ears but we come to make sense of it with our eyes. Nevertheless, sound does exist independently of vision. lt has a unique logic and structure quite separate to things from the visual realm. For some time visual artists have investigated the relationship between sound and vision by using aural metaphors to interrogate vision and vice versa. Recent examples that come to mind are Carsten Nicolai's use of audio frequencies that have visual representations, and Angela Bulloch's interactive music/light installations.
Michael Graeve has been exploring the relat ionship between the audio and visual realms through reductive painting/sound installations. These installations often consist of a suite of paintings which is accompanied by audio piece(s) amplified in the same exhibition space