UCLA Art|Sci Center Presents Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption

September 7, 2024 /

Part of Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide initiative, programs and exhibitions will run Sept 14, 2024, through June 7, 2025, launching with a Bill Fontana sound exhibition

Immersive, interactive installations, artist lectures, walkthroughs, and live performances and videos by 13 artists—including Bill Fontana’s site-specific installation Silent Echoes: Notre-Dame and the Dachstein Glacier; Katie Grinnan’s sound sculptures The Sensitives; Anna Nacher’s soundwalks; and performances by artists such as Patricia Cadavid, Amber Stucke, and Sholeh Asgary—will activate the UCLA campus to engage audiences in deep reflection on the climate crisis.

Organized by co-curators Victoria Vesna, UCLA Art|Sci center director, and Anuradha Vikram, Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption includes seven sequential exhibitions presented between September 14, 2024, and June 7, 2025, as part of Getty’s PST ART:Art & Science Collide.

The exhibition and related public programs will be held in multiple campus venues, including the Art|Sci Gallery in the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) building on UCLA’s South Campus; the EDA in the Broad Art Center on North Campus; Sage Hill Native Plants & Wildlife Habitat; the Mildred E. Mathias Botanical Garden; Royce Hall; and the UCLA Nimoy Theater operated by UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance.

Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption builds from four years of research by eight artists-in-residence at the UCLA Art|Sci center: Sholeh Asgary, Patricia Cadavid, Bill Fontana, Yolande Harris, Anna Nacher, Joel Ong, Iman Person, and Robertina Šebjanič. Their projects will be joined by installations and performances by local artists Katie Grinnan, Rachel Mayeri, Christina McPhee, Amber Stucke, and Nina Waisman.

“Our goal is to highlight artists and scientists who have developed long-term collaborative relationships with one another,” said co-curator Victoria Vesna. “In this exhibition, we use sound to join the disciplines of art and science and to foster a deeper understanding of our many interconnected environments and cultures.”

PST ART, formerly Pacific Standard Time, is the largest art event in the United States. This year’s iteration will engage audiences throughout Southern California in the theme Art & Science Collide. With the support of nearly $20 million in grants from Getty, dozens of cultural, scientific, and community organizations will present more than 80 exhibitions and a wide spectrum of programs, traversing such topics as climate change, Indigenous knowledge, artificial intelligence, the burgeoning field of eco-acoustic art, and more.

Through Atmosphere of Sound, participating artists and scientists propose to engage human bodies through vibration and exploratory learning as a means of achieving deeper empathy with the environment and with other species.

“Our approach to this project is informed by the work of feminist scientific philosophers including Jane Bennett and Donna Haraway,” Vesna said. “We seek to connect artists and art lovers, scientists, students, performing arts patrons and local families with concepts of vibrant matter and intercellular communication on a global scale.”

Atmosphere of Sound kicks off with Bill Fontana’s outdoor sound sculpture Silent Echoes: Notre-Dame and the Dachstein Glacier, which will be amplified from UCLA’s Royce Hall from September 14 to October 5, 2024. This work threads audio feeds from Notre-Dame’s dormant bells and the Dachstein Cave in Austria, layering these soundscapes into a poetic statement on climate disruption and the fragility of human culture. Fontana is an American composer and media artist who has developed an international reputation for his pioneering experiments in sound.

The official opening event takes place Saturday, September 14, from 2–4 p.m. outside Royce Hall and will feature a conversation with curators and a soundwalk with Fontana.

Following Fontana’s exhibition are six sequential exhibitions in the Art|Sci center’s gallery, located on the fifth floor of UCLA’s CNSI building.

  • October 4 to November 2, 2024: Katie Grinnan’s The Sensitives and Amber Stucke’s Talking to Plants
  • November 15 to December 14, 2024: Robertina Šebjanič’s CO_SONIC 1884 km2
  • January 10 to February 1, 2025: Yolande Harris’s How You Shimmer: Sound Portal for Whale Bubbles
  • February 14 to March 15, 2025: Iman Person’s Memory Garden and Patricia Cadavid’s Kanchay_Yupana// and Electronic_Khipu
  • April 4 to April 26, 2025: Joel Ong’s In Silence . . .
  • May 9 to June 7, 2025: Sholeh Asgary’s Qanat and Ghatel, and Sholeh Asgary + the Ad Hoc Collective for Improvising’s Mourning Technologies for Future Griefs

All exhibitions are viewable by appointment between 2-5pm on Thursdays and Fridays and 12-3pm on Saturdays. Entry is free to the public.

Visitors are encouraged to visit the Atmosphere of Sound website and download the project app to assist in navigating between venues. The app includes wayfinding tools with parking and metro information; meditative soundwalks recorded by Atmosphere of Sound artist Anna Nacher; access to the Atmosphere of Sound radio station, which will stream sonic artworks and interviews with artists and scientists; and detailed exhibition and program information.

“Atmosphere of Sound provokes the central question: ‘If the scale and complexity of climate change exceeds the limits of human perception, how can artists represent it?’” said co-curator Anuradha Vikram. “The project examines how sound-based artists, responding to the climate crisis, have found a unique point of entry to this representational challenge. Sound art, as a medium, evades and challenges the certainty often associated with the sense of sight. The inherent ambiguities of sound can help audiences understand the rapidly shifting state of the climate and its effects on the physical world.”

The Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption exhibition and program of artist lectures, symposia, and performances, as well as a 250-page full color publication featuring seven original essays (est. print date September 2024) has been generously supported by the Getty PST ART initiative.